On Sat, 10 Apr 2004 05:00:10 -0400, Krazy Kiwi Viv <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
>Took the opportunity, as the accommodation was free, to have a quick dive
>trip up at Coral Bay during the Easter Break.

I think I need to migrate to your neck of the woods.  :-)

I am already starting my last-minutes chores to get ready for the
SIN/Bali Nedfest which starts less than 5 days from NOW because my
IAH to LAX flight had already been upgraded to BUSINESS class seats
(with full reclining chairs for sleeping).


>Spent 1hr & 45mins patiently waiting for the sharks to come
>in to the cleaning station so I could get piccies of them.

On one tank of air?  :-)  Must be pretty shallow or else you held
your breath.   Speaking of shark-cleaning, I saw for the first
time EVER, during a Bora Bora dive, that a shark being cleaned
while it was SWIMMING -- with his mouth and teeth open and little
fishes swimming around it, apparently doing the cleaning job.

On another Bora Bora dive, we saw SEVEN lemon sharks, in the
same dive with about a dozen reef sharks and a few blacktips.

This was how I described it in a "google-friendly" forum (for my
OWN easy future reference):

*>at first the BIG reef sharks that dwarfed the blacktips.  Then
*>the LEMON sharks that dwarfed the reef sharks!  The LEMON sharks
*>had such a girth around their bodies that they made the Caribbean
*>BULL sharks look skinny, and the blacktips look like minnows.  :-)

That's more lemons I've seen since the lemon tray for ice-tea on
the cruiseship that morning.  Truely AWESOME creatures.


>sharks like to cruise over.  Sometimes they just pass it by while other
>times they literally stop dead-still on the side of it doing a slow free-
>fall with their mouths wide open so the cleaner wrasse can pick them over
>for parasites.  Only during my last two dive trips out to this particular
>site have I been fortunate enough to witness this school of sharks openly
>showing us their cleaning routine.

The one I saw was definitely different in the way it was cleaned.
In any event, since the sharks teeth fall out often, I am surprised
they needed cleaning at all.  :-)

> I rate my dives by how many shots I click off on the camera - only
> 11 pics :-(

That's an interesting concept of rating a dive -- EXCEPT it's limited
to a rating of 36 if your camera is not digital.  :)  On BOTH of
my Bora Bora dives, I clicked off my rolls of 24 (on the MX-10
camera I found at 150 fsw in Coz a month prior) before the dives
were half over!   And they were NOTHING BUT pix of sharks!  Haven't
taken the film to develop yet -- which is another chore (besides
finishing my IRS "estimate" to file for <another> Automatic
Extension for filing) to do before leaving for SIN, exactly on
the deadline date of 4/15!  :-)


>Had two dog tooth tuna come swimming
>around checking me out before they moved on.

Wouldn't know what it is if it came over and bit me.  Dog tooth tuna?
Related to Jeff?   :-)

>2morra we will again head outside
>the protected lagoon but this time via the south passage on another
>exploratory dive.
>Viv

Have another good one!

See you in ... about two weeks, in Bali.  :-)

-- Bob.