As we biked to the Scuba Shack on Roi today, we noticed the trade winds were picking up, and once we were on the water, we certainly felt it, but it did not deter us from diving the site known as “The Crater.” This is a large round coral head with a sandy patch in the middle which can be seen from the surface of the water on a calm day. As we headed down to the sandy spot, we watched a shark and two eagle rays swim by on the outskirts. Normally, this area is teeming with sea life like the sharks and rays, but today, these were the only ones we saw the entire dive. All around the coral head, the ocean drops to unknown depths, but in order to get the most out of our dive, we hung around 30-60 feet, so we could examine the life chomping on the coral all around.
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the abundance of the black and green crinoids growing on the reefs around Roi-Namur. A crinoid is also known as a sea lily or feather star with a mouth on the top surface surrounded by feeding arms that flow with the current underwater. They can pull these arms in to form a fairly tight ball as they sometimes do when touched, but more often their arms will stick to your glove when gently putting a hand out, and you have to be careful not to pull away too hard as part of the arm may come with you. Although they appear to me to be attached to the coral of the reef, they are mostly free swimming. Upon learning this, my boyfriend told me that actually had one attach to him one time while diving, which I didn’t know they could do before hand or I might have been more careful about touching them to begin with. :)
In addition to these creatures, I stopped for some time to watch a network pipefish, which is a cross between a seahorse in the face and an eel in the body. It’s a tiny little thing, but fascinating to watch, especially since he didn’t seem to even know or care that I was so close. While I was playing with the pipefish, one of our dive partners was snapping pictures of a beautiful filefish, and in the midst of this action, a school of barracudas swam by my boyfriend. So, despite the fact that this was tame compared to the activity normally found in this spot, there was still plenty to see.
I love to see the Peacock and Greasy Groupers swim around as they are less skittish than some of the smaller fish, and of course, the colorful butterfly fish are always lovely to see. Finally, I noticed an abundance of black fish with yellow outlining on the dive today, and upon going home to look them up, I figure it’s probably a type of surgeon fish, but I can’t be certain. I guess it may be time to find appropriate underwater housing for my point and shoot camera, so I can begin taking pictures and ramp up my fish identification skills. :)
Remember the LCM we found at the “Lost Tank” dive site some weeks ago? Well, today we decided to try and locate that LCM again as we never had a chance to mark its spot exactly while looking for and retrieving the tank on the two previous dives. As we headed down to the sandy bottom of the lost tank site, we noticed the water was even murkier than usual. We moved in a square pattern searching at least 4 different coral heads for the dumped wreck, coming up empty this time. We did see some sort of man made ladder or platform at about 100 feet buried in the sand and thought something else might be near by, but it was a false alarm. Somehow, we got our bearings off and will have to try again another day. The main problem is the depth of the dive. We have limited time down there, so we’ll have to narrow down the spots where we’ve been and start a new search next time as it’s most likely one of the many dumping grounds for equipment from WWII like the airplane graveyard, so WHEN we find the LCM again, there’s no telling what else we’ll come across nearby. Anyway, a lot of the fun is in the search and seeing what’s down there, so we’ll keep trucking until we find what we’re looking for. More to come another day...
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