Best of Mike #66

We are still on the island of Dos Mosquises.

The tour of the turtle farm is done, and we have finished wandering the shoreline.

That small boat you see thru the trees is the skiff that we came ashore in. And it's our ride back to the big boat.

We're just going to hang out under this tree until it's time to go.

I guess that would make this a bus stop ..... Caribbean style.

I think, if the all bus stops looked like this.... I would be tempted to sell my car.

Best of Mike #65

One afternoon our liveaboard dropped anchor near a small island ..... Dos Mosquises Sur.

Where there is a turtle breeding station.

Much in the same way that fish can be raised first in captivity and then released into the wild.

This farm is raising turtles, to bolster diminishing populations in the wild.

After touring the breeding station we wandered around the island taking in the other sites on a beautiful afternoon.

This meeting was happening on the pilings of the old pier, at water's edge.

I am not sure who called this meeting, what they were discussing or who the featured speaker was.

But it was a meeting that is well attended and a meeting that went on, even after we had returned to our boat.

Best of Mike #64

I have really zoomed in on this little guy, so let me first give you some perspective ..... he is about the size of a small green pea.

He hovers like a helicopter but is quite nervous, so the movement is much more darting ..... like a firefly.

We are pretty sure that he is some juvenile stage of one of the Trunkfish.

But in all honesty, we are not 100% sure because the coloring is wrong. Normally, the body is black with yellow spots but as you can see that is not the case here.

I even went so far as to send a pixture to the guys who write the fish identification book that I like to use but I didn't get an answer.

So barring evidence to the contrary, I am calling him a Juvenille Spotted Trunkfish.

Best of Mike #63

Creole Wrasse are always fun to watch as they work their way along the reef.

To begin with they are kind of noticeable with their purple bodies and the bright splash of yellow, green and blue along their sides.

They  swim in schools that arrange themselves in a long thin line. So, each time I see them.... I have "conga tunes" playing in my head.

Like many reef fish they are grazers,  swimming just above the surface of the coral.... snooping into crevices in search of snails, worms, shrimp, crab and eggs.

From time to time we will see them feeding, as they are here, by extending that "white dealy" (yes that's a scientific term) from their mouths and filtering something right out of the water.

Best of Mike #62

Trumpetfish swim slowly, sneaking up on unsuspecting prey.  

Or they lie motionless like a floating stick, swaying back and forth with the wave action of the water. 


I have also photographed them floating in the water, next to sea rods. When doing this, they will adopt the angles and positions in the water.... that make them look most like one of the branches on that coral.


Camoflage is a big part of their hunting technique. So, they often swim in alignment with other larger fish.... just above or below that fish. 


I think that was the case here, as this guy was more than happy to let me swim along above him, snapping all the pixtures that I wanted.


They feed almost exclusively on small fish, such as wrasses.... by sucking them suddenly into their small mouths.


They vary in color ..... anything from dark brown to green tones but it seems to me that orange and blue are the colors that I see most often.

Best of Mike #61

If you are taking pixtures underwater and come across a Red Lip Blenny, you are going to have some fun.

They provide the perfect recipe for a challenging but doable shot.

On one hand.... they are very small (2-4 in), very quick, darting in their movements and generally freaked out, that something as big and noisy as a diver has invaded their space.

But on the other hand.... they are darn cute (it's those big red lips), very territorial and brave well beyond their size.

So, it is really an exercise in spending the time necessary for them to become comfortable with your presence.

If you use some of that time to watch the pattern of their movements.... you will soon see where you can get a pixture of them perched and surveying their domain.

Best of Mike #60

Los Roques was the trip of the aggressive Spiny Lobster.

We saw them on just about every dive and they were lobster with attitude.

Standing outside of their hidey holes.... they would stare right into your eyes, waving their antennae.

On more than one occasion they ran towards us.

I imagined them yelling in their little lobster voices - "get off my lawn ya punks and stay out of my yard".

Best of Mike #59

It's a fan of coral.

Some eye candy for you to look at, while I tell you the story of our journey to Los Roques.

This and our trip to Palau are the contenders for "most exotic destination" in our travels so far.

When we went to Palau we were part of a group, always comforting.... and, we traveled thru a long serious of English speaking countries to get there.

Not so this trip ..... just Linda and I with my really limited and really bad Spanish.

Los Roques is a group of islands that are the oldest marine park in the Caribbean.

They are part of Venezuela, so we flew first to Caracas and connected to a small prop plane that took us to the island of Grand Roque and our liveaboard ..... the boat we would live on for a week of diving.

We made this trip in October of 2001. Now think about that for just a moment. What happened in September of 2001 ..... yup the 9/11 terrorist attack in America.

The upside to traveling then, from a purely selfish point of view, was that there weren't very many people who were doing it.

The downside included the very, very, extra, special attention to security and a very noticeable attitude of nervousness, that was shared by everyone.

Now, we have traveled many times to Mexico and were at least comfortable with, if not a little cocky about our very little Spanish.

But what you don't realize, until it's not there, is that on your way to Mexico there is always an English bailout.

If you can't quite read the sign in Spanish, there is probably and English version near by.

If you can't quite get your point across in Spanish, switch to English because the person you are talking to, or someone nearby, speaks it ..... at the very least, much better than I speak Spanish.

Not so in Venezuela ..... at least not in the airport in Caracas.

In the course of our 4 hour layover there, we didn't encounter a single person, including the airline staff, who spoke English ..... or understood my really bad Spanish.

Somewhere in the sign language that we used to ask for directions, we got the gate we were supposed to be at to board our plane.

But never in all the time we waited (about 4 hours) did the monitor in that waiting room EVER say the name or number of our flight.

We had a nice long layover, so we wandered the airport from end to end, more than just a few times, looking for some monitor, or some other clue that if we got onto the plane that parked at that gate, at 4pm, we would be going where we wanted to go ..... Grand Roque.

In the end, a plane did arrive at the gate. We gave the airline employee our tickets at the gate. They did not say "where the hell do you think you're going" or anything that carried a tone that would imply that was what they were saying ..... so we got on the plane.

Imagine our great relief, a hour and half after we took off, when the pilot came on the intercom and gave what I suspected was the standard "prepare for landing speech" ..... and it included the words Grand Roque.

Once on the ground we were met by the crew from our live-aboard ..... the Antares Dancer.

They spoke a lot of languages, maybe 6 or 8 ..... including English. And did a lot, over the course of the next week, to help me with my newfound resolve to improve my Spanish.

Best of Mike #58

Over the years I have collected alot of pixtures of Arrowcrabs. They are plentiful, interesting to watch and pretty cute in a gangly sort of way.

During mating (not that I have ever actually seen that happen) the male places a sperm capsule on the female, that she then uses to fertilize her eggs.

She carries these eggs, on her swimming legs, until they are ready to hatch.

Once hatched the larvae swim to the surface to feed on plankton.

They go through a series of moults, eventually, emerging in the adult form, you see here.

Last post from our visit to Curacao ..... next stop Los Roques, a group of islands off the coast of Venezuela.