He let me belly crawl right up to him today and even had the decency to have a pretty purple plant pot for a background

He’s already giving me the eye-roll

and the oh so disinterested pretend to sleep pose

Headed for one of my favourite little out of the way spots on Blizzard Ridge before trundling to the main site. One of the small anemones had two porcelain crabs waving their baseball mitt hands around, catching food and then stuffing into their gobs. So cute to watch!

I was having tremendous problems with my stupid mask again on dive one. A little fogging on the edges despite a good clean, anti-fog and spit but the real pisser was it was freakin’ leaking!! It had been letting a little drip in now and again over the past however many dives, but it was manageable. Not great, but for some dumb stubborn reason I was determined to make this mask work. But this dive marked the end of our relationship. It was a horrible breakup; I’d clear it and about 3 seconds later it would have so much water in it that I couldn’t see. And woe is me when I tipped my head to try to shoot something in an awkward spot (why is all the good stuff always in an awkward spot?) – salt water in the eyes and just friggin’ miserable.

I was about ready to simply call the dive and head back to the surface when a lovely group of not good divers swarmed around me, kicking masses amount of sand up totally making me blind.

Fabulous, I thought to myself in a seriously snotty tone.

Instead of hunkering down to let them pass over me as I usually do, I headed up to the top of the ledge and just settled there while they kicked and stirred and flailed about. At least it gave me some more time to clear the damn mask again. Once both my mask and the surrounding couple feet of water were clear, I saw a baby nudibranch! I never would have found him if it hadn’t been for the chaos.

He was slowly cruising along munching on whatever it is that these guys eat

of course, he wasn’t in a great position so I just hung out with him and waited patiently for him to sit up (he never did) or pose more prettily or at least accessibly (nope) when out of the corner of my eye I saw a little movement that was different to all the other action happening around us. I peered a little more closely at the reef and found a very well camouflaged tiny scorpionfish whose markings simply lit up when the light hit them. He’s awesome!

I tried to take a few more shots of him but by this time my mask was all full of water again and would not be emptied so I wasn’t sure I was getting anything I wanted (turns out, I didn’t get many keepers from this series – what a shock LOL). As I was trying once again to clear the dumb mask, he hopped forward a few inches. I backed up to see what he would do. He kept hopping forward a few inches at a time – it was so fun to watch him! I’d backed up to where I was when I found the nudi (who was still in the same general area) and then all of a sudden the scorpionfish was there, too!

A couple of frames of them both and then boop – he disappeared down a little hole.

Back on the boat I changed my gear over and got my other mask out while hoping it was going to be an improvement. Cleaned it, popped it on and didn’t think about it for the whole dive. Hallelujah!

Had some shots in mind that I really wanted to try to capture today but as so often happens, I got distracted. My cuddly turtle was back in her spot and so we had a good 15+ minute scratch and snuggle. I got lots of turtle head bumps today and had to gently push on her not to do it anymore as they have pretty hard heads when they are smacking you in the eye or bridge of your nose!

While I was paying attention to Turtle I also tried to keep an eye out for other action since we were sitting under a nice school of glassfish and a few small trevally were trying to make a dent in it. I had the baby Panasonic TS3 out just in case some cool action started. And it did – but not what I expected. A tawny nurse shark skimmed over the edge of the reef and started hunting for something that was tucked up under a ledge. I spent over 8 minutes with her (I think it was a her) as she explored, circled, cruised around the finger of reef and back again. I know I say it a lot but – AWESOME! You’ll be able to tell where more divers joined us

There were so many cool things on the dive but I’m running out of steam. I’ll leave you with a grumpy fish

and a beautiful flatworm that just suddenly appeared floating in front of me as I was almost back to the mooring.