Eagle Rays and Moray Eels

Another glorious day on the waters of Cozumel! We were invited to spend a day with Blondie and Donna, and their son Renee. Donna is one of the manager/owners of Aqua Safari, Blondie often works as a boat captain usually for fishing charters. They own three boats of which the Belinda is one (the dive boat I most often dive from when on Cozumel). Today we went out on their largest boat "Gypsy" which is a comfortable shallow-draft boat outfit for both scuba and fishing charters. The plan was to do a one-tank dive at either Eagle Ray or Barracuda (deep diving sites, but still within recreational limits) to look for eagle rays cruising the reef.

To make a long story short: we saw 11 in total, or possibly 2 groups of five which may have been the same five twice, and one solo eagle ray. I'd been having some minor problems with the video housing but today I was able to get it working flawlessly the whole dive.




Also on this dive, Renee spotted a full-grown Green Moray Eel. I am posting this video of it specifically for Walt, because he once commented on one of my pictures "this is why I don't swim in the ocean." I'll agree that Morays look like one of the nasty monsters of the deep that you really don't want to tangle with, but so far I haven't been bitten by one. (I do know someone who has... in the neck... but she is still alive!)

Teasing Toadfish

OK, swimming with Wild Dolphins wasn't the only fun thing I did on Sunday. During the 3rd tank dive at Paradise Reef I also got to tease a Splendid Toadfish out of its hole. You've probably seen my pictures of these ugly/beautiful fish in my photo albums and what you usually see is only the head with its chin tentacles. I'd heard from friends and divemasters that you can tease them out by wiggling something yellow'ish in front of them.

So... today when I came across one and had the video with me, I unhooked my safety sausage (it was the only loose object I had at the time except for my video housing!) and squirmed it in the sand in front of the toadfish. At first it came out a little bit, but then stopped. So, while holding the camera as steady as I could with one hand, grabbed the sausage and teased some more. What you see on the video is the thing coming out of its hole about 3/4 of the way! What great fun!

If you want to see what the whole Splendid Toadfish looks like, just do an image search on that name.