A gentlemen at the hotel just down the beach from ours spent his days on vacation making some really great sand art. I figured it was worth sharing with more people than just the folks walking down that stretch of beach. -- Round 3
Does anyone perhaps know of a site for reviewing #dive shops or #diving companies. The #padi website has such a limited number of accredited resorts. Yes I want to dive with a safe company, hence the need for a website?!
I found this medium-sized octopus on a night dive. It was perched on a piece of coral and I wasn't able to immediately recognize what I was looking at. After a moment in the spotlight, the octopus dropped down to the reef and began to move around. After a few minutes, it seemed to adjust to us and go back to hunting. Yay octos!
It's always disappointing to see invasive lionfish on Caribbean dive sites, as they devour the local populations and have few predators. That said, they are visually interesting, with so many different colors and textures warning predators about the venomous spines.
I had never seen this type of anemone before our dive guide pointed it out on a dive in Saba. It is simply called a Branching Anemone and it was spread out over a large area on the surface of some coral. It's always fun seeing a new species, especially when they are so pretty.
I've seen Queen Angelfish on every trip to the Caribbean, but this is my best picture to date. They are quite large and have an amazing collection of colors and patterns. Sometimes they follow feeding turtles around and munch on whatever the turtle stirs up that doesn't make it into its mouth.
I was taking a picture of a turtle scratching on a rock when our dive guide came over to me and made some very emphatic hand signals at me and motioned for me to follow. When we arrived, I figured out what his hand signals meant - this pair of colorful lettuce were mating! The photo was tricky to capture because they were in a cut between the rocks with quite a bit of surge.
Yellowhead jawfish are one of my favorite creatures to photograph, but they take a lot of patience. They are often quite cautious and will retreat into their burrows, but if you give them some space and remain calm they will sometimes come out and take a look.
Soapfish are nocturnal and during the daytime can often be seen motionless under rocks. The first time I saw one, I thought it was dead! At night, they are totally different moving quickly through the reef looking for snacks.
Flamingo Tongues (the name of this snail) are fun to photograph and look at, but they are a menace to soft corals, secreting chemicals to dissolve the coral so they can digest it. They often leave a trail of destruction behind them as in this image. The snail is moving upward to devour more polyps.
Peacock flounders are a colorful variety of flounder found all over the Caribbean, particularly in sandy areas. They are left-eyed flounders, meaning their right eye moved over to the left side of their body. When flounders hatch, their eyes are on opposite sides like any other fish, but as they mature, they shift. Nature is wild!
On any given sandy dive in the Caribbean, you will probably pass over dozens of small pale gobies that dart into hiding as soon as they see a diver float by. This bridled goby was very cooperative and let me get progressively closer with my macro lens to capture this very detailed image. I love macro photography!
This is my favorite picture from the St. Kitts/Saba trip! We saw many sea turtles over the course of the week, but a few of them were super relaxed and went about their business even as a big group of bubble blowers approached. This beautiful green turtle came right up to me to check me out and I managed to get this lovely image. I hope you like it as much as I do!
I always love when I spot a new creature for the first time and this one was an instant favorite. I bring you the Cryptic Teardrop Crab! I spotted these on numerous night dives once they were pointed out to me. I like how their carapace and legs are camouflaged to look like a sponge!
I recently took a trip to St. Kitts and Saba aboard the Caribbean Explorer II. This week long adventure was a ton of fun and I took lots of pictures! I briefly shared a preview, but here goes the sharing!
Kicking things off with a small spotted moray! There were eels on every dive, but I like this view of the sharp teeth on the upper jaw. Glad I'm not on the menu!
On forthcoming film Athletes of War and the IOC decision to let complicit Russian athletes compete in Paris this year.
“Our conditions are different from those of the Russian athletes. We have missiles flying over our heads,” says wrestler and Olympic medalist Iryna Koliadenko. “We may not wake up.”