The other day we went on the first of ten (10) dives that I’m doing while I’m here. The day was cloudy so we were surprised that the water was as calm as it was. When I got in it turned out that I had a self-inflating BCD so I had to disconnect it and control my buoyancy with just my lungs. The dive site was called Lion’s head (known as chicken butt by the locals) and it had beautiful columns of coral that are 20 feet high and form beautiful archways.
We saw a lot of cool stuff but the highlight were two yellow stingrays and some clearer shrimp.
Yellow Stingray (Urobatis jamaicensis), have to look very closely
Later that night we went on a night dive and I didn't know if I was shaking from the cold or from fear. As soon as I get into the water I run into a squid (one of many) and float there, admiring it, and it suddenly inks at me. And then it just attacks my flashlight. Those 4 inch bois are ready to fight. At night it's so much easier to find sea stars and brittle stars. There were also urchins everywhere. At one point we ran into a giant puffer fish roaming the seagrass. We also passed several porcupine fish and a burrfish. On our way back I spotted a nudibranch, most likely a lettuce slug, so cute. Sadly Lauren, who always wanted to see one, missed it.
On the topic of jellies, this morning while we were scouting for anemones
Giant Sea Anemone (Condylactis gigantea)
we ended up swimming through clouds of comb jellyfish and a chain of egg/worm looking things that we had no idea what they were. It was stressful, we were against the current, everything was slimy. Although, we did find a scorpion fish a new octopus den in the process.
Stingray count: 3
Octopus count: 7
Nudibranch count: 1
Trunkfish count: 3
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