Wainilu dusk dive, Seven Seas Liveaboard, Jan 9, 2014 - Mandarinfish!

Our fourth night out was our first chance at a night dive, really a dusk dive so that we could see the beautiful but elusive and shy, Mandarinfish.  Getting good pictures of these little fish is a challenge.  They hide during the day and come out at night to chase each other around and then dart up above the coral rubble they live in in order to quickly spawn.  If you use a white pointer light to help you see the fish and focus your camera the Mandarinfish go into hiding.  I had better success on this attempt by using a red filter on the small focus light built into my strobe.

As I was trying to get positioned over the rubble and was in the process of trying to carefully place my left forefinger and index finger on the bottom to keep me still in one place in near darkness.  I spotted small movement next to my hand and realized it was a scorpionfish...I carefully moved my hand about a foot and nearly put it down on a second scorpionfish...this is why one uses a short stainless steel pointer rod to suspend oneself above the bottom when muck diving.  I bought a new one from Seven Seas the next morning...

 The first of two close encounters with scorpionfish as I started my dive...

Mandarinfish are gorgeous and they know it.
To see more pictures from this dive please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5974926769800059809?authkey=CKOtipHs9MXdgAE

Nudibranchs from south Komodo on the Seven Seas 1-6-14 - 1-19-14

This collection of nudibranch photos (nudibranch means "naked lung" for the exposed gills on the backs of these sea slugs).  Nudibranchs are frequently brightly colored as a way of alerting would be predators that they are not good to eat because the transfer the stinging nemocysts from their prey to their skin.  They feed on anemones, hydroids, sponges, etc.

To see all the 21 or so pictures please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5974790664289219457?authkey=CKaQov6FkJ_kyAE

Here are a couple of the nudibranch photos:

Last night dive on Seven Seas Liveaboard, Komodo.

I'm being pseudo-random in covering my amazing 13 day dive trip on the Seven Seas liveaboard.  The night of Jan 17 we made our final night of the trip before heading back toward the island of Flores the next morning so that we would be close enough to get there for the night of the 18th before catching our flight on the morning of the 19th.

The dive was in Horseshoe Bay, Rinca Island (pronounced Rin-ja as the Dutch spelled it, for a hard k sound in Indonesian you use a k).  The dive site is known as Torpedo Alley for the torpedo rays that are common there, one of which I saw and photoed on the dive. I was shooting with my 60 mm macro lens so getting the half meter ray in the shot took some resetting and positioning.

Always underwater, especially in tropical seas, you want to be very careful where you touch the bottom both for the damage you can cause and because of the damage you can sustain.  Torpedo rays bury themselves in the sand so that only their eyes are exposed.  Putting your hand down on one could give one a shocking surprise.

Spent some time with a cool pygmy cuttlefish.  I don't think he thought my strobe was so cool though.

Pygmy cuttlefish was about 4 inches long.

I found some cool crabs protected by tiny hydroids on a purple sea pen.  The crabs were maybe 1/2 inch across.

I had my first ever encounter with an ornate ghost pipefish, one of those fish you dream of getting a picture of.

For more pictures from this dive please go to :
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5974556159732190497?authkey=CJS3lZyK2oKEPA

Diving the Seven Seas, Komodo, Indonesia, 1-6-2014 through 1-19-2014

The dive trip I recently completed on the Seven Seas liveaboard in Komodo, Indonesia was simply wonderful.  I went by myself (Donna didn't want to get chased by Komodo Dragons, she knew I'd dreamed of seeing them since I was a kid in Florida fascinated by lizards, snakes, and dinosaurs, and the trip was expensive) with a great group of divers all connected through Tom Campbell, a well known high definition underwater videographer.  Also on the trip was one of the world's leading experts on Manta Rays, Andrea Marshall.  Andrea wonderful to have on the trip.  In two days of sensational Manta ray feeding she was able to identify 63 different individuals using Manta ray belly shots.  Each Manta has a unique pattern of spots on its belly.  There is a program available, at http://www.mantamatcher.org/  which allows divers with manta belly pictures to add their manta to the data base and learn if it is a known individual.  The boat, the Seven Seas, is beautiful and kept perfectly neat, clean, and shipshape.  It is a beautiful two masted Indonesia schooner.  The crew were delightful and eager to help.  The dive guides were excellent and the food was superb.  On days when we weren't moving a great distance the dive days went like this:  cold breakfast at 6 to 7 am (cereal, sliced fruit, yogurt, tea, coffee (regular, expresso, capucino), fruit juice.  First dive at 7:30am, 2nd breakfast - a hot breakfast, they take your individual order when you get back on board from the dive - bunch of great alternatives, Indonesian fried noodles or rice with eggs, pancake with eggs and bacon, omelet with bacon..  2nd dive at 11:00 am, full, wonderful lunch, 3 pm afternoon dive, snacks, night dive at 6:30, dinner around 8:30.  All wonderful.

The Seven Seas Liveaboard is a beautiful boat with an outstanding crew.

 We got our skins on and everything ready to dive before taking easy stairs down to the waiting launches (which had our tanks, bcs, weights) to go out for a dive.

 We hiked across a gorgeous island to a beach on the opposite side where our boats came and picked us up.  Its hard to see in this picture but it is red (ish) sand caused by organ pipe coral erosion, beautiful.  We also had white and black sand beaches.

Upper deck was where we ate our dinners on evenings when the weather was good (which was most evenings and most days).

The diving was great and you could either choose to follow the guide or dive independently (which is what I did about 80% of the time).  Dive briefings were very good and though I came up alone with no one and no boat in site several times I was soon picked up, no worries.  They kept track of who went out in which group and who skipped dives so they knew how many folks to retrieve.

One of the reasons I like to dive alone is so that I can just focus on what I want to and it allowed me to for instance, park, at some cleaning stations and record fish coming in for a cleaning.  Here is a link to a moray, a couple angelfish, and a large coral trout (grouper) getting cleaned by wrasses and shrimp.

https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/5973801595636499889?authkey=CKftssnti_umBQ

I'll do a couple more blogs from this great trip with Mantas, Komodo dragons, octopus, macro stuff...