achu
Guest
Another fantastic dive today!!!
It was another beautiful sunny Cozumel day! My friend is flying out tomorrow and wanted to do one last dive.
We decided to do Paraiso Reef from shore. (that way, we could get in the diving, and the sunning all in one trip!) But what an unexpectedly amazing dive it was!!!
Paraiso Reef: Max depth 45´ Time: 90 min.
We carefully walked in from shore... I was regretting this already, as the water felt COLD!!! (ok i´m ALWAYS COLD... yea, 80 degrees is cold...) We descended and started swimming out towards the main reef at Paradise. This took us 8 minutes to get to since we were taking our time, checking out all the life living in the sand and seaweed. You should all slow down sometime when going over seaweed! There is so much interesting life hiding out there!
After the 8 min swim, we got to the main reef. Right away, I spotted a few toadfish. I even saw one from above, it was hiding under the coral, but the coral had huge holes in the top that I could "peek in". All I saw was a bit of a toadfish tail...Sigh, I thought of Dee´s awesome picture of a WHOLE toadfish!!! Someday Dee... Someday I WILL see a spendid toadfish out in the open. My friend found some huge lobsters, a huge starfish and some moray eels.
We looked up and WOW, to our amazement, a massive spotted eagle ray appeared before us. It didn´t seem scared of us at all. In fact, it was busy munching away at conch. ( I could almost hear the conch crying out, "run!!! Run for your lives!!! Poor, poor conch....) We just hovered there quietly for 5 minutes watching the eagle ray get awefully close to us, munching the whole time. What an incredibly cute birdlike face it had... and how elegant it was in movement... fluid motion through the water. I noticed for the first time that other than the big "wings" that they use for speed, they also have these two "rudder" type smaller wings right at the base of the large wings where the tail starts. They seem to use these for minor adjustments in direction and depth. Like flaps on an airplane. What an unbelievable experience to see an eagle ray feeding, up close and personal.
We went to inspect some of the conch ceviche "leftovers"... the conch shells were chomped to pieces. I can only imagine how much strength they have in their teeth to crack through those huge conch shells. They make it look as easy as us cracking a peanut shell and eating the peanut!
We moved on along the reef and marveled at the little banded shrimp peeking out from all the little crevices. I was also noticing all the different color anemone and the different types of symbiotic shrimp, crabs and fish that live in each one.
As we were turning around to head back towards the beginning of the reef, I looked up and saw not one, but two more of those magnificent creatures appear out of the distance. An eagle ray pair, just soared around us and swam back off into the distance.
We swam back towards shore and hovered for a moment as we passed Paraiso Shallows. We double checked each other´s guages and were comfortable that our 1000 psi was going to get us through a tour of Paraiso Shallows.
I love Paraiso Shallows, it is shallow at around 20-30´ max depth. I inflated my safety sausage... 20 feet depth with lots of snorkeling boats zooming around always makes me nervous...
We spotted lots of splended toadfish... tried to lure them out by placing my metal clip in front of the hole and moving it as if it was some helpless creature... well... no fooling them today! We spotted a few different types of moray, 2 little juvenile drumfish, 1 huge mature drumfish. We marveled all the trumpet fish head down, tail up, pretending to be gorgonia, floating with the currents.
We laughed as the faces stared out of the underwater glass windowed half-"submarine" looked at us... we even saw the flash of some cameras!!! LOL I wonder how their pictures turn out?
When I turned around, once again, to my amazement, another eagle ray appeared out of the distance! WOW!!! It headed straight for the "submarine"... until it realized what the big metal object was... then it quickly turned around and "flew" off into the distance again.
Ok, we were good and satisfied that no shore dive could ever have been better!
We turned around and headed back to shore where we had gotten in.
Sigh, what a day! What a dive!!! Can I repeat it? I AM AN OBSESSED DIVER!!! I wonder if there is a cure for this obsession?
achu
It was another beautiful sunny Cozumel day! My friend is flying out tomorrow and wanted to do one last dive.
We decided to do Paraiso Reef from shore. (that way, we could get in the diving, and the sunning all in one trip!) But what an unexpectedly amazing dive it was!!!
Paraiso Reef: Max depth 45´ Time: 90 min.
We carefully walked in from shore... I was regretting this already, as the water felt COLD!!! (ok i´m ALWAYS COLD... yea, 80 degrees is cold...) We descended and started swimming out towards the main reef at Paradise. This took us 8 minutes to get to since we were taking our time, checking out all the life living in the sand and seaweed. You should all slow down sometime when going over seaweed! There is so much interesting life hiding out there!
After the 8 min swim, we got to the main reef. Right away, I spotted a few toadfish. I even saw one from above, it was hiding under the coral, but the coral had huge holes in the top that I could "peek in". All I saw was a bit of a toadfish tail...Sigh, I thought of Dee´s awesome picture of a WHOLE toadfish!!! Someday Dee... Someday I WILL see a spendid toadfish out in the open. My friend found some huge lobsters, a huge starfish and some moray eels.
We looked up and WOW, to our amazement, a massive spotted eagle ray appeared before us. It didn´t seem scared of us at all. In fact, it was busy munching away at conch. ( I could almost hear the conch crying out, "run!!! Run for your lives!!! Poor, poor conch....) We just hovered there quietly for 5 minutes watching the eagle ray get awefully close to us, munching the whole time. What an incredibly cute birdlike face it had... and how elegant it was in movement... fluid motion through the water. I noticed for the first time that other than the big "wings" that they use for speed, they also have these two "rudder" type smaller wings right at the base of the large wings where the tail starts. They seem to use these for minor adjustments in direction and depth. Like flaps on an airplane. What an unbelievable experience to see an eagle ray feeding, up close and personal.
We went to inspect some of the conch ceviche "leftovers"... the conch shells were chomped to pieces. I can only imagine how much strength they have in their teeth to crack through those huge conch shells. They make it look as easy as us cracking a peanut shell and eating the peanut!
We moved on along the reef and marveled at the little banded shrimp peeking out from all the little crevices. I was also noticing all the different color anemone and the different types of symbiotic shrimp, crabs and fish that live in each one.
As we were turning around to head back towards the beginning of the reef, I looked up and saw not one, but two more of those magnificent creatures appear out of the distance. An eagle ray pair, just soared around us and swam back off into the distance.
We swam back towards shore and hovered for a moment as we passed Paraiso Shallows. We double checked each other´s guages and were comfortable that our 1000 psi was going to get us through a tour of Paraiso Shallows.
I love Paraiso Shallows, it is shallow at around 20-30´ max depth. I inflated my safety sausage... 20 feet depth with lots of snorkeling boats zooming around always makes me nervous...
We spotted lots of splended toadfish... tried to lure them out by placing my metal clip in front of the hole and moving it as if it was some helpless creature... well... no fooling them today! We spotted a few different types of moray, 2 little juvenile drumfish, 1 huge mature drumfish. We marveled all the trumpet fish head down, tail up, pretending to be gorgonia, floating with the currents.
We laughed as the faces stared out of the underwater glass windowed half-"submarine" looked at us... we even saw the flash of some cameras!!! LOL I wonder how their pictures turn out?
When I turned around, once again, to my amazement, another eagle ray appeared out of the distance! WOW!!! It headed straight for the "submarine"... until it realized what the big metal object was... then it quickly turned around and "flew" off into the distance again.
Ok, we were good and satisfied that no shore dive could ever have been better!
We turned around and headed back to shore where we had gotten in.
Sigh, what a day! What a dive!!! Can I repeat it? I AM AN OBSESSED DIVER!!! I wonder if there is a cure for this obsession?
achu
