Cayman Scuba and Snorkeling Journal

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Feb. 26th, 2011)

2011-07-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Snorkeling this day was pretty fun! Some cool stuff to see.
However, a big barracuda kept hanging out and made the experience unnerving.
You can catch a glimpse of the barracuda's silhouette in the background of the above picture. He never came close enough for me to get a good shot, just close enough to make his presence known.
The coolest part of this day was that there were a bunch of squids hanging out. These are Caribbean Reef Squid. They're fairly common and can grow up to 1 foot in length. Some people think these are called Cuttlefish but, they are not. Squids, Octopuses and Cuttlefish are all types of cephalopoda. I found a good description of the differences between squid and cuttlefish on yahoo answers.Here's a Honeycomb Cowfish. It's a type of trunkfish. They're cool because their 'skin' is actually a hard carapace made up of a hexagonal 'honeycomb' pattern. I've tasted this fish before in a salad and its flesh is very light tasting.

Here's a Ocean Triggerfish. It's pretty big compared to most other fish around the reef. It's a solitary fish and can grow up to 65 cm in length. They're pretty skittish so I was lucky to get this close.
Just a bunch of jack fish hanging out near the sandy bottom.
This was pretty sweet! A big school of little fish swam past and I was surrounded. I guess they're a type of herring?

Good Stuff!

Scuba Diving in Cayman Brac (January, 2011)

2011-04-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

Cayman Brac!

Decided to take a little weekend vacation over to the diver friendly island of Cayman Brac. We stayed at the reasonably priced Alexander Hotel. There was no diving at the hotel, but it was only a short ways to the hotels that did offer diving. I was surprised at how the island of Cayman Brac differed from Grand Cayman. For instance, it was much dryer there, so there were many cacti growing. It is a rugged island formed by cliffs of coral. See:These cliff ran along the whole island (approximately 11 miles) sometimes offering caves to explore. I also took pictures of a house I found interesting:I named this house "Orange House." The intrigue & attractiveness of the houses and caves in Cayman Brac quickly waned and I was glad that we were certified divers. I wouldn't recommend going there unless you are a diver because there's not much else to do. Fine by me!

The first dive we did there was a shore dive. It was a really cool place. A wreck dive. The wreck was called the Captain Keith Tibbetts and is an old Russian war ship purchased for the the purpose of sinking in order to attract divers.
The Ship was resting at about 70 ft deep and a 200 yard swim from shore. It was cool to explore.
The best wreck I've ever seen. Lots of places for fish to hide.

The following day. We did two boat dives.It was luxurious in that the dive masters helped us with our gear. One of our diver masters was certified lion fish culler, so, we witness some spear fishing (killing). I was dissapointed that they didn't eat the fish that they killed.
I was exited to get a picture of this white spotted filefish. This was a new species of fish for me! Kind of feels like a real life Pokemon. I've heard that there's about 28,000 species of fish. Got to catch them all!
This little turtle followed me for a while.
Here's a Queen trigger fish. I had never seen one this big before. That was a common theme while diving in Cayman Brac. A lot of the fish were the same as in Grand Cayman, only bigger. The coral and plant life seemed to be bigger as well.

It was a great trip!

Scuba Diving at Lighthouse Point (November 11th, 2010)

2011-03-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

Lighthouse point is a pretty nice place. It's in Westbay. It's nice place to do a shore dive. Look at all the tanks.
To enter the water, you have to jump of the end of the dock because there's no stairs. But, the main attraction to going to Lighthouse point is the battery powered underwater scooters the you can rent. Just like James Bond 007 or something!
I recorded our dive using my GoPro video camera. Please Enjoy!

The song from this video was taken from the soundtrack of the movie "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." Funny!

Scuba Diving at Eden Rock (October, 2010)

2011-03-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today's post will be all videos. The names of the fishes are in the videos. Enjoy the assortment of fish and the sweet jams!

Hope you noticed that parrot fish taking a munch outta that coral.

Eden Rock is a shore dive that is easily accessible from downtown George Town.

Snorkeling in Westbay (Oct. 2nd, 2010)

2011-01-21T16:26:00.000-08:00

This blog post is going to be kind of a different one...Fish Art Gallery: This is what happens when pictures of fish meet digital editing software.
These are some kind of mackerel fish.
Here are more of those mackerel-like fish except they've been crystallized.
Here's a french grunt in front a squirrel fish.
This is a green moray eel.
This is a sting ray. I'm not sure if it was laying eggs or something because as I got close, it seemed to get angry. It arched it's back kind of like a hissing cat. I didn't want to take my chances with this one so, I promptly left her be.
Here's a lobster. No digital trickery here. The unsteady camera ended up giving this shot a cool effect just 'by accident!'
Here we have an artistic contribution by an anonymous guest artist. The piece is called 'puffer'.

Have a nice day!

Snorkeling in Westbay (Sept. 19th, 2010)

2011-01-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

I gots me a new camera! I bought one of those GoPro cameras that are so popular nowadays.
Saying "I went snorkeling in Westbay" is pretty vague since there are so many different snorkel locations. To be more specific, I went snorkeling in Westbay behind the gas-station near the four-way stop. The reef there is pretty sweet however, it's a good 200 meter swim to get out there.

There's no doubt the camera works well under water for taking videos. You gotta love that wide eye lens. Not quite a fish eye, which is too bad since this blog is all about fish and stuff but, it's close enough.

I surfaced and snapped this here picture:
I like this picture because you can really see the effect the wide angle has by looking at the horizon. Also, that cloud in the middle is pretty crazy. Probably a strombocatacumulo cloud. Just kidding. It almost looks like a mushroom cloud! The point is, when using the GoPro, realize that the still pictures above the water's surface are much more clear versus the still pictures you'll take below.
Here's a gray fish. I've blogged about this fish in the past and I still haven't found out the proper name for it. I was just saying that these pictures aren't that great underwater but zoomed out like this one is, it still looks pretty cool. One challenge with using the wide angle lens is that the subject of your shot has to be closer to the camera then you'd 'normally' expect.
It's tough to tell from this zoom level but, here's some sergeant major fish.
Finally, a nice coral specimen. One additional comment about the GoPro camera....There's no preview LCD display. I think this is good because it conserves battery life. However, it is slightly inconvenient because you don't know if you've captured a 'good' shot or not. Conversely, it makes for a nice surprise when you return home to see if you've got any good footage.

Thanks for reading. Become a follower of my blog.

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Sept. 12th, 2010)

2010-10-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

Awesome!
SHARK! SHARK! SHARK! Saw a shark!This is a Nurse shark. It was hiding under some coral. I swam in real close to snap this picture but then it got scared and swam away.
This is the nurse shark swimming away. I was surprised at how fast it took off.
Shark wasn't the only thing seen on this snorkeling adventure. Here's a lovely school of blue tangs.
Here's a baby spotted trunk-fish.

Sharks are cool!

Snorkeling at Barkers (July 20th, 2010)

2010-10-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Spotted a little rock off the tip of Barker's and decided to swim to it. It took about an hour each way. The water was pretty shallow and below head-level for the majority of the way.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much see life to observe.

This little stingray showed up but that was about all there was to see while swimming.
I brought my fishing rod with me because I thought I'd do a few casts from the rock.
There were some fish swimming around the rock but they didn't want to bite my lure. Also, the rock was really sharp and that made it tough walk on. During this adventure, there was lots of stuff to step on. It would have been good to have shoes.

There were jelly-fish and I got stung. It wasn't a big deal though.

Snorkeling at Barkers (July 20th, 2010)

2010-10-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

It was really hot out this day and the ocean felt like bathwater. Almost too warm. There were some fish around.These are yellow grunts. They are really common. I was surprised to see that they were being sold at the downtown fish market because they're pretty small.Here's a sea anemone. I'm surprised that there are so few of these here in the Cayman Islands.This big barracuda showed up and wouldn't leave me alone...so this cut my snorkeling short.

Scuba Diving at Sunset House (July 11th, 2010)

2010-07-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Went to Sunset House today. They have an Indian restaurant there called SeaHarvest. It was delicious. Also, Sunset house is a good place to go scuba diving. The appeal of Sunset House is that they sank a metal statue of a Mermaid. Unfortunately, we were unable to find it! Oh well. Now there's a reason to go back. It's a pretty deep dive site. Most of the time was spent at about 60 ft.Here's a gray angel fish. The picture turned up fine because this fish does not have many colours. The thing about photographing at a depth of 60 ft is that blue seems to be the only colour that makes it down that far. I guess expensive underwater photography uses lights and special flashes.

This was one of the first noteworthy things I saw on the dive. It's a school of surgeon fish. Looks like there's a grouper hanging out there too.
Spotted this little barracuda hanging out in the reef.
This fish it one of my favorites. It's a trumpet fish. The trumpet fish is a solitary ambusher of small fishes and crustaceans.
I believe this fish to be a queen parrot fish. Notice how there's no red in the picture. The yellow also seems absent. In the future I could use a red filter, a better flash, or more exposure compensation. I tried some post-editing using photoshop but, my photoshopping skills are lacking (so is free time), therefore, you see the pictures just as my camera takes them.
Here is a great specimen of a honeycomb cowfish. You can tell it's a cowfish and not a trunkfish because it has two spikes on its head. Looks like a tasty one.
This is a bicolor basslet. I guess the flash on my camera was working as the yellow was captured nicely. That's it for this dive. Enjoy the following video of a bunch of different fish swimming around some coral.

One last note about underwater photography: to photograph this dive I was using my Stylus Tough 8100. The camera is only supposed to be used up to 33ft but I brought it down to 60ft. At 60 ft the camera stopped working. The lens cover wouldn't open when I turned the power on. So, I swam up to about 50ft and then it started working again. It didn't break which is pretty sweet! I'd be worried to bring it any deeper though. The LCD view finder looked distorted and I was worried that I had ruined the camera.

Stingray City! (July 1st, 2010)

2010-07-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hey,

A group of us took a boat ride to Stingray City. It was awesome. I snuck a few beers along for the ride! When we got there, there was a big mess of boats full of tourists. It was fine though as there were plenty of stingrays to go around!The plan was to check out the stingrays first and then do two more snorkels on our way back to shore (for a total of three snorkels).
Stingray city is a pretty cool place because it's at a sand bar way in the middle of the ocean. I'm not sure why so many stingrays congregate there. My guess is that the tourist company dropped food there over time and trained the wild stingray to 'show-up' in the same place all the time.

It was pretty fun when the stingrays would swim right up and rub against you.

Funtimes!

Before we left for the next snorkel site, this trunk fish showed up

Once at the second snorkel site of the Stingray city excursion, we encountered a school of black trigger fish.

Here's a curious school master. (Sorry pal, no food for you)

In this video I'm swimming after a Gray Angel fish.

At the third snorkel spot there were a bunch of sergeant majors.

End

Scuba Diving at Eden Rock (May 23rd, 2010)

2010-06-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all!

Finally got some scuba diving done! I chose to go to the easy dive site Eden Rock because I hadn't been diving in a while and neither had my diving-buddy. It's also one of the shallower dives so pressure from the depth would be bearable on my camera.

We were really glade to choose Eden Rock because the staff were very friendly and helpful.

Once we got in the water, we came across a turtle:This turtle was pretty sweet and didn't mind when I got close to snap this picture. He had some funky-looking moss growing on his back so he might have been sick.

This is a video of the turtle swimming away. He got bored of posing for pictures!I like this shot from deep underwater (~40 ft). You certainly do see a lot more fish scuba diving compared to just snorkeling.
This picture is not too great but, it's a really nice fish. This is a blue angelfish.
This trigger fish was pretty cool looking. And it was pretty small. I think it was a juvenile Queen Triggerfish.

Above is the cave we swam through. Swimming through caves is what Eden Rock is known for! Awesome! (the fish at the end of this video is a hogfish)

What a great dive!

Snorkeling in Westbay (April 2nd, 2010)

2010-04-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Went for a quick one in Westbay and saw some amazing stuff! (Near the dock just past Al Fresco's)Here's a Caribbean Reef Octopus munching on whatever was living in the shell. Octopus are pretty strong. I tried to take this shell, but it was too strong!Here's a 'Spiny Brittle Star.' They move pretty fast and look creepy as they move. Kind of like a bunch of worms. They're mostly found hiding under rocks.This is China moray eel. Pretty sweet. It's pattern is really unique. Pretty happy about this shot. Here comes one more with it's mouth open:

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (March 21st, 2010 - Midnight)

2010-04-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Did a quick one this night. It was cold and kind of boring out there. Saw a few things though. Check em out:Here's a 'Red-ringed Clinging Crab.' Notice that it's not red. These crabs come in a variety of appearances such as; yellow-brown, red, and green.Here's a couple of crabs hanging-out on some fire coral. I'm not sure about the identification here....I think that they're the same type as the above crab. The reason I'm not sure is because their carapaces are different in appearance. Perhaps they are younglings.This is a sea cucumber. It appears to be a baby conical sea cucumber which is a rare find!Here is the common, but rarely seen Dusky Squirrelfish. Enjoy this crisp photo!

Snokeling at Cayman Kai (March 16, 2010)

2010-04-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

Cayman Kai is on the North part of the island near Rum Point. It's a public beach. It's pretty shallow there. Most of the action was seen near shore or out a by the reef (which is a good swim from shore).Here's a Flamingo Tongue gastropod. The spots you see aren't actually on the shell. Part of the creature that lives inside the shell (the mantle, which is spotted) is wrapped around the surface of the shell which results in spots.This purple and yellow fish is a juvenile Spanish HogfishThis is a spotted trunkfish. It was swimming pretty good so I'm luck to have snapped this one.This is some type of filefish. I'm not certain of the exact type. Maybe some kind of juvenile because it was pretty small.Here's two Spotfin butterflyfish (See the little black spot?). They were swimming around together. I think they like each other.This Caribbean Spiny Lobster was HUGE! I bet this sucker was about 100 years old! Awesome.Here's a cool shot that includes a giant Caribbean Spiny Lobster, a juvenile French angel, and a blue-headed wrasse. I like this one so much I made it my desktop background on my laptop.

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (March 15th, 2010)

2010-04-24T17:34:00.001-07:00

Real Quick one this day. In and out of the Water. Saw these fish:These are yellowfin goatfish!

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (March 8th, 2010 - Midnight)

2010-04-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Went for a midnight snorkel at the spot closest to where I'm living. It was really cold. Saw some pretty cool stuff though. Some animals only come out at night, like this shrimp:This is a 'Red Night Shrimp'. There easy to spot because their eyes light up when they catch the beam from your flashlight. They get scared easily and will scoot off if you spoke them.There was lots of lobsters out a night too. These looked a little too small to eat....unless you caught a bunch of them. Anyway, these too were hanging-out under this ledge. They are 'Spotted Spiny Lobster' (Contrast with the Caribbean Spiny Lobster which are more commonly used for human consumption).Here's a balloonfish at night. Seems like he's chilln. It's cool how the camera sometime takes more-clear pictures at night. I guess the shutter only stays open for as long as the flash goes...? I should probably read up a bit a photography skills instead of 'trial & error.'Here is a pretty interesting ray. It's a 'Yellow Stingray.' I was excited to see this one because they are most often buried in the sand. I thinking that they feed at night, that's why I was able to observe one.Check out the red night shrimp hang-round this spotted spiny lobster. So many eyes! Reminds me of a looney toons cartoon where the characters are wondering about in the dark and only there eyes are animated. Yeah, more night-time adventures to come!

Snorkeling at East End (Feb 21, 2010)

2010-03-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

After the Wreck of Cali was sufficiently explored, we headed out to the East End for some fried fish and more snorkeling. Saying 'snorkeling at the East End' is pretty vague cuz it's a huge area with lots of different beaches. Not sure exactly where the snorkel spot was. Yeah so, here comes the fish: Here's a French angelfish. I've blogged about this here fish in a previous post. The reason that this picture is cool is because the fish is in the transitional stage between juvenile and adult (fish puberty?).Here's a green moray eel. They can grow to be 6+ feet! This specimen was in the upper end of the size spectrum. I think I was getting on his nerves!This cool-looking fish is called a 'Spotted trunkfish.' It feeds on turnicates, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and seagrasses. This picture is nice because the fish is focused!This is the back side of a lionfish. They are really cool and there spines are poison (they hurt but won't kill you). They show you there backside while in the defensive position. It's interesting to see one of this here in the Cayman islands because, they're not indigenous to this area. According to an article about lionfish on Wikipedia, a hurricane in Florida release these fish from an aquarium and now there proliferation is disrupting the ecosystem of the Caribbean coral reefs.

Snatched up a lobster for dinner on the way home before the end of lobster season.

Snorkeling at the Wreck of Cali in George Town (Feb 21, 2010)

2010-03-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

Got full day of snorkeling in today! Went to two different sites! The first site was in right in George Town, Grand Cayman. You wouldn't guess that there'd be a great snorkeling site so close to downtown but, there is!Pretty cool spot to enter the water from. There's a wreck underwater out there somewhere.I noticed this fuzzy chiton before entering the water. I guess some people eat these!?! You have to pry them off the rock using a knife.
Once in the water, I came upon this group of baby surgeon fish.The Wreck of Cali is a cool snorkel spot because there's a bunch of these tarpon swimming around. They're pretty big so that's exciting. Tarpons are a type of primitive silvery fish.
Here's part of the Wreck of Cali. Pretty cool that you can see a ship wreck while snorkeling.
Here we have a male blue parrotfish (the female has a yellow stripe on its less square head). There was a bunch of these guys here. They get to be a good size too.

Snorkeling at Barker's Bay (Feb 17, 2010)

2010-03-03T16:17:00.000-08:00

Went to Barkers Bay this time, which is on the North part of Grand Cayman past Westbay. Once there, we had to do a long swim to make it out to the reef where the waves were crashing. You can see that's it's really far out there:
On the way out to the reef, we encounter.....:a healthy looking stingray who was one the move. Once we got out to the reef, there were a bunch of fish but, the crashing waves were pushing us around and it made it hard to click some clear pictures.Here's a chipper little Squirrel fish.This is a delicious looking Nassau grouper. You can kind of see how the water was swirling around. I wonder what the best way to catch one of these is without a spear-gun?
I thought I'd include this picture of some fire coral. I brushed up against some this day and now I know why they call it 'fire' coral. It really stings as little bits get lodged in you skin. Anyway, watch out for this stuff.
Just before heading back to shore, I spotted this little eel hiding in the coral. It's a goldentail moray eel.
Here's a cool school of surgeon fish. Classic.This Caribbean spiny lobster wants to be left alone.

Field Guides to Caribbean Coral Reef Fishes

2010-03-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

Hi.

I wasn't happy with not knowing the proper names of some of the fish I was seeing. So, I went out and bought a couple of books to help me out. I bought:

This book is full of drawings of fish.

I also picked up this little diddy:
This book is really sweet. It uses photographs to help you identify fish.

Now, identifying fish and reef creatures has never been easier! So, I went back and edited my old posts so that the correct names are displayed. I feel that increased accuracy of fish identification will increase the quality of this here blog.

Snorkeling at Cemetery Beach (Feb 14, 2010)

2010-02-14T10:07:00.000-08:00

Cemetery Beach is a pretty cool spot. It's a fairly popular beach on the way to Westbay, Grand Cayman.The graves here are shallow because that is the Caribbean style. Cemetery beach is a designated snorkeling spot so, there are some buoys marking points of underwater interest (reefs).Took this picture at the base of one the buoys. Thought it turned out pretty cool in an artistic kind of way.One cool thing about the Cemetery beach snorkel spot is that there are a bunch of sergeant major fish. The cool thing about sergeant majors is their pugnaciousness. They aren't scared of you and will swim right up to you for a closer look.

These two were real curious!A beautiful girl fish! ♥There were lots of little fish swimming around. I suspect the little ones to be juvenile ring wrasses. Not sure what this fat gray one is called. I couldn't find it in my field guide...I think it might be a dusky sweetlips or a grey snapper?
This fish was really cool. It's fins moved in a unique way. I couldn't get that good of a picture of it because it was really shy and it wouldn't come close. This is a ocean trigger fish.

Pretty good day.

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Feb 12, 2010)

2010-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Not too eventful today. Cloudy water. Just wanted to get out there for 1/2 an hour. Check out the picts:

Just a bunch of different fish hanging out together......(some surgeon fish, parrot fish, snappers?)
This yellow-finned snapper is showing me a lobster (didn't notice the caribbean spiny lobster until I looked at the shot afterwards!)

That's all for today.

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Jan 28, 2010)

2010-02-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

Pretty sweet day! The water was clear. The sky was partly cloudy and at times the light was less than optimal under the water. Also, I went just as the sun went down so, the light diminished as the snorkel progressed. Check out the shots:
This sting ray was a big one.This black and yellow fish was pretty cool. I thought it was it's own type a fish. Actually, it's a juvenile french angel fish that will look very different once it's an adult.
Couple of little nimble spray crabs (one's hiding).

This is young stoplight parrot fish. It's got some pretty good camo. I like this shoot because the blurry background make it look like it's swimming fast.
This lobster was right out in the open. I wasted to grab it, take it home, cook it up, and eat it. They don't have claws so I think it would be pretty easy. I not sure what the law says about taking lobsters down here in the Cayman's but, somebody told me your allowed up to 3 a day per person. I'll have to look into this. Also, I guess you're not allowed to catch them with you hand, you have to use some type of noose/lasso to catch them. So that will be sweet.
Hey. Check out this puffer fish! This type of puffer is called ballonfish. I've never seen one of these puff-up before. I think they probably have to be in pretty big danger before they'll puff. A fish-loving kind of guy like me wouldn't want to hurt one of these just to see it puff-up. One day, hopefully, I'll get lucky! Tetrodotoxin is present in puffer fish so, sushi fans beware! (Tetrodotoxin blocks the trigger zone of the action potential at the initial segment or axon.)

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Jan 21, 2010)

2010-01-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

First day using my new camera. It was pretty murky out there today. I still got some alright shots. Look how murky it was.
This is a silver pompano. Pretty cool. I guess they taste good too.This is a pretty good picture of a blue-headed wrasse.
This isn't that good of a picture but, I really like this fish. It's blue spots are really shiny. It's a juvenile jewel damselfish. I was able to find this fish's name by visiting this forum. This fish hang around fire coral (brush your skin against this coral and you'll understand why it got it's name!).This fish is red. It's called a Glass Eye Squirrelfish. I found this out from a wiki site. It has plenty of fish ID's. Check it out here! Another cool site to ID fish is http://www.oceanlight.com/fish.html
This fish is blue. It's called a Blue Tang Surgeonfish.

This copper, hatchet shaped fish is called a glassy sweeper.

Kind of got carried away with all the picture this post. Guess I was excited to have an underwater camera again. I still haven't got the chance to use it in water with good visibility. Also, I have yet to use it while scuba diving. I guess that there's a bunch of shallow dive sites around the Cayman's so I should get to use it soon.

Seven Mile Beach (Jan 8, 2010)

2010-01-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

Broken Camera! Water got in....

I showed up to the beach and the water looked crystal. Check it out!
In my excitement, I ran into the water before making sure that the hatches to the inside of my camera were closed. Before I knew it, bubbles where pouring out the side of my camera and I knew it was too late.So, I bought a new camera! My new camera is the same model as my broken one except this time I got black.

I think I've learned my lesson and won't be so hasty with this new one....I still want to see how deep it can go! (manufacturer says only 33ft but, I know someone who went 45ft and said it was still cool)

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach (Jan 6, 2010)

2010-01-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

yo.

It was kind of wavy out there today so, the turbidity was pretty high. Therefore, poor vis. Check out the beach. You can kind of see the reef where I was snorkl'n.First day using my new camera and got some alright picts. I'll post the few things I did see even though they are kind of crappy. Just want to get this blog started! Also, I am in no way an ichthyologist so If I named some fish inappropriately, feel free to correct me (leave a comment)

Here we go:
This here fish is a reef needlefish. It kind of looks like a barracuda but it ain't.
Here we have a lobster. It was a big one. Some people say Caribbean lobster don't taste as good as Maine lobsters. I can't really tell the difference, not that I'm an expert lobster taster or anything.This looks like a school of surgeon fish. They were purple. You can see how cloudy it was out there.....

Got me an Underwater Camera!

2010-01-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hey underwater fans! I recently received a new camera that goes underwater. The model is the Olympus Stylus Tough-8000.
Seems like a pretty dope camera so far. However, it only goes about 33 ft deep. I got this camera instead of one that goes deeper because the deeper ones are very expensive (link to expensive underwater camera cases). Since a lot of scuba goes deeper that 33ft, the majority of the blog posts will be from snorkling. Some will be from scuba....we'll see how tuff this puppy really is!

I never read the instruction manual for this thing but, one tip I can tell you is that, you should make sure to clear any air bubbles from the lens before snapping picts because air can get caught in the view finder when the camera is submerged through the surface of the water (observe the following botched photo):

Snorkeling at Seven Mile Beach with Imation Disposable Underwater Camera (Sometime in December, 2009)

2009-12-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

This day I tried out an Underwater disposable camera by Imation.

The results of the pictures were less than spectacular:

Here's a peacock flounder. Pretty sweet fish. Too bad the camera sucked!