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Archive for October, 2009Oct 31, 09 Comments (0)
 Rufo in the rain Good evening boys and girls how was you Halloween day?? Our day here started at 4:30 in the morning! Our friends Zenzi and Ester came by at 5:00 and took Aimee to the airport, all three girls are headed to the IMATA conference in Atlanta. So I am on my own again for a week, will have to start getting up earlier just to get everything done in time.
Today we got hammered by a tropical downpour that dumped so much water in such a short time we had to cancel all our afternoon dolphin swims due to yucky water! When it rains like it did today everything runs into the sea causing very poor surface water conditions! While it was raining or should I say pouring someone inside yelled “look at poor Rufo”! Well poor Rufo was having a blast! He would open his mouth and drink water plus spread his wings open getting a super full body shower!! I shot this from a window, it was raining so hard I couldn’t get near him without getting soaked. After the rain stopped he just sat there in a daze a little bit like he was cold so I picked him up and dried him the best I could.
After work I took the hound dogs on a muddy one hour walk and a fun swim in the ocean. The ocean was like a lake tonight so the dogs had such a great time swimming and are now fast asleep! The frogs are sure making noise tonight, it’s time for bed, talk to you tomorrow, Barry
31-10-2009
Oct 30, 09 Comments (0)
 Happy Halloween Good evening friends. I spent the evening looking thru tons of pictures trying to find some kind of a scary face for Halloween but all I found was this “Happy Face” photo from Inca. I mean if you didn’t know Inca and you saw this coming at you full speed it could be seen as scary right?? Well Happy Halloween anyways I tried!
Aimee and I both worked today so not much to report. I did go on a fast one hour bike ride directly after work and then raced home and took the dogs for a very short walk returning in the dark.
Bad news for the local reef system tonight, Lionfish have just been found for the first time in Bonaire and in Curacao this week at the dive site Watamula. Lionfish are not supposed to be here and can and will do great harm as they are ferocious hunters and eating machines!! Divers are being told to immediatly report any sightings or carefully catch them and take them to the Sea Aquarium or contact me and I will help any way I can. It would appear that a cloud of larvae carried by the ocean currents passed by the windward islands recently, out of which the larvae settled when they found the sea bottom within reach. It is likely then that hundreds of juvenile Lionfish are now living around the islands. Because they can live down to depths of 150m (500 ft) or more we will never see most of them, only those that end up relatively shallow, like the three that have now been reported.
Aimee leaves early tomorrow morning for her trip to the States, it’s going to be an interesting week. Gotta run, have a safe Halloween, Barry
Oct 29, 09 Comments (0)
 Mushroom Forest 1 Hello all yes it’s me again! I get so many letters asking and wondering how in the world do you find time to do your blog thing every day?? Well it’s simple, I get daily doses of encouragement from many of my readers and that’s always enough to keep me going another day! Like today I wake up turn on the computer and there is a note from a lady I have never met! Her name is Carol Haralson of Carol Haralson Books, (Google it) well this woman just makes our day every time she writes!! Her notes are filled with compliments and inspiration and shortly after reading them I feel like Super Photographer and race out into the world to find something to shoot! It’s really amazing how far a compliment can take you, try it today and see for yourself, words are a powerful thing! And since I’m on the subject I want to thank all my “Regulars” for always keeping in touch on an almost daily basis, Aimee and I love to get your notes from home!
Here’s a fun shot we took a few weeks ago while Eva was here at one of Curacao’s top dive destination, the Mushroom Forest. More folks go here than any place on the island and for good reason it has all kinds of beautiful coral and sponge formations! It gets it’s name from these super big Star Coral mounds that kind of look like giant mushrooms, “with a good imagination that is”!! This is Aimee hovering above one of the thousands of cool sponge out-crops. The long purple ropes are called Row Pore Rope Sponge and the sponges in the middle are Branching Vase Sponges, it’s just so beautiful!!
We had a fun family outing this morning, Aimee took us to an abandoned land-house she found while out running the dogs on Wednesday. This place must have been built in the early 1800’s and it still looks pretty good, would love to have a million bucks to fix it up, and it has the best view in all of Curacao! The rest of the day was a bit on the lazy side, I went to the doctor for my annual check-up and worked on driftwood creations the rest of the day trying to get some more things ready for sale. Aimee went on a one hour mountain bike ride by herself at 5:30 and I took the dogs for a short walk, that was pretty much our day.
Aimee is leaving for an IMATA conference Saturday morning and will be gone for one week. It will be held in Atlanta this year and is going with two other top trainers from work. Here’s the IMATA site address for those of you interested, www.imata.org/cms.php?home it stands for International Marine Animal Trainers Association.
I’m off to bed, hope you all are doing well, still waiting to hear from some of you e-mail slackers out there! Till tomorrow, Barry
29-10-2009
Oct 28, 09 Comments (0)
 Caribbean Stingray Good evening from the ABC islands!! Over the past year many have requested a Stingray photo and by golly I found a few this week in my old stock of photos. This is the Southern Stingray or also called the Caribbean Stingray and is the most common ray found in the Caribbean. These were shot right in our own backyard at the Curacao Sea Aquarium in Animal Encounters. Here you can pay to swim with the rays and other fish in a giant lagoon and feed them at the same time, it’s quite the adventure just ask our guests who have done it, right Nancy!! I can still remember the look on our friend Bernard’s face when he went in with me for the first time. Once they found out he had food it was every ray for himself and seconds later he was completely covered in rays, one was even resting on his head! We do see these out diving on the reef but I think mostly they are laying in sand somewhere completely covered and we probably swim right over them.
Aimee was off all day, I worked and it was busy again, it sure makes the day go by fast. We are doing a little family adventure tomorrow morning to a new place that Aimee found today, I’ll send a photo. I’m out, have a great evening, Barry
28-10-2009
Oct 28, 09 Comments (0)
 Dolphin Kiss Good morning all, sorry I didn’t get this out last night I was just to tired after a bike ride and hours of going thru old cd’s. Yesterday was pretty much spent at home, I worked on the computer going thru old photos from years past, I worked on my driftwood projects a bit and then went for a very short and slow bike ride at 5:30. Before the bike ride I had to go into work for a little meeting during which they presented me with an award of sorts for working at the Dolphin Academy now for five years! That’s a long time, my how time flies when your on vacation!
Here’s a fun photo of Zenzi I took the other day. I am always asking the girls to try or do something different with the animals, it’s fun for them and the trainer! All the dolphins are doing great, baby Pasku and Tikal are now out in the big lagoon with everyone and just as happy as can be. We have some pregnant dolphins again this year so soon we will all be very busy with baby watches again.
The whale is also doing great, each morning he follows the boat far out into the ocean in hopes of finding a pod he can jump in with, I guess it’s just a matter of time.
Have to get ready for work, Aimee is off today and will be going somewhere fun with the dogs this morning. Have a great day, thanks for the notes and all the compliments on yesterdays photos, he sure was a big hit with you all. Bye now, Barry
27-10-2009
Oct 27, 09 Comments (0)
 Porcupinefish Good morning, waking up with a very sore shoulder this morning, can hardly lift my arm. I have to take Aimee to the whale again this morning and will probably just walk the dogs over in the salt pan area while I am out. Very little going on lately, everything is fairly calm although work continues to be very busy still. It kind of looks like our rainy season may be starting, we are now getting rain and mosquitoes on a regular basis.
Found this picture of a giant Porcupinefish last night while going thru photos from 2007. These things are always worth stopping to watch as they ever so slowly move thru the water just minding their own business. On many dives we find these docile creatures just hiding underneath a coral overhang or in a cave of some sort just floating the day away! I just love their facial expressions!!
Sorry so short, I have to go, talk to you tonight, Barry
26-10-2009
Oct 25, 09 Comments (0)
 Big Moth Good evening gang, we had this monster moth or butterfly hanging out at the aquarium the other day and it just so happens I had my camera with me that day. The wingspan on this bad boy was around 10 inches making it one of the largest I have ever seen. I looked on line but could not find a name so I am counting on my butterfly and moth experts out there to help me. The underside of this guy was pretty dark, like a dark brown to black if that helps at all? This moth pretty much just hung onto this tree all day trying to stay out of the wind.
I forgot to tell you all about our little wild parakeet encounter yesterday morning. I was taking Aimee to the whale at 6:15 in the morning and all of a sudden she yells, “that was a little parakeet sitting in the middle of the road”!! I hit the brakes and wiped a u-turn as fast as I could and sure enough there in the middle of the road on the white stripe was a little green parakeet. I pulled over and raced out and grabbed him and carefully handed him to Aimee, one more car and he would have been run over! He wasn’t moving much, we thought he may have a broken leg or wing so I took him home and put him in a little cage to rest. Well about 40 minutes passed before I could get back to him and when I returned he was now clinging onto the cage door. Stupid me I opened the door to put some food in and out he flew never to be seen again? We are guessing he just ran into a windshield and laid there on the road in a daze and just needed some time to recover. I sure hope he’s alright?
Aimee was home sick all day with something?? I first took the dogs for a two hour hike at Saint Joris, then went with my buddy Cival to the Bat Caves and did some photography and just got home from a 25 mile mountain bike ride, I am done!!
Hope all is well with everyone, I can sure tell it’s the weekend I never hear from anyone! Bye, Barry
25-10-2009
Oct 24, 09 Comments (0)
 Brittle Star Good evening my dear friends, are you getting the most out of your weekend?? Our days are spent mostly at the Sea Aquarium and then in the evening’s Aimee rushes home to walk the dogs in what little light we have left. Today at 1:30 my friend Kenji and I went on a dive as we had no more programs for the rest of the day. The water was pretty murky in the shallows plus big waves overhead didn’t help the visibility but we still had a pretty good dive. Aimee and I were just looking at some of the photos I took today and in one photo of some encrusting sponge she spotted a see-thru shrimp that I accidentally took a nice photo of, I never even saw it?? This really seems to happen quite a bit, I shoot something and then get home to find another little treasure in the photo, let’s just call it a bonus!
This is a Sponge Brittle Star that Aimee found on the night we saw the grooved brain corals spawning over in front of Aqua Electra. These sponge brittle stars don’t seem to be affected by light like their cousins the regular brittle stars, those guys are scared of everything! Eva was with us the night we found this, Aimee kept me pretty busy with one cool find after another.
Gotta run, talk to you all tomorrow, Barry
24-10-2009
Oct 23, 09 Comments (0)
 Michelle and Tina Hello gang how was your friday?? It was back to work for me if you can call taking photos of beautiful woman with dolphins work?? Hey it’s tough, I have to stand out in the hot sun! This is our lovely dolphin trainer Michelle who works with Aimee spending a little free time relaxing with Tina. Now it’s not Tina like the ladies name, it’s pronounced Teen-ya, kind of a Spanish name. Michelle and I had made plans to do this little photo shoot in advance today. So as I was shooting I noticed more and more people with cameras joining in next to me and by the time I left we had quite a crowd, I guess they just wanted photos of the dolphin, yeah right!!
Sorry so short guys but my mind is blank tonight!! Have a wonderful weekend, talk to you again tomorrow!!
Sunny Curacao regards, Barry and Aimee
23-10-2009
Oct 22, 09 Comments (0)
 Pillar Corals Good evening one and all! Remember weeks back when I sent out this photo?? I told you I thought it was some kind of coral disease?? Well it just so happens that a top coral researcher named Nick Polato saw the photo and immediately contacted me and told me what is really going on here, I couldn’t have been more wrong!!
Nick writes, the story with the damsel fish is that they find a bit of coral they like and peck off the living coral tissue. The exposed skeleton becomes overgrown with algae that the damsel fish like to eat. The fish defend these little farm territories so aggressively that they will even chase off larger herbivores like parrotfish that would quickly clear away the algae (I have definitely had them bite my fingers while working with the corals & once had one hit me right between the eyes…good thing I had a facemask on). Apparently with the decline of larger predatory fish on reefs worldwide, these little guys have become much more abundant and can be a real threat to reef health. The photo you took is a great example, where you have what appears to be a perfectly healthy coral missing tissue only on that patch at the top of the pillar where there is a thick mat of algae growing on the white skeleton. The angry looking three spot damsel fish staring you down in the center of the photo tops it all off! If you want to hear more about these guys check out this piece NPR did on Bonaire last month.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1117 Aimee and I had a wonderful day. I first took Aimee to the bat caves at Saint Joris as she had never been there before and right after our quick tour we then took the dogs walking along the shore collecting driftwood. We found some great wood this morning all waiting to be transformed into something useable. Aimee slipped on a mossy log and fell on her back, I watched it happen but couldn’t do a thing to help, it happened so fast. So needless to say my dear wife is going to be a bit sore and bruised tomorrow. The dogs had a blast this morning chasing each other thru the water until Indi found a leather glove and just wanted to play with that instead. After we got home we headed to the Aquarium for a dive out on the reef. After going thru our photos I realized we really don’t have many pictures of all the different types of coral?? Yeah how is that possible? We have been shooting sponges now for quite awhile but the corals now need to be photographed as well. Our dive was kind of uneventful maybe because we were only looking for certain things to shoot. Once we got home Aimee took a nap while I did 101 things around the house and around town, no time for napping for this boy!
That’s kind of our day in a nutshell it’s back to work tomorrow for both of us. Hope everyone is doing well, there are so many on the list that we just never hear from Please drop us a quick line to let us know you are still out there. It’s off to bed, see you tomorrow, Barry
22-10-2009
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