Sea life

Viewing wildlife underwater is such a different experience than viewing wildlife on land. You can get so much closer to the fish than you ever could to land animals. Watching the variety of ways that the fish and other sea life move through the water. Some fish use their fins like wings. They either flap them up and down, or use a sweeping motion. Some fish have more of an undulating motion to propel themselves, either undulating their entire bodies or just their dorsal fins. Wonderful variety. Turtles are another category. They look so ungainly, and yet as they flap their flippers they move so gracefully through the water. We saw 8 turtles on our dives today, 3 the first dive and 5 on the second.

Another pleasant surprise on the dive today was seeing 13 small squid, all in a row, all just hanging out and letting us approach them. We were a group of 5, and the two groups faced each other. We were checking them out, and they were definitely checking us out. Lots of the sea life check us out in one manner or another. Apparently the snappers have learned to direct divers to lionfish. They will swim up to a diver, and then swim to an overhanging ledge, repeating the motion until the diver finally understands that there is a lionfish under the ledge. The snappers have learned that the divers will spear the fish and then feed them to the snappers.