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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanOLDER POST:Diving the Car Pile in CuracaoNEWER POST:Another Trip to the Superior Producer with EvaOct 12, 09 Comments Off
 Brain Coral Spawning Good evening friends, sorry for getting the news out late but we have been very busy!! First things first, the dive we did Saturday night in front of Aqua-Electra was incredible!! Aimee, Eva and myself met Dirk and many other top coral researchers for a coral spawning dive at 9:00 on the right side of Aqua-Electra in almost the same spot Mark and Jim jumped out of the helicopter a few weeks ago. The researchers and Dirk got ready super fast and took off without us, we were plagued with problems before we even got in. I had a tank that was leaking and we had to change the O-ring, my new regs started free-flowing and I couldn’t get them to stop losing 1000psi entering the water, Eva forgot her dive computer on top of the car and so on and so forth! Many times when a dive starts out this bad I usually consider it a sign and just say forget it! I was down to 1900psi before we even started but we all agreed to go do a short dive anyways. Well thank goodness we decided to go!! As we went under we could see the glow of the other divers lights up ahead and off we went to join. When we arrived the star corals were starting to release their eggs but I passed those and searched for other things that I had not seen before. Well about 20 minutes into the dive Dirk starts signaling with his light and Aimee who was constantly watching him saw the signal and took off to see what he had found. Seconds later she starts banging on her tank and waving her light for me to get over here ASAP!! As I raced over I could see these giant sized eggs coming from somewhere and as I got closer I noticed that the Brain Corals were Spawning!! This is something we have never seen before!! The eggs were two to three times bigger than the normal star coral eggs that we see all the time and unlike the star coral these eggs popped out very slowly just a few at a time. Here you can see all the Brain Coral eggs ready to go and just a few that have been released! I can’t even tell you what a thrill this was to see all thanks to Dirk. So needless to say after we watched this for awhile we then stuck pretty close to Dirk who ended up finding more Brain Corals spawning plus he found some great Gorgonians as well releasing eggs! So a dive that started out terrible ended up great! We also found a red Doris, a new crab, a new shrimp and Aimee found a beautiful brittle star on a blood red sponge, I’ll send that soon. We got home after midnight, I didn’t even rinse the gear just the camera and off to bed we went, what a great night.
Sunday morning we all woke up in a foggy daze feeling very un-rested! Aimee took off to work, Eva and I took the dogs to Saint Joris for a fun morning walk. After we got home I again got the camera ready and loaded the car and off we went for a dive on the Superior Producer. Eva and I were joined by three other divers one was Dirk and the other’s are friends of mine from work. When we got there the ocean was rough making the entry and exit very difficult and a bit dangerous! You have to time it just right and step down off this big rock ledge and then walk out as fast as you can before a big wave rolls in and knocks you down! We all tried our best to help each other but it was still difficult, we really should take the time to make a nice entry/exit area. Once we all got in and on our way the rest of the dive was great! I took photos of the whole group exploring the ship from above and watched as they all went in and out of doorways and down into the hull exploring the whole way with flash lights. I did do one photo with Dirk swimming thru the back of the boat where the propeller would have been but need to go back and re-shoot it with more light. On our way back to the reef we found squids everywhere but I had my mega-wide angle lens so the most I could do was just watch. Our exit was not so fun, but it’s the price we all must pay for visiting such a cool site.
The rest of our day was fairly quiet, washed the gear, took a nap, played on the computer and at 6:00 Aimee and Eva took the dogs again on a little walk. Eva took us to dinner at the Ribs Factory and then we all came home and went to bed early for a change. We sure are enjoying our new house guest she’s really wonderful, we still have so many more adventure in store for her this week so stay tuned!
Better get moving, Caribbean regards, Barry
11-10-2009
OLDER POST:Diving the Car Pile in CuracaoNEWER POST:Another Trip to the Superior Producer with EvaSITE MAP
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