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Archive for the ‘Marine Reptiles’Aug 4, 10 Comments (0)
Good evening friends, I just got home from the airport, we have two friends that flew in from Rapid City to spend five days with us! They arrived with a little delay but with smiles on their face and after a quick greeting we headed off the beautiful Avila Hotel. Tomorrow I have to work but Aimee will pick them up and start showing them the island, then on Saturday and Sunday they are mine!
I am feeling better today but still seem to have a bit of a fever, it seems to come and go? I did go into work today but I did not have to get in the water.
Here’s another shot of our one and only “Turtle Handler” Zenzi holding onto a ready to go little Hawksbill turtle. Our turtles arrive at the aquarium in many ways. Omar brought some to us as babies, fishermen bring them in, and some came to us with injuries. We occasionally bring this guy out from inside and let him swim in a big lagoon and of course he loves it, just look at that smile on his face!
Sorry so short, pretty tired, Barry
Jul 9, 10 Comments (0)
Hello everyone, thanks a zillion for all the Birthday wishes on Facebook and via e-mail it was really great! I came home today and had 126 messages on the computer, that’s a new record! Here in Curacao and in Holland if it’s your birthday you have to make or buy your own birthday cake and take it to your friends at work, it’s the total opposite in America where normally someone buys you a cake and surprises you with it. So thanks to my dear wife she made two big chocolate cakes and took them into work today and within minutes they were gone!
I have had many readers ask me what do sea turtles eat in the wild?? Well that’s a good question and really I have only observed turtles eating twice, once a juvenile Green Turtle eating sea grass and this small Hawksbill Turtle seen here digging in the coral rubble searching for tunicates or small mollusks. Hawksbill turtles feed primarily on sponges. They show a large level of feeding selectivity in the way that they only eat certain species of sponges, some of which are toxic to other animals. Jellyfish and other coelenterates are also common prey items. These turtles are omnivorous and also eat mollusks, fish, marine algae, crustaceans, and other sea plants and animals. A preferred feeding ground of the turtles is in shallow shoals abundant with brown algae. Their sharp, narrow beaks are used to feed on prey found in reef crevices. I watched for quite awhile as this guy dug in the dead coral, he would grab a piece of rock and pick it up with his beak and move it to the side and then go back to see what was underneath, he did this over and over and would occasionally find a small “something” to eat. After following him for an hour and seeing how much work he went thru to find food it just plain left me with a very depressed feeling, I just don’t know how they survive??
Our little male puppy is gone!! I am very sad this evening and am missing him very much even though he’s just next door at his new home! I pray he has a restful night and quickly adapts to his new home, he will be missed!
Thanks again for all the kind notes and cards it’s great to have friends. Goodnight, Barry
Jun 5, 10 Comments (0)
Hello my loyal readers, how is your weekend going?? I first want to say thank-you for all the responses and compliments from this weeks photos, again you really keep me going with your positive feedback. I am also getting a lot of responses from new visitors to the www.coralreefphotos.com site and they are posting these wonderful comments back to me, we love reading them!
Today I did something a little different, I joined our head dolphin trainer Zenzi for a super fun swim with one of our juvenile Hawksbill Turtles we found during hurricane Omar. After hatching, baby turtles swim out to sea for several days. They then spend the next five to ten years drifting around in surface waters at the mercy of ocean currents, and they feed mainly on plankton. They are often found in huge rafts of drifting sargassum, a type of brown seaweed, where they are probably best able to hide from potential predators. Once they reach lengths of 30 or 40 centimeters they settle in one particular area around coral or rocky reef. When Omar came to visit it washed in around 6 baby Hawksbill Turtles and they have been residents at the aquarium ever since. So today we gentle took one of the turtles out of it’s man made lagoon and took it to a big deep pool fed by the ocean and let him go, he had a blast! Most of the time Zenzi just swam along side and watched as he did what turtles do, eat and swim. This little guy is so used to people that he completely ignored us and did his own thing and I was able to swim along side for some fun photos.
A big thanks to everyone who has been helping us look for a home for the last puppy but he still needs a place to call home. I know that anyone who spends two minutes with him will see how special he is and why we want to best home possible for him.
Off to bed, be back tomorrow, Barry
Feb 21, 10 Comments (0)
 Green Turtle Good evening friends, feels like I just wrote you guys a few hours ago. My day off zipped by so fast again but I got a lot done!! My trail at Saint Joris is looking great and I am being extra careful not to harm any of the environment. The desert is so dry that I can now find my way thru much easier and I got lucky in finding a still used goat path, the goats are gonna love this trail!! While raking today Inca and Indi chased each other back and forth on it and seemed to never get tired of it which is fine by me as long as they are keeping out of trouble! I had to pull some prickly pear cactus up by the roots that were in the way but got them all re-planted next to the trail and I am going around any and all nice bushes or trees, just trimming. After trail building class I took the dogs for a nice walk and a nice swim and they are still out!
I spent most of my day packing and getting last minute things done and at 4:00 took off for another one hour bike ride. The trails are so dry and the desert here is so brown right now we so badly need rain! As I rode by the salt ponds tonight I noticed they are really drying up and salt crystals are starting to form again, will have to run down and get some new shots!!
Here’s a little Green Turtle I found quite awhile ago at Small Wall, I think this was a dive I did with Mark from the World Famous Dive Bus Hut!! My divers out there know that there are two types of turtles, scared ones that won’t let you get close and the one’s that could care less, this one was super mellow and if I would have had more time I would have spent the whole dive with him!!
Hope you Sunday went well, gotta go, Barry
Oct 16, 09 Comments (0)
 Hawksbill Turtle Good morning, we are all waking up asking “what happened”, these fast paced fun vacation days can wear a person out! We again packed up dive gear and drove an hour to the west end of the island to a dive site called Playa Kalki. Our friends Mark and Suzy and Rob also met us there plus another friend from North Coast divers bringing our total to seven, the more the merrier! It was a beautiful morning, just a light breeze and the ocean was super flat and calm. We jumped in around 10:30 and took off to the east, something new for me as I have only dove the reef in the other direction in the past. It was a fun dive filled with lots and lots of little surprises like a tiny cone shell Aimee found under a shelf, some weird sponges, a big green moray eel being cleaned by some shrimps, a tiny trunkfish and the highlight of the dive, this small 14 inch Hawksbill Turtle. This little turtle could have cared less about all of us he just swam around doing his thing. He swam a complete circle around me when I took this photo and then went right back to reef searching for breakfast I assume? I think we dove for close to 90 minutes, Aimee and I kept busy taking beauty pictures while Eva just swam around finding all kinds of great creatures, it turned out to be a really fun dive.
We got back home again after 1:00, the dogs were so glad to see us again!! Aimee immediately took off and went shopping and returned tanks while I stayed home and worked on the computer and cleaned dive gear. At 5:00 Eva and I went to the Sea Aquarium for another dive. We jumped in again around 5:30 and immediately came across two Yellowtail Hamlets mating!! I hung out with them for quite awhile hoping for some photographic action but finally I said enough and we moved on. As we took off now at 50 feet I spotted two more Yellowtails chasing each other and this time it looked promising. Eva hung out above me while I followed these two all over and then finally like magic they stopped in mid water above a coral head and did a beautiful 2-3 second mating ritual! The two fish come completely to a dead stop and just float wrapped together in a ball, you have to see it to believe it! I haven’t looked at my photos yet so I don’t know if I was able to capture it or not, it happens fast! We watched them mate three more times and then off we went to find something else. The next major find of the evening was by Eva, she called me over and pointed to some brittle stars all together on top of this cluster of fire coral. One look and I knew what was going on, the Brittle Stars were Spawning!! I was so low on air and here this great event was unfolding right before our eyes! I took as many shots as I could before Eva swam over and showed me her air gauge she was close to out as well so off we went! When I got out I raced over to our dive shop and found another half used tank and quickly put it on and raced back to the water! I again found them all over and proceeded to shoot away, normally these things are so shy they would never come out not even at night. I ended up being under there again in about 15 feet of water for 35 more minutes so that ended up being one long dive but boy was it ever fun! Eva and Aimee were waiting for me on shore they had been watching my lights from above and had been wondering what was going on? So it was another fun evening, we all went home super tired and crashed immediately!
Better get moving, it’s late for me! Curacao regards, Barry
15-10-2009
Mar 12, 09 Comments (0)
 Green-Turtle Good evening friends, I did a super fun dive with the World famous Dive Bus company today at a place called Small Wall. Usually this is a boat dive but it can be done by shore or by starting at Directors Bay and swimming out to it like I did today!! I was the only one who swam out, the others all walked along the coast, there was just no way I could have walked that far carrying my big heavy camera and all my gear, I float better than I walk! The first thing that was spotted was this beautiful green turtle! He or she was around two feet in length and was just as majestic as they come, they are just so fun to watch! There was a slight current today and the water wasn’t real clear but that didn’t stop us all from having a great time. We ended up starting at the tip of Small Wall and diving all the way back to Directors Bay following the beautiful wall the whole way in. Last night I did a bunch of trail cleaning. I swept most of the bad areas on the World Cup course and started on the Calabash. After an hour of that I went on a one hour ride to enjoy the fruits of my labor, it was great. I am slowly getting back into shape and love the new bike I got from my buddy Dan in the States, it rides like a dream. Talk to you tomorrow, Barry 03-08-2009 SITE MAP
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