Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Well we took a chance and tried our luck with a local dive operator to do some boat diving with them on the Saturday. That was our first and last time with them I reckon. 

It's true what they say, you get what you pay for. It's the first time we've ever got back on the boat with 140 bar still left in the tank!. Short dive times, shorter surface intervals and to make it worse, the staff listened to the majority of the divers (not us I hasten to add) and took them where they wanted to go instead of where the best diving actually was. 

The majority wanted to go to a particular dive site to get the best pictures (they said). As I've said for many years, the general public are idiots and they don't know what they want. We ended up on probably one of the sh*tiest dive sites I've been to anywhere in the world, and I've dived in some right old filthy puddles in my time.

To put the world to rights and put that horrible episode behind us, we went shore diving on Sunday. We only did a single tank dive but we had a 147 minute run time, which more than makes up for the utterly miserable dives the previous day.

Nurse sharks, angelfish, groupers, tarpons, octopus, but still sad to say the seahorses are continuing to elude us. Maybe this weekend..... And we nearly saw a scrap between a turtle and a barracuda, but they both backed down at the last minute and headed in opposite directions.

I must say the nurse shark pics and video I got aren't my greatest but they were very skittish and I didn't want to frighten them, off so please excuse by below par shots.

As close as I dared without frightening the poor thing

And another shot for good measure

Loads of flamingo tongue cowries were out and about, it must be breeding season for them. Or some sort shellfish convention or something....

I love these little colourful cowries

There was a good selection of petersons shrimps scuttling over the reef as well and when you can get them to sit still for a few seconds you can get some great shots that really show up their colours as well as allowing you to see the eggs in their translucent bodies.

A petersons shrimp, sitting still

We had some really nice angelfish follow us around as usual, if it's not snappers or groupers then it's usually angelfish that are looking to be adopted by visiting divers. I swear they can remember you from previous dives. Maybe fish do have memories after all?

The adopted angelfish we always wanted...

....and the porcupine fish we never wanted but it adopted us anyway!

Jill made a nice find of a nesting octopus so now we've got it's location pegged, we'll be able to visit it whenever we're out. Unfortunately at this point it was content to stay in it's hole and blow bubbles at us. Maybe it'll be out for a forage next time we're out.

Anti-social octopus

And of course the obligatory christmas tree worm shot, because I like sneaking up on them and they're just so colourful and photogenic..

No excuses, I just like them

This coming weekend, we're out with our friends at Ocean Frontiers who may not be the cheapest for dives on the island, but they are the best on the island and we always get well looked after whenever we're out with them.

And maybe Sunday, we'll go seahorse hunting and try and find the little blighters once and for all!