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Not hard at all. While I have seen some truly remarkable things as a diver, by far the best was a pair of hammerhead sharks for the first time.
It was not seeing the sharks themselves that was so remarkable. I wasn't that close to them,they are skittish and swam off before I could get a decent photograph. But my 13 year old daughter, Sammi, pointed them out as we were diving in San Salvador, Bahamas. She had never seen a shark in the water before and I had never seen a hammerhead.
It was a magical moment and one I will never forget.
There's bigger, smaller, rarer, and more colorful critters in the ocean, but the cuttlefish remains my favorite. Something about knowing that they're a congnizant, thinking being (check the research), and those enigmatic eyes as they hang there watching you. I love 'em!
If I wrote it, it's only my opinion. ___________________________ " ... when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent. "
-Dave Barry
For me, the "best" thing I saw underwater was a simple decorator crab. It was my first ever dive, at the Breakwater in Montetey, and I'd just achieved neutral buoyancy and was able to focus on what was around me. There in the sand was a decorator crab, putting on another bit of kelp. All of a sudden, I was no longer a struggling neophyte, I was Jacques Cousteau, watching in real life what I'd only seen on his TV specials.
hmmm. I have to say it was a bit of the cycle of life. A very small crab and a couple snails preying on a tunicate. I watched them worry off bits of the tunicate for about ten minutes. Sand bottom "nothing to see". Most would have missed the entire thing.
It was an example of the cycle of life, how ecosystems work, the entire system in microcosm, like Shiva Herself in a tableu no bigger than the palm of my hand.
Oh, I've had so many wonderful experiences . . . but right now, the one that tops them all was jumping off the boat in Rangiroa into a pod of dolphins, who stayed and tried to entice us to play for more than five minutes before we bored them and they headed off -- to play a dolphin game, it appeared, because as we followed them, we discovered they were hassling the puffer fish and leaving a trail of puffed up ones behind them!
I'm going to go with a small WWII wreck site in Papua New Guinea with a plane broken into pieces. Over the decades, it had become an artificial reef rich in both hard and soft coral populated by a variety of fish. Not only was it a colourful and beautiful display but it was exciting looking into the nooks and crannies and finding something unusual. AND we were fortunate enough to have our guide spot a fish that is quite uncommon - can't recall the name but it was bizarre looking.
To date, the most impressive thing I have ever seen was exiting a swim through in Grand Cayman around 100 feet onto the side of a vast, deep wall. I looked up and saw the coral head about 60 feet up and beyond that, the boat on the surface. Left and right was the wall as far as the eye could see (100 feet plus). In front of me was open ocean. The only thing disrupting my view of the abyss below was a turtle calmly cruising 15 or 20 feet below me.
Okay, not so much a "thing" as a moment in space. Nonetheless, it is the most impressive moment I have had.
I agree it's tough to narrow it down to one thing. I'm going to go with a partridge tun I saw on a night dive in Kona. It's a type of snail with an immensely huge foot. It was moving along at a pretty good pace (for a snail) when we saw it. In color it's mostly red and is very cool looking in general.
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