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Archive for May, 2009May 21, 09 Comments Off
 caribbean-spiny-lobster Hi again everyone! Aimee and I had a fun adventure this morning, we did something that we have wanted to do for four years! We met a friend at 9:30 and loaded our dive gear onto a small boat and took off in rough seas to a nearby area called Saba. This is a dive spot that is around a mile up the coast from the Sea Aquarium and is only accessible by boat. Our plan was to get dumped off at Saba and dive all the way back to the House reef in front of the Aquarium. One by one we rolled off like Navy Seals and down we went watching as the boat left us to explore at will. Being that we had such a long way to go we decided to level out at 40 feet to conserve on air. It was a nice dive but not anything like I had imagined, maybe our last storm “Omar” destroyed this area as it was fairly bare in a lot of areas. We did the whole dive along a big wall so we could see way down below us and stuff above us, turned out to be a good cruising depth. Your photo this evening is one of Aimee’s cool finds, this is a giant Caribbean Spiny Lobster. This lobster was really beautiful sitting in his little cave with his “million dollar view”, Aimee went around to one side and I went to the other. We pretty much just swam from one cool sponge outcrop to another taking pictures the whole way although the waves overhead were really starting to affect the visibility and taking pictures became more and more difficult. It was a fun dive but not sure I would do it again, think I will stick to our reef or my favorite place in front of Breezes!
Our day went by so fast today, at 3:00 we took off to the store only to find it was another holiday and everything was closed? So instead of running around I went on a mountain bike ride with some friends and later met Aimee on the trails running with the dogs, that’s our day.
Talk to you more tomorrow, Barry
05-21-2009
May 20, 09 Comments Off
 burrowing-mud-crab Good evening one and all, welcome to another day in Curacao. Tonight I have another different crab for you all, not sure of his name so I am just calling him a burrowing mud crab. When the tide goes out around the bay in the area of the mangroves you will see thousands of tiny holes in the mud and each one of these holes contains one of these little crabs. This little guy here was less than half an inch and very hard to get close to. I just randomly picked a hole and set up the tripod and waited and it wasn’t long before out popped this tiny crab. You can see he was not getting to far from his safe underwater mud cave, the slightest movement sent him flying back into his hole at top speed, I was shocked at how fast they can move? Anyways just another cool crab from Curacao and found it interesting enough to photograph.
Not much else for you this evening, it was a day at work entertaining folks from the Adventure of the Sea’s cruise ship, everyone left with smiles on their faces!!
See you tomorrow, Barry
05-20-2009
May 19, 09 Comments Off
 giant-barrel-sponge-and-diver Good evening once again everyone. Here’s another fun shot from 100 feet below the surface! This is yet another amazing Giant Barrel Sponge we found the other day on our deep dive out in front of the Sea Aquarium. This is my model Candy again who not only went along for the ride she ended up getting put to work as well, if you can call holding a flashlight work that is?? After finding all these new beautiful sponges I am now on-fire to explore more and see what else we can find? After shooting this at 100 feet I looked down the slope further and I think there may be another but twice this size or bigger at 135-140 feet, any volunteers to go with me and check?? This giant sponge also had the most insane texture on the outside that I have ever seen, it was like hundreds of sponge spikes, really, really cool!
My day today started out with taking the dogs out on our trails by the house and doing some good o’l fashioned trail work. I swept and raked while the girls hid in the shade, this was one of our first really hot days! I pretty much spent the rest of the day at home working on the computer and sitting in the air-co it was way better than being outside. We are currently in need of a air filter for our car and today even though I was told not to, I tried to wash the one we have. I used hot water and soap and did get it a little cleaner but now see why they told me you can’t wash them, it kind of started to fall apart. The filter can only be bought in Holland making it very difficult for us to get parts for this thing.
At 5:00 against my better judgment I took off on my bike and headed to Saint Joris. I fought the worst wind ever the whole way there, it was awful! In fact at one point I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder and was being drafted by a local kid on a homemade piece of junk BMX bike!? That’s one of those little one speed bikes that the kids all ride. I thought to myself, “this is embarrassing” I’m on a $2500.00 mountain bike and I’m getting my butt kicked by some kid on a kids bike? What kind of nightmare is this? I then increased my speed thinking he would now fall off the back and be gone! No such luck, not only did this young kid match my speed he passed me going up a long hill into the wind?? As he passed I said “good job my friend” huffing and puffing of course, he just looked at me and smiled and put the pedal to the pavement. At the top of the hill he turned off, lucky he did or I would have had to teach him a real lesson!! Not! I swear am I just getting old, am I that out of shape or was I riding on two flat tires, I’m gonna say all three!
That’s it for my adventures today, see you tomorrow, Barry
05-19-2009
May 18, 09 Comments Off
 touch-me-not-sponge-worms Good evening readers of the Curacao blog, how was your day today? Remember a few days ago when I sent you the picture of the new fish we found, the little spotlight goby? Well I mentioned that the little white marks on the sponge were all tiny worms and since then have received countless e-mails about the worms. So I went out today and took a close-up of these worms just to prove that I am not crazy and not making this stuff up. One person asked how can these sponges survive with all those worms? Good question. There are a number of animals that live in association with this toxic sponge. The list includes, Touch-Me-Not Fanworms, Sponge Brittle Stars, Florida Tubeworm Snails, the Yellow Goby and the Shortstripe Goby, all need this sponge to survive. The worms you see here are actually tiny polychaete Sponge Worms and feed by inserting their proboscis into individual cells never harming the sponge itself. This was a super hard picture to take today! The worms are down along the inside walls and the sponge it’s self is very toxic! I am sure I took 50 pictures and only had a few come out but was bound and determined to get something. So divers the next time you swim over a Touch-Me-Not sponge stop and really look, all those white specks you see on the inside are all worms, it’s just so cool!
Here’s something fun and different for you all this evening, have you ever tried to say the word “Toy Boat” 10 times real fast?? It’s close to impossible! Well we were playing this at work the other day and the locals I work with said “oh yeah, we have one of those here too” try saying “Baka Brabu Rabu Largu” 10 times real fast! It means Angry Cow, Long Tail! The locals here enjoy this tongue twister as much as we love ours and there’s even one I learned in Dutch, it goes “de kat krabt de kruller van de trap”. Say What? This one is translated as “the cat scratches off the curls on the stairs”. The way I understood this was that if you have stairs with carpeting and own a cat, the cat will scratch or claw at the carpet creating little curls of carpeting with it’s claws, I love it!
That’s it, more tomorrow. Barry
05-18-2009
May 17, 09 Comments Off
 blackbar-soldierfish-under-a-giant-sea-fan Good evening boys and girls, how was your much deserved weekend?? I had a busy day as usual starting with a three hour hike. I ended up taking on more distance than I should have this morning, what looked like a quarter of a mile turned out to be a mile and so on and so forth. We started at the usual place at Saint Joris and headed to the inlet of the bay where the ocean meets the island. When we got there I figured why not head towards Canoa now along the coast until we get to the first beach, well that took forever! When we got there the dogs raced to the water and just stood there cooling off as I looked back were we had just come from thinking this was not a good idea. After giving the dogs half of the water we again headed out into the desert this time going a different way back, I figured it would take about the same time to back-track as it would to do a loop around the mountain. Well to make a long story short, I won’t do that walk again, about a quarter of the way back I gave the dogs the rest of the water and kind of just wondered what possessed me to do this today? We got back to the car over three hours later, the dogs raced to the ocean to cool off and I raced to the water that was in the car, that’s a long walk carrying all that camera gear, tripod and water! The good side to that walk was that the dogs slept the rest of the day.
After resting for awhile I assembled the underwater camera and took off to the Sea Aquarium for another dive. The dive was wonderful! Again the visibility was super clear and there were schools and schools of fish, it’s like swimming in a big aquarium. I am still searching our reef for different and unusual sponges, never realized just how many different kinds there are until you really open your eyes and look, it was really fun. I looked for the seahorse on the way back but didn’t see him, boy do they ever blend in!
Your photo was taken on my way out today near the exit. This is our big Sea Fan we have at the edge of our reef with four unafraid Blackbar Soldierfish. I have used this sea fan for so many pictures over the years, including with the mini-sub and countless models, it just sits there swaying back and forth all day.
That’s about it, talk to you tomorrow, Barry
05-17-2009
May 16, 09 Comments Off
 orange-elephant-ear-sponge Good evening from Curacao! I started the day off with another “deep dive” in search of more fun sponges. I was joined by my friend and co-worker Candy (seen here) as a dive buddy and a model, two for the price of one! We had a great time down there kind of just moving from one sponge to the next, will send you more examples in the next few days. These are one of the most beautiful sponges anywhere and are called Orange Elephant Ear Sponges. This was taken at 100 feet and unfortunately at this depth we could only hang out and look around for a few minutes, it’s just amazing how fast your time passes down there! Candy is a Dive Master and Instructor so to say I was in good hands was an understatement, she is as good as they get! After shooting this we headed up to safer depths. We then stopped at around 30 feet for more photos near a big sunken propeller where to my disbelief Candy found a big red seahorse! Unfortunately I had the wrong lens so no seahorse photos for you but may go back tomorrow morning for another quick look. The visibility was close to 100 feet today, it was just a perfect morning for a dive.
I worked the rest of the day and am now ready to call it a day. Many thanks for all the great notes, we always want to hear from you! Sunny regards, Barry
05-16-2009
May 15, 09 Comments Off
 stationing-a-baby-dolphin Good evening all, ever wondered how they train baby dolphins?? It takes patience! And a lot of it! This is baby Pasku with our trainer Junior doing a pretty good job at what we call “stationing”. Stationing is done by getting the dolphins attention by putting your hands out over the water and getting them to stop what their doing and focus their attention on you, it’s like a dolphin stop sign. Once stationed like you see here a different hand signal is given and if done correctly they get a tasty fish. Now in baby Pasku’s case, he got a fish for just stopping long enough to look up at Junior, this was his first step and he did great. They usually take their little fish and swim off at top speed and then seconds later toss it in the air, playing with your food seems like way more fun than eating it? And usually if they play with it long enough one of the big snappers will grab it or a waiting frigate bird will dive down for a free meal leaving our little dolphin wondering were did my fish go??
I did a macro dive this morning, got some pretty cool shots but not really what I was hoping for. I swam by the new fish I found yesterday he was still there, this time I stopped and took a nice vertical shot, I like it more than the horizontal.
Not much else this evening, see you tomorrow, Barry
05-15-2009
May 14, 09 Comments Off
 spotlight-goby-gobiosoma-louisae Good evening all, we found a new fish! This is a Spotlight Goby and from what all the books and research say there has never been one of these reported in our Southern Caribbean waters, so that’s pretty cool! He is only about an inch in length and is identified by the perfect little yellow spot on the top of his nose. I first saw him yesterday from high above and knew immediately this was something different. He is living inside a Touch-Me-Not sponge but came out and perched himself on top long enough for me to take his picture. Not only is this sponge poisonous if touched it is covered in little white sponge worms, can you see them?? Look down into one of the two holes, those white things along the sides are all worms and are commonly found in association with these Touch-Me-Not sponges. Aimee and I did a deep dive this morning so I was able to re-take his photo as yesterday I had the wrong lens. We dove to around 100 feet this morning looking for new sponges and found a treasure chest full of them down there, need to go back ASAP with my wide angle lens. Because of rough seas overhead the overall visibility wasn’t that great but still very enjoyable, it was a short but fun dive.
For lunch we went to the new Tony Roma’s that opened a few months ago and it was great! We have been home now close to four hours and we both are still stuffed, man was it yummy!
That’s about it, we are taking the dogs hiking now for a few hours and then calling it a day. Have to run, Barry
05-14-2009
May 13, 09 Comments Off
 wild-parakeet Good evening friends and family how was your day?? I first want to thank all of you for the compliments! I was a bit shocked by how many of you liked the dolphin picture today, we received a ton of mail regarding that one?? Heck I’m just glad you guys are still out there keeping us company after all these years, we really enjoy reading your feedback.
I worked today but Aimee was off. I was able to do a dive with her at 1:00 being that we had no 3:00 programs so off we went on another “sponge locating dive” and had a blast! The moment we went under we realized how clear the water was but soon found out why, mother nature had turned on the current! We dove down to 50 feet staying low to the reef but still fighting the current head on. If you think just diving in current is hard, try to take pictures as well, there’s a challenge for you! Aimee would signal me to come over and shoot whatever she had just found and I had to find a way to stay in one spot long enough to do it, which is just a matter of body positioning and a little luck. Both of us really enjoyed this dive but burned our tanks up fast because of how hard we had to work to stay in one spot and we both exited with a headache from breathing so hard!
Your photo this evening was taken yesterday in our back yard of our now daily squawking visitors! I am starting to get real good at hearing them from inside, grab the camera, crouch down as low as I can and ever so quietly TRY to sneak up on them. Most of the time I get busted and they fly off screaming the whole way but sometimes like you see here I can get pretty close. It’s just so cool to live somewhere that has tropical birds flying around, we really enjoy them and hope they continue to come visit.
Aimee and I are going to the movies this evening for a night of relaxation and popcorn so I have to get moving! Talk to you again soon, Barry
05-13-2009
May 13, 09 Comments Off
 tela-and-pasku Good morning all, after doing two long dives, errands around town, hours of computer work and a mountain bike ride I had no time or energy left to get this out last night! My dives yesterday were so great! The water was so clear and there were so many fish which made for one of those really memorable diving days! I was out there on both dives searching for all types of new sponges that I had never really photographed before like all the colors of encrusting sponges, wait till you see how beautiful they are. I found a big Atlantic oyster clinging to a rock yesterday with his shell covered in orange encrusting sponge. He was so cool but very scared when I got close he slammed his shell shut and never re-opened for business. I have never in all these years seen that many fish in our waters like I did yesterday, I really need to get a video of this for you all to see.
This is mamma Tela with baby Pasku who as you may remember is our “Christmas Miracle” He was born Christmas morning with very little effort and no problems at all and continues to amaze us all every day!
I have to get my underwater camera ready and get going to work, I will talk to you more tonight. Have a great day and thanks again for all your kind words of encouragement! Bye now, Barry
05-12-2009
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