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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanArchive for the ‘Sponges’Oct 9, 09 Comments Off
 Stove pipe Good morning friends, I guess it’s starting to look like the blog is moving back to mornings again, I just don’t seem to have time in the evenings?? Last night we had a four hour quarterly meeting at the Dolphin Academy. The first two hours pretty much consisted of listening to talk about how our numbers can be improved and better ways to help the in-coming tourists. We have noticed Americans are spending less or just are not traveling like they did last year. We had the Adventure here on Wednesday and they hardly bought anything after the swim but the European visitors still seem unaffected for the most part with the economy. The second half of our meeting last night was designed around Team Building. We first got put into groups then handed a list of songs that we had to Karaoke to as a group! So after being served a nice dinner each group got up on stage one by one and did their stuff, I laughed so hard I cried at one point!! Our group sang some crazy song from M&M, kind of like Rap, we had our hats turned sideways and our glasses on trying to the do the best gangster impressions we could think of, I pray that video stays hidden forever!!
Yesterday it rained almost all day here! We ended up staying in and cleaning for the most part, didn’t realize what a mess we had going on here!! I guess when you have piles of driftwood laying around, wood working tools, mountain bikes with dirty tires and two shedding dogs the house can get destroyed fast! Our car doesn’t seem to working well, it’s very noisy in first and second gear, I guess it’s typical of the quality of repair one can expect on a small Caribbean island??
A year or so ago someone asked me “do sponges regenerate if they are broken”? At the time I had no idea, we never really see to many broken sponges out there. Well I found this perfect example the other day at 60 feet out in front of the Sea Aquarium. This is the top of a purple stove pipe sponge that for some reason broke off but is now re-growing a new tube again, cool huh?? I will go back every once in a while and continue to monitor this progress just to see how fast they grow.
Ok, I need to get moving, I have to work today, we pick Eva up tonight and starting Saturday I have a week off. I have a list of photos I will be having her help me with so hopefully we will have some fun stuff to send to you next week. Have a great day all, Barry
8-10-2009
Oct 3, 09 Comments Off
 Touch me not sponge Good morning, here’s a little reef-scene from right out in front of the Sea Aquarium. This is a beautiful cluster of Touch-Me-Not-Sponges and remember these are the sponges that are full of worms! Behind the sponges is a nice chunk of Star Coral that more than likely spawned last month and we never got to see it because of the dumb current! It seems out current is now gone but has been replaced by big waves driven by this strong wind we are still having. I was trying to tell someone the other day the importance of using flash underwater, if you didn’t the whole photo would look like the background in this picture.
Aimee and I are still without the car, I found out that it has something to do with the front wheel drive and or steering, whatever it is it doesn’t sound good. We were unable to take the dogs anywhere yesterday so Aimee just walked them around here. Aimee and I did jump on our bikes and do a grocery run after work, she stayed outside with the bikes and I ran in.
They are still hunting for a missing American Consulate guy here in Curacao, he has now been missing for one week?? They found his clothes at one of the beaches we dive at and that’s about all they seem to know, I myself have heard 100 versions of the story now??
Off to work, talk to you tonight, have a great weekend, Barry
02-10-2009
Aug 24, 09 Comments Off
 Orange Sponge Good evening from Curacao. I have been telling you all now for the past week about this weird sponge I found and as promised here it is?? It’s not very big, only around 6 inches tall but it is beautiful and I have never seen one in these waters before. I was looking thru my sponge book and on page 43 of the Reef Creatures book it does show a Red-Orange Branching sponge, maybe this is just mutated?? I really hope some of my sponge experts on the list or my local divers can help with an I.D.? Aimee and I are returning here on Thursday as I want to get a diver next to it for size, maybe just her face and mask or the o’l magnifying glass trick?
Work was again non-stop!! At 1:30 today I had to run to my eye doctor who sent me home with a clean bill of health saying the eyes looked good. I do however need reading glasses for anything that is real tiny but I can live with that!!
I received an e-mail this evening from our friend Lori who owns the famous Dark Canyon Coffee Company in Rapid City, South Dakota. She read that Aimee is leaving for the states soon and is sending us some “Highlander Groog”, the best coffee I have ever had! You can buy yours at www.darkcanyon-coffee.com tell Lori your on the list as well, always good to make new friends!! Thanks again, we can hardly wait!
That’s about it, the whale is doing great! It followed the boat out to sea today for the first time without nets and came back on it’s own, George and the team of volunteers should get a medal for this or at least a key to the city!
See ya tomorrow, Barry
24-8-2009
Aug 19, 09 Comments Off
 Encrusting Sponge Good morning, I was so tired at 9:00 last night I just went to bed, this island wears me out!! I started my day off yesterday by taking my underwater camera and dive gear back to Pen Resort for an early morning dive. The second I arrived I was greeted my Michael who had just jumped in the ocean for a bath and was washing his clothes and was hanging them along the side of his plywood shelter. I got my dive gear together and before I left I asked him to please watch my car and also told him that I could use his help getting out as I had my big camera and the waves were getting bigger by the minute. He said yeah yeah no problem so as an act of faith I gave him a little money up front, big mistake! He said to me just before I was getting in, “do you mind if I run real fast to get some food”, he said “it’s real close and I will be back in 10 minutes”! I said fine, thinking he’s probably hungry just be here to watch the car and when I get out, so off he went! Well, I never saw him again the rest of the day! I was in the water for over two hours photographing the Elkhorns and every so often I would surface and look around but he was gone! So what have I learned?? Never give 25 guilders to a guy who lives under a piece of plywood, I really thought I could trust this guy but apparently not! Other than that my dive went very well. The water was clear due to the current but made for a perfect long dive, I found all the corals I was looking for and got them all photographed. Getting out was the only pain, you have to time it just perfectly or you will become part of the coastline, I am getting pretty good at it!
Once home I washed my gear and burned a CD with all the photos I just took and at 3:00 had a meeting to discuss them. At 6:00 I took off on a super fast mountain bike ride, I only had an hour as it gets dark at 7:00.
This is a close-up photo of a little piece of encrusting sponge I found the other day. This beautiful stuff grows on the sides of dead rocks and kind of adds some color to the reef.
That’s it in a nutshell, Aimee is off today and I am off to work! Have a great day, if any of you locals see Michael tell him he owes me 25 guilders, that’s around $12 bucks! Bye now, Barry
18-8-2009
May 27, 09 Comments Off
 branching-vase-sponge Hey, hey it’s me! I was going thru pictures today and see that I forgot to send out a photo from our trip from Saba to the Sea Aquarium that we did last Thursday. For those of you who don’t remember, Aimee and I were shuttled in a boat up the coast and dropped off and we dove about a mile back home. This was one of the cool sponge clusters we found hanging out over an endless wall. This is what they call Branching Vase Sponge and the orange below it is a little bit of orange lumpy encrusting sponge, it was just such a nice cluster sitting all by itself at 50 feet that I just had to take the time to photograph. That’s Aimee high above she was pretty much responsible for finding everything “like always” I just take the pictures.
I don’t have much for you this evening I just got home from a mountain bike ride and am recovering from a nice over the bars wreck I had! I was flying up one of my trails and my bar end got hooked on a branch (that I will go cut tomorrow) and off I went rocketing to the ground ending with a big painful thud! My elbows and knees took the brunt of the fall and I have some nice road rash but other than that I feel alright. It’s really true what they say, the older you get, the harder you fall! And no I didn’t cry although I wanted to!
Talk to you tomorrow, super windy in Curacao regards, Barry
05-27-2009
May 24, 09 Comments Off
 encrusting-sponge Good evening guys and gals how was your Sunday?? I bit the bullet and geared up and took off on a two hour bike ride from the house to Canoa and back in what seemed like hurricane force winds! I don’t know why I rode the loop in the direction I did, if I would have done it the other way I think it would have been much more enjoyable! For those of you unaware of the joys of riding a bike into a strong head wind it’s like rowing a canoe upstream, not a real good time. Well then why do I do it?? I lost track of how many times I asked myself that today, I guess because a bunch of my friends are riding and I don’t want to be the one struggling in the back, so train we must!
After the long ride I showered and grabbed the dogs and took them to the ocean for another two hours like a good daddy, they swam and swam and swam! We left the bay at around noon, it was now even more windy and super hot it was time for some nice cool air-co!
Your photo this evening is a close-up of a section of Peach Encrusting Sponge. Yes this is a sponge, beautiful isn’t it?? Sponges are the simplest of the multicellular animals. The Individual cells display a considerable degree of independence, and form no true tissue layers or organs. Depending on a cell’s location within the sponge, they do, however, perform somewhat specialized functions. A sponge’s surface is perforated with numerous small holes called incurrent pores or ostia. Water is drawn into the sponge through these pores and pumped through the interior by the beating of whip-like extensions on the cells called flagella. As water passes thru the sponge, food and oxygen are filtered out. The water exits into the body’s interior cavity and out the animal’s one or more large excurrent openings or oscula. (Reef Creature ID, Paul Humann/Ned Deloach) This type of sponge only grows on the sides of dead coral heads and comes in all kinds of colors, next time you swim by some stop and check it out really beautiful stuff!
I can smell something yummy cooking upstairs, have to run, see you tomorrow, Barry
05-24-2009
May 22, 09 Comments Off
 collection-of-curacao-sponges Good evening faithful ones!! I had such a great dive this afternoon! After our noon programs had finished I grabbed my gear and the camera and met my dive buddy and co-worker Naomi for an ultra fun deep dive. Our plan was to go straight out and over the edge to 135 feet and look for a giant barrel sponge that used to be there, I saw it four years ago but someone said it died quite awhile ago so we went to check it out. So down we went, the visibility was spectacular and there was no current, it just doesn’t get any better! When we got to 115 feet I saw something I had never seen before, the two big sunken tugboats that are laying on a ledge at 170 feet! From a hundred feet you could see them just as plain as day that’s how clear the water was! I have only seen these tugs from the safety of the mini-sub or from photos that my friend Gordy has taken, to say I was star-struck was an understatement!! We found out immediately that the giant barrel sponge was gone, we would have seen it for sure because of the ability to see for every direction so far! So we ended up staying at around 120 feet racing from one incredible outcrop of sponges and corals to another and slowly working our way up the slope. There’s an area down there the size of a football field just filled with these unbelievable sponges almost like big flower arrangements and each one seemed to be more beautiful than the next. Your photo this evening has so many different varieties of sponges in one little cluster, I was so excited I could hardly stand it and can hardly wait to go back. The down side to these new found treasures is of course the depth, I can only be down there for like 10 minutes max, doesn’t give me much time! On the way up I was just looking at things I want to go back to so stay tuned for more fun pictures from the deep.
About thirty minutes after we surfaced I was asked if I wanted to go do a snorkel with the babies, I said heck yeah let’s go! We jumped in with Tela and baby Pasku and DeeDee and baby Tikal, it was a blast! I pretty much would just take a deep breath and lay on the bottom waiting for Junior or Rona (the trainers) to bring the dolphins to me, seemed to work pretty well. I took a bunch of cool stuff will get that to you as well in the next few days.
At 6:00 Aimee and I took the hound dogs on a fun one hike into the sunset at Saint Joris. As usual it was a great time although I did slip climbing a rock and scratched up my arm pretty good, but hey after a day like that who cares!!
See you tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel (that’s from the old, old t.v. series of batman) Good night, Barry
Oh Geez I almost forgot, I saw a new brand of potato chips today that are mayonnaise and ketchup flavored???? For those of you un-believers I will send a photo upon request, now I have seen it all, yucky!!!
05-22-2009
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 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
Mar 27, 09 Comments Off
 Deep-Dive Good evening from banana land! Was looking thru old pictures today and found this one from a few weeks ago when Marco and I went on a deep dive in front of Pier Baai. I think we dropped down to 120 feet where I found this sponge sitting all by itself. We both noticed this area was pretty much just plate corals and rock, not a whole lot of sponge clusters to be found. If you were to continue at this depth for ten minutes heading east you would run right into the Curacao Car Pile, named after all the car parts and junk dumped there many years ago.
I don’t have much for you all this evening it’s just a nice quiet Sunday. Many thanks for all the nice compliments on the hummingbird pictures glad you all liked them. Sunny regards, Barry
03-21-2009
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