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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanArchive for December, 2009Dec 17, 09 Comments Off
 Trainer with a Baby Dolphin Hello readers, I had mentioned this photo a few weeks back and finally am able to get it out to you. This is Junior again with our little pride and joy Pasku who on Christmas day at around 5:00am will turn one year old!! This little treasure loves human contact more than any other dolphin I have seen in the five years we have been here, he just loves Junior!! Junior is the only one that can pick him up like you see here and hold him, Pasku just closes his eyes and seems to be in little dolphin heaven! Junior did tell me though that he is now getting to heavy to hold so more big hugs in the water are next! Junior spends every working day with Tela and Pasku and he is constantly pushing them both to learn which from my point of view they just seem to love it and always come racing back to him for more.
We are on our way to a Sea Aquarium Christmas party on the beach so I have to get moving, talk to you tomorrow, Barry
Dec 15, 09 Comments Off
 Purple Stove Pipe Sponges SQ Reef Good evening one and all, how are my faithful readers this evening?? Today was some kind of island holiday and just about everything was closed. But the two places I needed to go the most were open, Building Depot and the grocery store! I had to park so far away to get into Building Depot today, it was a giant one day sale on Christmas stuff so half the island was in there! I asked three different locals in the store what they were celebrating today and none of them knew, one didn’t even know it was a holiday??
My day started with a three hour six mile hike with the dogs. I carried my broom and did a whole lot of much needed trail maintenance the whole way, mostly sweeping up loose rocks and sharp thorns that are a bike tire’s worst enemy!! It was a beautiful morning for a walk and ran into countless folks out either hiking or biking as everyone seemed to have the day off.
I put in a lot of time today at home hanging pictures for Aimee, putting up our Christmas stockings (and one for Emily of course), decorating our little artificial tree some more and wrapping a few gifts. At 4:30 I took off like a man on a mission on a fast one hour bike ride. You wouldn’t even know it rained yesterday, everything is dry again! This is one of the cool things about our trails here, after a rain you can pretty much go riding because it’s little rocks and sand not a whole lot of mud.
Just a fun photo from our House Reef, this is a nice little cluster of Purple Stove Pipe Sponges with a bunch of little Brown Chromis swimming around.
That’s about it, Aimee just made a great big salad with grilled chicken on top, it was great!! See you, Barry
Dec 14, 09 Comments Off
 Scrawled Filefish Hello, how ya doing, what’s up, how was your day?? Oh yeah this was Monday wasn’t it, living here I tend to forget the days, the months, what time it is, and so on and so forth, it just doesn’t seem to matter as much any more. Good news, we got the car fixed again today!! I was the clutch cable and only cost around $150 to repair! And if I didn’t tell you all I also got my computer repaired for around $450 quite a bit cheaper than the quote we got here but hey everything costs more in Curacao! Our friend Emily who I think will be here on the fourth is bringing it back for me and my repaired camera is being brought down the day after Christmas by our friends Ann and Sara, it’s great to have friends!!
Aimee and I both worked today and it rained off and on most of the day. After work some friends took me to get the car, I then raced home, grabbed the dogs and off we went on a nice evening walk and left just before it rained. Indi is much better today most of the swelling has gone away and she is back to being bad again, meaning she is into everything!
Here’s a cool Scrawled Filefish I swam alongside the other night on my dusk dive. This was a fairly small one only about a foot in length. You can see his spine is up on the top of his head which means back off in fish language! This is another species of fish that has the ability to change so many different colors in the blink of an eye putting him at the top of my “favorite fish on the reef list”.
Hope everyone is doing well, I’m happy knowing the camera, computer and car are either getting fixed or are fixed, we can’t afford any more problems this month!! Got to go, bye now, Barry
Dec 13, 09 Comments Off
 Spawning Hamlets Good evening readers, first I would like to say “Thanks” for all the great compliments on yesterdays photo, who would have ever thought the eye of a Stingray would be so popular?? Not me! Here’s a new Spawning Hamlet shot for you all, I took this a few nights ago on my long overdo “dusk dive”. I have spent so much time observing these hamlets over the years that I can almost predict where and when this mating ritual will take place now. It’s like everything, if you know what to look for it’s an easy thing to see but most divers are rarely in the water at this strange magical hour. These are Butter Hamlets and during the day they are solitary animals! When dusk comes around they will then leave the safety of their homes and travel great distances in search of a mate. After these two did their beautiful three second love dance I followed one of them for five minutes at top speed back to it’s home in the dark and it was a long ways from where they mated, I was really shocked!
Well it’s official, the Curacao rainy season has begun! We woke to rain again and it rained off and on all day. The strange thing is at 4:30 I took off on what I thought would be a muddy ride but it turned out to be fairly dry, the ground just soaks it up.
Because our car is broke down I had to walk the girls to the trailhead this morning from the house. Once we got there I started taking photos of some snails and wasn’t doing a good job of watching the dogs or should I say Indi, Inca is always near me. So I yelled, Indi!! She always comes when called but this time I saw her down the trail rubbing her face in the dirt, I thought she had found something dead? Turns out she had gotten badly stung by either a nest of ants of bees and her face looked like a balloon!!! She was a mess and in complete misery! I grabbed my cell phone and called Aimee who quickly borrowed a car and met me at the end of the trail and rushed her to the hospital where they gave her a steroid injection! By the time I got back home with Inca she was back with “balloon face” and her eyes were already looking better. I spent most of the day watching her at home and tonight she is 100% better but still swollen in the cheeks! Scary!
My buddy Mark from the “World Famous Dive Bus Hut” came and picked me and my gear up today for a dive on their reef at Pier Baai, is that service or what?? I did a long shallow dive and for the life of me couldn’t find anything to shoot today, I took ten shots of some pillar coral and that’s it! It’s rare when I do a dive and can’t find anything to shoot, weird huh??
Oh, I smell dinner, I gotta go. Rainy Regards, Barry
Dec 12, 09 Comments Off
 Stingray Eye Good evening friends, you probably noticed right off that tonight there is a different copyright stamp on the photo and the reason for that is my “Photoshop Batch” program is for some strange reason not working?? I shot this yesterday for you all, this is a close-up view of the eye of a big Southern Stingray. I found this guy buried in the sand with only his eyes poking out at the one and only “Animal Encounters” located at the Curacao Sea Aquarium. This ray was probably six feet long with his tail and to my surprise let me get very close for this shot, usually they swim away. I think he thought he was well hidden under all that sand and that no one could see him, little does he know the outline of his body stood out like a sore thumb!!
As of this morning our car is down again!! Aimee came home from walking the dogs at 7:00 and said, “I think the clutch just went out” and boy was she ever right. With the help of our friend Michelle we were able to get it a to a nearby garage but it will have to just sit there until Monday morning as everything is closed on the weekends here! I tell you, broken camera, broken computer, now the car, geez where will it end, this is killing us!! Our car has been great but I think it’s starting to go down hill fast, the motor is still nice but everything else is falling victim to our fast paced Caribbean lifestyle and the good o’l salt air! Tonight we had to ride our bikes to the store to get some groceries and not sure yet how I am going to get the dogs to the trail tomorrow.
Hope everyone is getting the most out of your weekend, you’ve waited all week for these two days so live it up!! I smell dinner, talk to you soon, Barry
Dec 11, 09 Comments Off
 School of Fish Hello readers how did your Friday go?? I bet many of you are so glad it’s the weekend!! Well I was underwater most of the day, in fact I spent close to four hours under the cold H2O!! And yes it was cold today!! We have had this raging current outside now for the past two days which in turn brings up the cold water from the deep! It was 25 Celsius today which is around 77 degrees, that’s very, very cold for this part of the Caribbean, usually it’s in the low 80′s! I first did a shallow “15 foot deep” dive with Aimee and her girls and a dolphin named Tina, (which when pronounced correctly sounds like “Teen-ya). This was a tough dive for me, the current was actually pushing me into the subjects I was trying to shoot and I ended up stirring up a lot of dust trying to stay still. After about 45 minutes of that I climbed out and walked directly over to Animal Encounters and went right back in. Since the water was so clear I figured it was a perfect time to swim with the Stingrays! I had a great time and tried hard to think about how cold I was getting but managed to stay in there photographing the rays for around an hour and thirty minutes! When I got out I was frozen and rushed to the hot shower which felt so good and within minutes I was back to feeling my hands and feet again. The third dive was about two hours later back in Animal Encounters, this time equipped with a macro lens. I had been wanting to get a close-up of the eyes on a Queen Conch and a close-up of an eye of a Stingray all of which I accomplished on this third hour and a half dive. Most of my co-workers think I am crazy diving so much but they have no idea how many cool shots I bring back from every dive, I am a man on a mission!! I really can’t believe that as long as I have been here that I never took the time to get a photo of the Conch eyes, they are so cool wait till you see.
I took your photo of the day last Wednesday on our reef. This is a large school of Blue Tangs, Doctorfish and Ocean Surgeonfish all out for a bite to eat. I see these large schools of Blue Tangs just about every dive I make and they seem to love swimming in numbers! If the lead fish dives down to eat some moss off a rock they all will, it’s almost comical to watch, it reminds me of the saying, “the blind leading the blind”. Anyways they are so beautiful in numbers like this and I thought you would like it!
Thanks for all the compliments on the kitty card you guys are great as usual!! See ya, Barry
Dec 10, 09 Comments Off
 Christmas Kitty 09 X-Mas Card Good evening friends! Who remembers the tiny little kitten I found in the middle of the desert this year?? For those of who don’t remember or are new to the blog I found the smallest little kitty on the top of big rocky hill near the ocean in the middle of nowhere! The dogs went crazy when we first heard the meowing but instantly helped me flush the kitty out of a big mound of cactus and overgrown brush. Seconds later out popped this beautiful little homeless kitten and without a second thought I opened my big camera bag and carefully placed him inside for the long walk back to the car! Needless to say I had two dogs stuck to me like glue the whole way back to the car and were basically going crazy from the non-stop meowing coming from by bag. We immediately rushed him to the vet but to our surprise he was in pretty good health. Then over the course of a few weeks Aimee fed him powdered milk thru a syringe and then he gradually started eating on his own. I can’t remember how long we had him but as you can see I made good use of our new family member and photographed him constantly in all kinds of fun positions and figured why not use him for our Christmas card this year! Well the story has a great ending, my friend and co-worker Sorayda came by one evening to see him and it was love at first sight and he has been with her and her husband ever since and is now named Mundi for where he was found. Here in Curacao Mundi means the desert, the name just fits. Most of you who know me know I am not a big cat fan but this little guy stole our hearts, we enjoyed every minute with him and we are so thankful he got a great home, he’s one lucky cat!
We had a pretty busy day today, Aimee and I took the dogs to Saint Joris for a nice walk something we haven’t done together for a long time. It was so hot and windy by 10:00 that we were forced to go home. At 2:30 I did a dive down near Punda at the site of the new proposed Pen Resort Hotel. I was hired to take two VIP’s on a tour of the reef and show them the important corals that will need to be protected during the building of a new breakwater project. Most breakwater’s around Curacao are built will gigantic stones that are dumped into the water but this one will be done with steel making it safer and maintenance free and there should be far less damage to the reef during installation.
Well once again I just want to thank everyone who came to visit us this year for bringing needed supplies and gifts to us, it’s like Christmas six times a year!! Aimee and I also want to thank all our friends for all the help in the past and present helping to make our lives what they are today, we have countless friends that have done so much for us and we will never forget it. This year went by so fast and I still can’t believe I never got a vacation?? Yeah I know I live on a Caribbean island and I don’t need a vacation right?? We hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season and a Merry Christmas!
Sunny Curacao regards, Barry, Aimee, Inca, Indi, Nila and Mundi!
Dec 9, 09 Comments Off
 Erect Rope Sponge Hello and good evening. Today we got up early and loaded the dogs and dive gear and headed West to an area called San Juan. It was a long drive in on a really rough dirt road but once we got to our destination it was worth it. We had this whole little beach to ourselves this morning, we never even saw one other person anywhere! We had to park the car up high on a hill and carry all our gear down because only a good four wheel drive would have made it down and back up this crazy hill that ended at the beach. I came down the hill in my wetsuit and tank on and was ready to go, Aimee carried the camera. I did a short one hour exploratory dive while Aimee played with the dogs, collected shells, snorkeled, read a book and took some photos. My dive was fairly uneventful, I saw a baby turtle when I first went out but the second he saw me he took off, I guess you can’t blame him! The visibility there was terrible today, there was zero water movement! I noticed this section of the reef had a lot of alga growing everywhere and I also noticed many big Damselfish Gardens. There seemed to more sponges than coral here which was fine by me, I love the sponges! So I didn’t take that many photos but did get a few cool things like more pics of the Damselfish Gardens that were this time on big sheets of Grooved Brain Coral heads! When I surfaced the dogs launched into the ocean and swam out to greet me, I actually had to hold Indi for a moment so she could catch her breath! We hung out there for another thirty minutes or so looking for shells and taking photos and then decided we had better get moving as it was getting hot and we had a long drive back home.
Your photo this evening is from my dive on Sunday on the Sea Aquarium house reef. Usually most every time I dive our reef I go to the right side of the reef but Sunday I thought lets go left for a change I haven’t been down this way in a long time. It turned out to be a great dive! I found so much great wide angle stuff to shoot that I had either forgotten about or had never seen before. Like this spectacular Erect Rope Sponge with a big trumpetfish hiding alongside. I didn’t even know we had one of these on our reef and this is a big one! These sponges just amaze me, I can’t believe they don’t break?? They must have an incredible hold on the reef to be able to handle the constant surge from the passing waves, because as I watched this one was swaying back and forth from every passing wave.
I’m getting ready to go diving again in about an hour on our house reef, am going on a squid searching safari!! It was a beautiful hot day here and we have the air-co running in all the room, hard to believe our friends back home are in freezing temps right now! Better get moving, Barry
Dec 8, 09 Comments Off
 Split-Crown Feather Duster Hello Amigos! How is everyone this fine Tuesday evening?? I had a pretty busy day at work so not much to report tonight. I did get to spend a good part of the day with our trainer Junior and the two greatest dolphins we have Tela and Pasku! I got a bunch of fun momma and baby together shots today again and also a fun shot of Junior holding baby Pasku so be on the look-out for that soon.
Here’s a close-up shot of a small Split-Crown feather Duster living on top of a mound of star coral. These feather dusters, also known as fan worms, do not appear to be worms at all, because their bodies are hidden inside parchment-like tubes attached to the reef. The flexible tube is constructed of fine sand held together with glue that is secreted by collar glands just below the head. Feather dusters have a highly modified head with a crown of feather-like appendages called radioles that are normally extended from the tube. These work as both gills, and for capturing plankton, which is moved to its mouth at the center of the feathery crown. The dramatic colors and patterns of the radioles are often the keys to visual identification. Feather duster worms are very sensitive to nearby movement and changes in light intensity and, if disturbed, instantly retract the crown. Cool huh!! That’s word for word from our underwater bible, Reef Creature identification by Paul Humann and Ned Deloach.
I just got home from another fast one hour bike ride. I can see I am going to have to start the o’l two-three hour rides again to get back what I lost so quickly! Aimee and I are planning on taking the dogs to a place called San Juan in the morning for a different change of pace, it’s an hour drive but should be well worth it!
Thanks for all the compliments on yesterdays shrimp, glad you liked it so much!! I’m out, Barry
Dec 7, 09 Comments Off
 Spotted Cleaner Shrimp Hello all, just a quick note to say hi and that we made it thru our Monday fairly easy. Aimee and I both worked today and it was fairly busy or maybe it just seemed busy because we were short staffed and I had to do more work than normal? For the past three days now the ocean has been fairly calm and the diving is again back to being great. This month is usually when we get a lot of rain but so far it has been small showers here and there, but I am sure those tropical downpours are looming on the horizon!
Here’s a beautiful little Spotted Cleaner Shrimp hanging out on the end of an arm of a Giant Anemone. You can pretty much bet that any anemone you find while diving will have at least one of these Spotted Cleaner Shrimps living inside, just stop and look closely. They are kind of the care-takers of the anemone keeping it free of bacteria and sand and in return the anemone offers a great safe hiding place for the shrimp. This colorful little shrimp was less than an inch in length and is constantly moving around making the task of getting his photo a bit difficult!
We both just got home a little while ago, the first thing we do other than let the girls out is to make ourselves a cup of Highlander Groog and we usually take the time to just sit, relax and enjoy it before continuing with the nightly chores! That’s about it, Barry
Dec 6, 09 Comments Off
 Elliptical Star Coral Good evening, I haven’t sent any coral faces out for awhile mostly because I never find any and trust me when I tell you I am searching!! yesterday I found this chunk of Elliptical Star Coral and it was completely covered in fun faces, in fact the more I looked the more I saw, and yes I have a wild imagination!. I only had my macro lens so I could only shoot sections but will go back and take a larger photo as well so we can see just how many different fun and scary faces we can find.
Today we woke to rain and it rained on and off most of the day. The dogs and I took off this morning on a nice two hour hike on my biking trails and while out there I did some trail maintenance. I always get a kick out of tourists finding their way to my trails and there I am either sweeping or raking and seeing that confused look on their face’s makes my whole morning! They always ask “what are you doing” and I proceed to tell them the story of how the trail they are walking on was born, always makes for great conversation. After those rains passed today it was hot! By 9:00 all of us were panting hard and we more or less raced back to the car and zoomed home for some cool air-co! Like I have said before if we are home morning or night the air has to be on, it’s that hot! Crazy huh? After cooling down and washing the dogs and eating breakfast I loaded the car and headed to the Sea Aquarium for a nice morning dive! the ocean was for once calm and beautiful and the diving today was out of this world! The second I went underwater you could see for what seemed liked miles, it had been so long since I have been diving in such clear water. I took a 16mm wide-angle lens today and proceeded to find and shoot some really beautiful coral reef scenes, many of those from today will be headed your way soon! After my long dive I went shopping and then got ready for a bike ride. I did a one hour loop today on the trails at the salt flats, some of it was a bit muddy from the morning and afternoon rain but it sure was drying fast! I’m finding I have lost my in shapeness already, my how fast we lose it if we don’t keep up on it! The problem about living here is there is just to much to do and biking usually comes in last!
For those of you wanting to see a real live Lionfish in person stop over to the Curacao Sea Aquarium and check out aquarium number eight! One of our divers found and caught one the other day at west point and brought it back for all to see, it’s really a thing of beauty!
Dinner is ready, have a wonderful evening and a great Monday! Bye now, Barry
Dec 5, 09 Comments Off
 Red Hind Cleaning Station Good evening, it’s me again! Here’s a fun shot I got today on my afternoon dive and thought it would be perfect for tonight’s email. Yesterday I sent you a photo of the two Sharknose Gobies so here’s the same type of goby doing what they do best, cleaning bigger fish. The fish being cleaned is a Red Hind and is a major fish eating predator on the reef. These little gobies provide such a valuable service to the fish and creature community keeping them safe from infections by eating any and all little bacteria on their skin and in return are left alone from predators. I have seen these little fish dash in and out of the mouths of big green moray eels and giant barracudas, they really are the bravest fish on the reef and without them we would have a lot of sick fish swimming around!
I can’t believe it’s December already and Christmas is just weeks away, where did the year go?? I’m shocked I never even left the island this year but for sure will be going to the States sometime next year. That’s about it, not much going on see you tomorrow, by now, Barry
Dec 4, 09 Comments Off
 Sharknose Gobies Hello one and all, welcome to yet another addition of “Barry’s Daily Blog”! Someone asked me today on the list just how long have I been sending out the daily story? Well I can’t tell you exactly but it was within days of us arriving here five years ago and I have only missed a few weeks here and there because of vacations other than that it has been sent out every day!
Let’s see today I took the dogs to the coast and attempted some new snail shots but it seemed like I everything I tried just went down the drain. Most of the snails are in very hard to get to areas places where no sane man should take his camera but you know me I will try anything once, ok almost anything, I’m not jumping out of a plane or getting into a shark cage!! While I wasted time playing with snails the dogs chased each other up and down the beach and in and out of the water and after two hours I had two tired dogs, and that’s a good thing! When I got home I decided why not go for a dive all my stuff is already set up from yesterday’s failed attempt so I loaded up the car and drove to the World famous Dive Bus Hut!! I ended up doing an hour and a half dive but not really seeing much or should I say I saw a lot but I already have photos of all the common stuff. I did sit and watch these two Sharknose Gobies for quite awhile, they both stuck to each others side and seemed completely unafraid as I sat there inches from them and took picture after picture, for a one inch fish they are very brave!! After leaving the water and getting home, I rinsed everything and then took off on some errands around town and at 5:00 took the dogs again out for their nightly walk.
That’s what I did today nothing really special but the day sure went by fast! Thanks for all the compliments on yesterdays photo I’m glad you all like the snails as much as I do. Have a great evening, it’s dinner time, Barry
Dec 3, 09 Comments Off
 Red Nerite Snails Good evening friends, as promised here is your new ”snail of the week photo”. These are called Red Virgin Nerite Snails and are my personal favorites! These Nerites can be found in great numbers on every rock along the oceans edge and as you can see have the most beautiful markings and colors! The number one colors seem to be these reddish hot pink ones (shone here) there’s also the black and white only, yellow and red, and my personal favorite which is a bit harder to find is purple and black. If you notice most of the shells have a green or yellow tinge to them, that’s algae from the water, if you were to clean them with a brush they would be spectacular!! These Nerits are most always found just inches from the waters edge. They seem to prefer an area or a rock that is constantly getting wet or covered by each wave but they don’t like to be underwater. To my surprise they move very fast and as you may have already guessed they can grip a rock like you can’t believe otherwise they would be knocked off with each wave. I still have many more species on the way to you so stay tuned next thursday for another, the search continues!
I just got home from a fast one hour bike ride. After work I rushed home and changed and took off, it now gets dark at about 6:20 so we don’t have much time in the evenings anymore. I tried to do a dive today but something constantly came up plus the ocean was angry again, it’s been rough seas for weeks now really glad none of my friends are here now diving.
That’s about it, hope all is well with all of you, talk to you again tomorrow, Barry
Dec 2, 09 Comments Off
 Gorgonion Good evening from Curacao!! I finally got back into the water today and did a very short but fun dive. While exploring the reef I came across this very beautiful really fluffy gorgonian sitting all by itself on top of this big rock!! I just sat there for a moment and watched as it swayed back and forth from the passing waves overhead, it was really beautiful! I think this is called a Porous Sea Rod but not for sure, I need to see the polyps retracted for a positive I.D. I did notice a bit of coral bleaching today as well, we always see it this time of year maybe due to more rain which brings a lot of debris and contaminants into the ocean from land.
Not a whole lot to write home about tonight, it was kind of a quiet rainy day. Aimee was off today she took the dogs back to the beach again, and yes they are spoiled but it sure is fun! Sorry so short, all is well with us we sure miss our friends and family even more this time of year but thanks to the internet we are never far away! Talk to you all tomorrow, Barry
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