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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanOct 16, 09 Comments Off
 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
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