Brett and Jess arrived yesterday and joined us on our dives today. It was so calm yesterday and I hoped it would be as good today, so they could enjoy some of this sweetness. It was. And they did. Both of our dives were along Molasses Reef today. Our first spot was at a place they call Ryan’s Beach. I suspect it has another name, because when they said it, the rest of the crew laughed. It’s probably something like Valerie’s Beach, but I can’t seem to look it up anywhere.
Southern Stingray
The dive itself was pretty good. Brett and Jess were still getting their ears wet again. We saw a huge southern stingray resting in the sand. Just as I was getting setup to take a few shots of him, the dive master was clanging his tank to alert us to an eagle ray swimming away. I could barely tell it was an eagle ray and he was gone in seconds. I went back to the big stingray. He let us get close and take all sorts of pictures, but there wasn’t anything else around to contrast it with, so there’s no color or sense of scale to the shots. It was still a cool experience though. We also saw some fairly good sized spiny lobsters and a drumfish that our dive guide pointed out. I decided it was impossible to get a good picture of a rainbow parrotfish. I tried many different settings in differently lit environments during the dive today and I think I finally figured out how to get some color from them.
Aquarium
For our second dive today we were back at Aquarium, by request. We jumped in and had just started looking around when we heard the constant clanging of metal objects against tanks and we knew. Someone had spotted an eagle ray. Charmaine was convinced she would see one this trip. I had my doubts. We’ve been a lot of places since seeing one in Roatan, including doing a bunch of dives here in Key Largo without seeing one again. But she was right, there was an eagle ray on his way around us. He turned and flew past the boat and I fired off a couple shots and got one or two that I won’t throw away. Luckily I already had my camera turned on or I would have missed him completely. Those things are like unicorns. They’re magical to see. I’m so glad we got to see one again.
Fire Coral Cleaning Station
Nothing else really mattered after seeing the eagle ray, but we did see a turtle trying to scratch an itch with a patch of fire coral. It was pretty amusing and I took a few shots of that too. There were a ton of fish everywhere and we even came across another huge southern stingray hanging out in the sand. I tried to get a shot that would be good, but I don’t have the skills for it yet. We also saw a bunch of butterflyfish, hogfish, parrotfish, squirrelfish, grunts, filefish, spadefish, and finally some juvenile blue damselfish. Those juvenile damselfish were some of our favorites in Roatan.
It seems they have everything here in Florida.
