Got up at 7:30 after a good sleep and grabbed a very light breakfast of some small croissants and a coffee. Steve had boiled eggs, so he now has salmonella to go with his HIV, bird flu, sun burn and dodgy teeth! ;)
We caught our ride to the speedboat, and the driver was half asleep and bloody dangerous with it. Once there we picked our flippers and jumped into the small boat. The driver of this boat was pretty young, and had no problem with blasting through the water at speed over some pretty big bumps, the first one made me grunt as it was unexpected and pretty hefty! Swine.
The little island we went to was quite nice and the beach was empty as we were the first there. The other people on the boat refused the snorlel masks once we got there, so it seemed they had paid to just sit on a different beach. Holiday makers... idiots! ;)
Steve and I got geared up and jumped into the sea and started looking around. There was no 'reef' here, just a gentle sloped sand bed with clusters of rocks and dead coral. There were some soft corals still but not many, and we soon learnt why as there were lots of urchins around and also plenty of Parot Wrasse, which munch on soft corals and rock.
I had taken two bananas along after my sister's bloke, Steve, suggested them as a good tool to bring the fish out. I took one in with me to try. There were plenty of damsels and wrasse around, but not much else as this island, and as soon as I broke a piece of the banana off and crushed it between my fingers, as many as 30 fish suddently appeared in a cloud to take some! About 6 or 7 large parot wrasse appeared from no where too. It worked like a charm, cheers Steve! Even rubbing the skins together once the flesh was gone was enough to keep them coming back for more...
I shared my second banana with some French kids who had an underwater camera and who were taking some poor pictures of one or two fish from afar. Once the banana was employed, they were surrounded and got loads of cool up close pictures of all the types of fish that live here... they were pretty chuffed, and I was hapy to have been able to share that. Next time I go snorkeling, I'm taking loads of bananas for hero status! ;)
I hunted for my favourite tropical marine, the trigger fish (I am a fish geek) but this wasn't a great environment for them. Some of the more likely spots didn't have any, so I gave up on that hunt. I did come across some domino damsels, which are really cool little guys, jet black with a sharp white spot on each flank and one on the head. They are pugnacious little guys and when I dived down to take a closer look they had a little charge at me and then darted into their nearby carpet anemone for safety. (Certain damsel fish can build up enough protective mucus like a clown fish to survive short periods of time in the stinging tentacles of anemone, in case you didn't know! ;) It was nice to watch them in their own environment, its been a while!
These sort of trips make me want to set another tank up, but that will have to wait as I don't even have anywhere to live, let alone a tank any more! ;)
We got our boat back at midday and I went to shower and eat. Looking forward to the microlite trip in a few hours! Woohoo...
