Ribbon in the sky

A great day to dive as the weather turned abruptly afterwards, so timing was with us today. The water temp was down to 27 C. mind you with this being winter time and all but that didn't stop the good times. There were huge shoals of fusiliers, barjacks and blue chromis, it was like swimming through ribbons of multi coloured light and explosions of underwater fireworks.

We also a wonderful array of turtles out there that to came to play with us with their entourage in tow in some instances. If I remember rightly, there were five turtles at different times hanging around. It's nice to see that they haven't all been poached and killed which is unfortunately still very much a thing here.

For dive number two I didn't get too lucky on finding the small stuff this time around. I always seem to struggle a bit at this site for macro stuff, however enough excuses. I did manage to find a flamingo tongue cowrie wandering the sand which was nice to see as the only time I've ever seen them is when they're attached to coral or sponge.

Macro deficit aside, it was a great morning for diving and still good to be in the water and forget the hubbub and tumult of everyday life. After all if you don't have diving, what do you have?

Mellow Yellow

And the results for the Yellow Pages Cover contest are in.........and I didn't win. They were looking for something to reflect the cultural heritage of the islands. I thought scuba diving reflected all nations, creeds and colours? :-D

Anyway, I did get two shots into the finals, one being of Jill in the water and the other a macro shot of a bee. They're peppered throughout the Yellow Pages about 40 or so times in various sizes and aspect ratios, so you can't miss them. Print quality isn't the best, but it's the Yellow Pages, not Sport Diver. Originals down beneath the YP example if you're interested.

Maybe next year I'll do some underwater shots of involving chickens and iguanas, that should cover all the bases............

Ruby Tuesday

Well they finally did it. After years of searching, scientists have finally found the first living ruby seadragon. This is the third species of seadragon and up until now the only place ruby seadragons have been found is in museums.

Link: HERE

"Previously, scientists had thought sea dragons were distinguished by long, wispy, leaf-like appendages. This feature helped name the two other species in existence — the leafy sea dragon and the common sea dragon (also known as the weedy sea dragon).
But the ruby sea dragon lacks these, bearing a far greater resemblance to a sea dragon relative, the seahorse."

 "Upon seeing the animal in the wild without the same plant-like growths as other sea dragons, the team concluded the ruby sea dragon may have lost them somewhere along the evolutionary timeline."

Stayin Alive

Happy New Year and welcome to 2017. So after being forced out of the water for the last 3 months and consultations with the "specialist" (I use that term loosely as I got a distinct felling he was more about the money rather than assisting me), I've decided to get back in the water anyway and see what happens.

As it turned it, it wasn't as traumatic as I imagined it would be and I'm still alive. It's not all perfect though as I'm going to re-acclimate and work round a few issues but several dives into 2017 things can only go up from here on in.

Diving at LHP was more a testing ground rather than a full blown macro hunt but I still managed to get on or two half decent shots, despite everything else going on.

And this happy little chappy we found by pure accident, which is always the way when you're not actually looking for anything.

And as always I would be remiss if I didn't add in a few blennies in for good measure.

And a little golden tail moray to round things off. With any luck I'll be back in the water again on Sunday with a few more images. Sport Diver has a few more of my bits and pieces to publish over the next few months so keep an eye out for them.