pyrasea

Our hermit crab-ventures now involve land! We found this guy in our bedroom. He wandered in from the beach. Other visitors include: bats, Peaches the dog, and red footed tortoises.

Sometimes I snap photos of things and don’t even know what it is! I thought this could be a crawling something or a tiny anemone but I had not seen anything else like it. It is an anemone. It looked like a cute little doll house sized bath mat. It’s precious, nubby, and neon green. 💚

A neck crab in Roatán. I guess they are like the swans of the crab family (neck wise). They are a variety of decorator crabs and attach little stinging hyoids to their shells adding protection and an undeniable amount of flair! You almost don’t know what you are looking at when you are looking right at them and then they move and it all comes together.

My, what long eyes you have. I look in every single sponge to find critters. There are tons of sponges so it’s an all day job. I am always amazed at how impeccably clean each sponge is! With all the sand, floaty stuff, and water swirling around I always expect them to be filled like little underwater trash bins. I’d say 95% of the time they look empty and pristine inside. The other 5% I discover critters hiding inside and looking out at me like they are invisible. It is the sea equivalent of a child covering their eyes and thinking they are well hidden in a game of hide and seek.

This is what a spotted eagle ray does when he gets to a Super Bowl party I guess. I’m both impressed and jealous at the way these beautiful creatures find and uncover their meals. Spotted eagle rays, along with other sharks and rays, have a special structures called the ampullae of Lorenzini which can detect electrical fields given off by buried pray. They know exactly where the snacks are. They will swim and then suddenly bury their face like this one and rut around for food. They will dig and munch for quite a while sometimes which gives us a great opportunity to observe them and snap some photos. Don’t worry… the ampullae of Lorenzini lets them know we are there too.

Do you believe they put a man on the moon? Not this man. This man (Marty) is hovering over the Hilma Ho**er, a 236 foot Dutch freighter that was sunk in 1984 after the owners decided they didn’t want to come retrieve it from the impound. Why was she in the impound you ask? Story-time: The ship experienced some technical difficulties off the coast of Bonaire and was towed in for assistance. When the crew couldn’t seem to produce the proper paperwork suspicions started to stack. Come to find out the boat had been on the radar with Interpol and the FBI for suspected drug activity. After some anonymous tips- a thorough search of the ship uncovered 25,000 pounds of ma*****na in a bulkhead! So… a little drug activity was happening and the owners didn’t want to come get the boat for some reason after that. In case you are visual and a little nerdy like me… a google search helped me figure 25,000 lbs of ma*****na = 22,650,000 joints! Who knew all that w**d could result in one of the coolest dive sites on Bonaire! On this trip it was our first and last dive of the trip 🛳️

Nurse sharks are so sleek. They are the sports cars of sharks. They have a lovely flattened shape and broad head. They have such powerful eating suction they can suck a snail right out of its shell. We see nurse sharks often. As far as sharks go, they are pretty easy going and don’t give me that “Oh no” feeling in my nervous system. Most sharks are stand-off-ish underwater. Divers are loud and have bubbles pumping from their heads so we do not often get to be close to sharks for very long. Nurse sharks seem more interested in resting and having seafood snacks than running away from us. It’s always so cool to be in the company of sharks. Sharks are a sign of a healthy reef and are always a welcome dive buddy on our dives. Fun fact! Apparently… sharks like yellow (my scuba accent color of choice) and people call it “yum yum yellow”. 😳

I’ll just be honest and say that when I saw this flash of red while diving the Red Sea in the pitch black of a night dive I thought it was a flip flop. For as many years as I have been spectating ocean creatures there are few things as beautiful as a Spanish Dancer Nudibranch swimming. Even if you don’t care about diving you’ve probably seen video footage of these things. It’s pure grace! They swim by whipping thier bodies around like a flamenco dancer’s skirt (hence the name)! Google it. Its scientific name is Hexabranchus sanguineus which literally means blood colored six gills (coolest nickname ever). This was the brightest red color that it looked like it had to be manmade. It was the size of my red flip flop which is really big as far as sea slugs go. I was so excited to find this and finding it in the dark made it an extra fun discovery. This is the only one I have ever seen in person. By the time I could get myself together to take a better look, it had already crawled under a bit of reef but not before we snapped a photo of some of its glorious blood colored gills.

The truth about diving is that it eventually has to end and we have to fly back to Atlanta. We plan a full 24 hours before we fly to reduce the chance of any rouge residual nitrogen bubbles to cause a ruckus in our bodies. We normally have a nice lunch, maybe visit a spa, have some day drinks or frantically pack before heading to the airport. We decided to do a mangrove tour in Bonaire with the Mangrove Center. It was great ! I highly recommend it as an active off-gassing activity on a visit to Bonaire. The mangroves are a power house of a habitat. They protects the islands they inhabit, they shelter and protect baby fish, turtles, seahorses, and other critters and birds. They are magical! We got to kayak and snorkel through tunnels of mangroves and see all sorts of life just beneath the surface.

If all this life doesn’t blow your hair back… where else, other than Bonaire, can you take a selfie with a wild donkey and a flamboyance of flamingos! Yes, it’s actually called a flamboyance 🦩🦩🦩🦩🦩🦩🫏

A black spotted nudibrach or Ceratophyllidia Papilligera 😳slugging along the reef. What a beauty! This pattern was show stopping. I love to watch these little guys moving and eating. It doesn’t seem like they can cover much ground but they really do! In summary, you CAN eat all day if you also move constantly all day and remain very small.

A Masked Puffer Fish resting on a coral head while we were on a night dive in Egypt. I saw one little guy perched up and I thought he was just a loaner swimming to his own tune but then… I saw about four more! These coral heads are apparently masked puffer fish bedrooms and I guess the masks are sleeping masks? They were so adorable and posed for these dramatic Olan Mills style portraits. I was delighted that these photos came out because they were really lovely little fish.

A goldentail moray eel peeking out from the reef like a new week. These eels are notoriously ornery and have earned the nickname “bastard eel” because of their aggressive nature! I guess these are the eels your momma warned you about 🫣