All of the pictures from the trip are available here.
It's about diving. And cats.
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Sunday, September 30, 2007
Belize 2007
All of the pictures from the trip are available here.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Belize, Day 6
Dive 1 : Paradise Canyons
Not too long into the dive, Rob pointed out a nudibranch (Glossodoris sedna) to me! I was very excited, since I have never seen a nudibranch in the Caribbean before. It was very pretty, and it was out in the open and in fine form – it’s gill plume was very plumy. While he was setting up a shot, I found a second of the same kind on the same rock. It’s gill plume was curled up and it’s rhinophores were under something, so it wasn’t quite as wonderful looking. We continued on, and I was really trying to find some shrimp for him to shoot. I was looking for barrel sponges, since they seem to congregate around those. I found a couple that were tucked way under overhangs. I also found a ton of arrow crabs for Rob, since they were pretty easy to find near crinoids. At some point, I was hanging around while Rob was taking a picture of something, and I saw something close out of the corner of my eye, like a scallop or something. I looked into the crack where it was, and saw a toothy grin. It was a large-eye toadfish, which I have never seen before! It was so cool looking. I pointed it out to Rob, who tried to take some pictures. By that point, the fish had retreated a bit more (not so into the focus light) into its hole. Rob gave up, then a minute later, signalled that he wanted to go back and try again :) After a while, we moved along, and 15 feet down the reef, Rob found another one!
I was very excited to see the nudibranchs. When I told Rob afterwards how excited I was, he asked if I was going to email my man crush about it right away :) I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out who he was referring to. The toadfish were really neat too. The other people on the boat had seen a couple the day before at Turneffe, and apparently they are not very commonly seen at Ambergris.
Dive 2 : Mosquito Canyons
My light wouldn’t come on at the beginning of this dive, which was a big bummer. I felt pretty useless at finding macro critters without the light (my backup was completely useless in such bright conditions). Boohoo. I finally did find a coral banded shrimp that was reasonably out on a barrel sponge, but it was still at a pretty weird angle, so I don’t think Rob got any good shots of it. Oh well. Then near the end of the dive, Rob found a flamingo tongue! It had almost no spots, so it was pretty funny looking. Then I found another one, with more spots, on the same gorgonian. A minute later, Rob found another one on another nearby gorgonian (the third one was the most beautiful of the three, but the gorgonian it was on looked pretty sickly). So Rob did find something fun to take macro shots of.
In case any one is worried (ahem, Ben), my light is actually fine. I guess the battery wasn’t charged properly. Can’t trust the old ball and chain to do anything right…
We headed downtown in the later afternoon to look at the souvenir shops, since I knew that Platypus Rex would have a temper tantrum if I didn’t get her a present. We also got some T-shirts for ourselves. Then we went to BCs for some drinks and to kill some time, since we weren’t quite hungry yet. For dinner, we went to Ambergris Delight, which was delightful. I had blackened shrimp kebabs and a margarita. Rob had barbecued chicken (because he is boring) and a tasty pina colada (because he is girly).
On Saturday morning, we went to Estel’s for breakfast. I had French toast, which was good, but not as good as the stellar French toast at Pepper Bite’s.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Belize, Day 5

So, there were only 6 of us on the trip, so we took a “small boat”. The boat could probably hold about 16 people though, so it wasn’t really small. There were lots of tanks on board, many with sketchtastic valves. The first two tanks I tried to use each had a squished valve orifice. One of the DMs suggested maybe something was wrong with my regulator (which made me want to kick him in the nuts), and after I insisted that wasn’t so, he tried cranking down on my reg and decided that the tank valve was indeed faulty. Another tank near our gear had a busted handle, that was hanging down about 30 degrees from horizontal. And of course even the serviceable valves had O-rings that were perhaps older than me.
The trip out to Turneffe was not as bad as I thought – it was only about an hour and a half, because we went to the South side, which I guess is closer than the Elbow. The boat ride was perfectly comfortable. The water had been very calm all week though, so maybe the “sometimes rough conditions” are for real. We did all three dives as drift dives. We told the DM that Rob is a pokey photographer, and he said it would be fine if we just popped our own bag when we were done, if we got separated from the herd.
This site had more variety in corals and sponges than the sites at Ambergris. There were also more fish, though not necessarily more variety, just more of the same stuff. I saw a giant anemone, which I don’t think I had seen yet. Also saw some corkscrew anemones, knobby anemones, and branching anemones.
Dive 2 : Mertle’s Turtles
We saw an eagle ray here. I found several spotted cleaner shrimp (the cool blue ones) on sea anemones. One of the other divers pointed out a spotted drum in a crevice to us. I’m not sure why people get so excited about spotted drums, but everyone else seemed to be. Eh, it’s a fish, not even a colorful one.
Dive 3: Barrow’s Camp
We saw wwo eagle rays and two turtles here. And a little Pepper eel (it was a goldentail), plus a green moray. More of those pretty blue shrimp. Also found a dancing peppermint shrimp in a stovepipe sponge (why do shrimpies rock back and forth like that?). Two fish with two spikes on their heads, which I could not ID.
The trip back was likewise uneventful, except that I was pouty because Rob had re-appropriated my towel for his camera. And I got rather sunburned on my back because I am an idiot, and only put sunblock on my face and shoulders. When we got back to the dock, we had to schlep our gear up to the dive shop, where we rinsed it. Israel from Protech said that he would pick up our gear in the morning, on the way to pick us up from our hotel. The guys at AquaDives acted like this was some big inconvenience to them, which annoyed me. The service definitely wasn’t as good as Protech – I never had to move gear to/from the boat the entire week with them, except the first and last days. Rob made fun of me when I complained about this to him, but it’s vacation, so I’m allowed to be lazy.
For dinner, we went downtown to Elvi’s Kitchen. I got the special, which was a mixed seafood grill with a tropical fruit sauce. It was really good, the sauce was super tasty and had chunks of mango, papaya, and pineapple. It was probably my favorite meal of the vacation. All week, I had been telling Rob I was going to have key lime pie before we left, since it’s my favorite kind of pie, and it seemed to be on basically every restaurant’s menu. So I finally got a slice at Elvi’s – they had a frozen key lime pie. It was tasty.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Belize, Day 4

We went to Hol Chan Marine Park to dive today. It is way down south on Ambergris. Since it is so far south, we did not return to the dock during the surface interval.
Dive 1: Eagle Ray Canyons
Today Peter was giving a class to another couple, so we stuck with Israel. We saw one eagle ray here, as promised. I also noticed lots of cool shrimps, which is funny because before the night dive, I had seen next to none. I noticed that in the little pits on the outside of big barrel sponges, there were lots of cool critters – tons of coral banded shrimps, and one really interesting one which I think was a squat anemone shrimp. I also found some of corkscrew anemones. I also started to notice that arrow crabs seem to pretty reliably be found near the orange crinoids.
Surface interval
On the surface interval, we snorkelled a very shallow area in Hol Chan (we could stand the whole time), although no snorkels actually participated :P There were nurse sharks and a variety of fish. There were scattered coral heads, some in surprisingly good condition, with lots of little fish hanging out around them.
Dive 2 : Pillar Corals
I thought that the shallows at Hol Chan were actually in worse shape than elsewhere, but that the deeper portions were better. Unfortunately we did not spend too much time very deep on this dive. But there were lots of huge barrel sponges, plus more of the small critters from the first dive. And I believe we saw at least one eagle ray.
In the afternoon, we rented a golf cart, to drive around the island and check out the further reaches. We went up north past the cut, and drove up a ways until it got rather desolate. At one point we found a little path to the beach big enough for the cart, and we drove down the beach, which was better than the sometimes-flooded dirt road. We didn’t see anything particularly interesting up there. Then a bit before dusk, we drove down south in search of crocodiles. We got rather lost on the way to the pond that was described to us (because of a road being closed), but we just happened to end up there. At the time, we thought we were just at a different pond, but turns out it was the one. Anyway, I saw something on the surface, and it was a crocodile! Pretty cool. I’ve never seen an alligator or crocodile before.
For dinner, we went to Sunset Grille. The service was appallingly slow. We got there, and were seated in the back corner (which was right on the water). Someone finally took our order after 20 minutes (no one ever bothered to take a drink order). Then about 15 minutes later, someone brought bread. People kept coming by and asking if we’d ordered yet. Then another 10 minutes later, our appetizer came. Shortly before that, our waiter came and asked if everything was alright (uh, everything being the bread and water?). I asked if we were ever going to get our food, and he made some excuse about our appetizer being poached by the server for another table. So finally we got our appetizer, and then our entrĂ©e came in another 20 minutes. I wasn’t in love with what I got (snapper with a mango salsa) because it had some herb I wasn’t a fan of. But I think it was a good dish, I am just picky about herbs. Rob got a really tasty shrimp pasta dish. By the time we got our entrees, I just wanted to get the hell out of there though. The place did have good ambience, but being shoved in a corner with no service was pretty annoying.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Belize, Day 3
We returned to this site because the first time, Rob was shooting macro and Teresa had some camera problems. So we all wanted to return. There were plenty of nurse sharks here again, and also a lot of big grouper. We hung out in the shallows for the first 15 minutes or so checking them out and taking pictures. Then we headed to the dropoff and swam across a couple of the coral fingers. Rob found two eels in pretty quick succession. The first was on one of the little “walls” formed by the coral fingers, and I think it was a goldentail moray. It kept popping its head out and then pulling it in. It reminded me of Pepper protecting her tunnel. After we were finished watching it, we headed up to the top of the dropoff and Rob found a green moray in a hole. His head wasn’t sticking out when I got to it, but I could see its body in the hole. When we got back to the shallows, the nurse sharks and groupers were still around, and Rob found one grouper that was particularly into having his picture taken. Rob was taking pictures of him forever, and I found a little arrow crab and one of those curly cue anemones to entertain me. Right before we ascended, I saw a spotted eagle ray coming towards us. It came around us and basically swam a big square-shaped U around us, stopping at each corner. So we got to watch it for a while before it took off. It had an entourage of cleaner fish with it.
Dive 2: Double Buoy
When I jumped in the water and looked down, I saw three nurse sharks laying in the sand in one spot, and two laying in the sand a little further away. And lots of yellowtail snapper closer to the surface. We again hung out with the nurse sharks for a while, then headed to the dropoff. Right before we got to the dropoff, Israel pointed out a lettuce sea slug to us. It was more colorful than others that I have seen before, with red and blue on its lettuce edges. It also blended in way better than any that I have seen before. We also saw a green moray, which was pretty far out of his hole. As soon as Rob swam over, he popped out even more to check out Rob’s camera (or more likely, his reflection in the dome port). It was really cute, he seemed really curious about the camera.
Dive 3: Double Buoy at Night
We were going to do a night dive at Taffy, where Peter said there was a “decent” chance of seeing some big sharks. But we ended up at Double Buoy (just by accident) but decided to just stay there anyway. Peter admitted that he didn’t know the site that well, but we were not that concerned, since the reef is pretty easy to navigate. Peter was diving with another local diver, named Abiner I think. So we headed down, and pretty soon after, Rob found a nice little octopus sitting out on a rock. After a minute of harassment from Rob, it scurried into a hole, turning bright red right before it disappeared. I had actually completely forgotten about the potential for seeing octopus on the night dive. I was kind of disappointed by how few shrimp I had seen overall on our previous dives. In fact, I don’t know if I had seen any. No coral banded shrimp, that’s for sure. But there were tons of shrimp out at night. I saw their beady little eyes as they skittered across the reef, just like the Breakwater at night. Then I found a nice big coral-banded, and Rob later found a smaller one. I also saw some red and white shrimp which I think were peppermint shrimp – it was much more tail and body and much less legs than coral-banded. I also found this ridiculous looking snail in one of the little walls. It had this huge foot that was like 8 or so inches long, with a not too huge shell. It was really creepy looking – if I found it in my garden, I would be afraid to go outside again. Sadly,Ii have not managed to ID it. We also saw a bunch of lobsters peeking out of their holes, and several were quite small. Speaking of babies, I saw a ton of small fish which I believe were juvenile squirrelfish. They were so cute – squirrelfish have babyface to begin with, but the babies were extra cute. There were also a lot of sleeping parrotfish. It is so cute how they just lay against the reef when they are sleeping.
My one goal for the night dive was to find a basket star. We saw two basket stars on one night dive in the Bahamas, so I was hoping for more. I was looking at every gorgonian that we passed, inspecting it for basket stars. I had almost given up, when finally I found a very small one, mostly curled up. It was feeding on some of the little worms that were ubiquitous in the water column. Kind of gross. I was very excited by this find. We eventually continued on, and Abiner found a nice big octopus sitting in the sand. We must have watched it for 10 or 15 minutes, as it scurried over the sand and puffed out as it tried to attack things. Rob and I each tried to get it to crawl on our hands, and we were rebuffed and it instead used its suckers to “attack” our hands. It felt pretty neat. Rob pointed out a flamingo tongue to me. We had discussed earlier how we were surprised to find not one flamingo tongue (they were all over the place in the Bahamas). After he found that first one, we found several more. I don’t know if they come out at night, or if I just saw them because I was searching for basket stars. Rob also found a slender filefish in a gorgonian. That was a nice find, it really blended in well. Rob also claimed to see a baby squid, but when he moved his light off of it to signal me, he lost site of it :)
After the night dive (which was over pretty early, nice thing about it getting dark so early), we headed down to BC’s, a bar on the edge of downtown, where we had a liquid dinner (and nachos), since we’d had a late afternoon snack.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Belize, Day 2

During the surface interval, we saw one of the earlier-mentioned fishing boats cleaning its catch at the beach, and there were two rays (a Southern stingray and a roughtail stingray) loafing around waiting for food. There were also a bunch of smaller fish fighting for the bits.
Dive 2: Cypress Tunnels
I didn’t know the name of this site when we dove it, but it makes sense. We were being rather slow, since Rob was shooting macro, so at some point the other divers were out of site. But I could see bubbles, so I followed them, and found this little overhead area. I thought maybe it was a swimthrough, since I could see bubbles percolating through the reef. I swam towards it through a little channel between two fingers of reef to check it out, and saw no signs of light on the other side. Just a tunnel going to who knows where. I guess this is one of the “tunnels” referred to in the name. This site also had a few nurse sharks and a ton of big grouper. They are more menacing-looking than the nurse sharks :) We also saw two turtles, but neither seemed interested in sticking around to play with us. We also saw a stingray hanging out on the bottom. Rob swam over to it to try to take a picture, but of course he just scared it away. I shot a bag and we did a drift ascent. Israel had already ascended with the other team, and picked us up.
After that, we decided to try the restaurant at our hotel, Monkey Bites (or Pepper Bites, as Rob called it, after his favorite monkey), for lunch. I had fish tacos, which were good. The tortilla was really tasty.
Later in the afternoon, we went downtown for ice cream at DandE’s frozen custard. Okay, I guess it was technically frozen custard. The owner is an American guy (a Pennsylvanian even!). He asked if we were familiar with frozen custard, and I said yes, and I guess I looked at him like it was the strangest question anyone had ever asked me. He explained that many people were not, so he had a spiel about it. Anyway, I got mocha, and Rob had cookies and cream (sooo predictable).
We also went to a cybercafe downtown to check our email and stuff. The guy there seemed to not like us very much. We ended up going there a few times over the course of the week, and each time we were greeted with a scowl.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Belize, Day 1

Dive 1: Taffy (not sure how it gets the name)
The site starts in about 40 feet, and then slopes down to over 100 feet. There are reef fingers, separated by sand channels. The soft and hard corals on the reef were fairly standard Caribbean stuff, but the fish life was pretty underwhelming. We saw a few lobsters, and then near the end of the dive, a nurse shark and some big groupers.
We headed back to the dock for the surface interval, and ate some pineapple. In the water right off of the beach there, we saw a stingray cruising around in the sea grass. Apparently the fishing boats pull right up to the beach there and clean the fish, which attracts the rays. For the second dive, we went to
Dive 2 : Tacklebox
It had a similar structure to the first site, plus some cool swimthroughs in the reef fingers. One of the swimthroughs was more like a sequence of swimthroughs (they really weren’t “swimthroughs” in the true overhead sense – they were more like narrow channels between walls of the reef), and between two of them, the divemaster signalled “shark” to me. I couldn’t find one, but then a moment later, when Rob (who was behind me) passed that spot, he signalled me to say he saw the shark. But it was off again before I could backtrack and look. We saw a big green moray eel (in the standard eel-hanging-its-head-out-of-a-nook pose), and a couple nurse sharks. I also saw a queen triggerfish, which is one of my favorite fish! They are so pretty. As we were ascending, we saw two spotted eagle rays swimming side by side. One was pretty small, maybe a baby?
After we were finished diving, the boat dropped us back at our hotel.
We headed downtown for lunch, and after wandering around for far too long (I was really hungry), and finally settled on Caliente, which is right by the dock that Protech is on. We ran into Michael, Teresa, and Peter there. Anyhoo, I had chicken tacos and a margarita, and Rob had beef tostadas. My tacos were fine, and Rob really liked the tostadas. We headed back to the hotel, and stopped at the market on the way back. Just as we got there, it started raining a little. By the time we were finished, it was completely pouring. We figured we’d just suck it up and walk in the rain (which was actually pretty refreshing), when Michael and Teresa drove by in their golf cart, and gave us a lift. Very convenient :) For the rest of the afternoon, Rob played with his pictures, and I didn’t do much of anything. For dinner, we walked down to Banana Beach to go to El Divino’s. I really liked it -- I had some very tasty grouper. I don’t remember what Rob had. I also had a fantastic pina colada. I thought the ambience was nice too, even though the place was basically empty. This was pretty standard though, since it was the low season.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Belize, Day 0

We got to San Pedro and took a taxi to our hotel. The taxis are all mini-vans, and the guy packed us into the car with 4 people going to another hotel, plus all of the luggage for the 6 of us. It was quite a clown car. When we got to the hotel (Exotic Caye Beach Resort), someone was waiting at the office for us (I guess it usuall closes earlier), and showed us to our room. The room was not particularly nice, but it was adequate. It actually looks exactly like the pictures on the website, so you can’t really complain :) The kitchen and bathroom reminded me of MIT’s Tang Hall, the graduate residence that I lived in for a year and a half. So not luxurious, but certainly liveable. The bedroom has a very effective air conditioner, which is powerful enough to cool the living room/kitchen as well (although the bedroom gets really cold if the AC is high enough to cool the whole place). We went out to look for dinner, and walked to a place that is like 2 minutes from the hotel. But it was closed, without any sort of explanation or indication of when it would be open. Turns out it is closed for the month or something because it is the low season. So we went to Pepperoni’s (which is even closer to the hotel). It is a little pizza stand on the side of the road, with some picnic benches to sit at. But it was way too sticky (it had just stopped raining) and the mosquitoes were out, so we just went back to our room and waited a while before going back and picking up our pizza. We got a Hawaiian pizza and garlic bread sticks, which were both very good. I was really pooped, and we were being picked up to go diving at 8:30 the next morning, so I went to bed around 9.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
My Scooter Awakening
I have never been a fan of these scooter dives that do a big circuit, hit a bunch of sites, but where you get next to no time to actually look at any of the sites. So, the plan was to scoot to Beto's, spend about 10 minutes there, then to the Sisters, spend about 10 minutes there, and then possibly do a quick fly-by of Shortcut Reef. We also had a secondary mission of noting the species of nudibranchs we saw on our dives today (for the BAUE nudibranch project). Kevin assured us that Beto's was a less than 10 minute scoot, which I highly doubted because I am such an inefficient scooterer. I have up until now been pretty inept at scootering. I just don't feel very comfortable, my legs tend to flop around a bit, and it takes a lot of concentration just to keep track of everyone and do all the other usual things that take no concentration (like venting my wing or checking my SPG). But I always have fun when we scooter, and I figure the only way to get better at it is to do it some more. I am too big of a wuss to enter the water while carrying my scooter, so Rob put them out on our float; what a sweetheart. The tide was nice and high, so getting into the water was really easy. Rob did not bring his camera, since I guess scootering is not very compatible with shooting macro (he has these floats on his strobe arms, which make it hard to fold up for transport).

Next we headed towards the Sisters. We ended up at the deep sister (#2 I believe they call it). On the way there, we saw an egg yolk jelly. We stopped to check it out. Anyhoo, almost immediately after getting to the second sister, I saw a Dirona! I have never seen one before, but have always wanted to find one. Rob saw one not too long ago at the Breakwater (on one of his night dives with the other woman, Dionna) and I was sooo jealous. I pointed it out to Rob and then we pointed it out to Kevin, although he seemed somewhat oblivious to it; I guess he just wasn't as excited about it as we were. Nearby, there were two very bushy Hermissendas. We did a little loop around, and ran into Mark and Dionna again. We saw some more of the usual nudibranchs, with Triopha catalinae being the highlight. I think I always see those on the Three Sisters.

After this dive, I decided that I love scootering and must get a scooter :)

Afterwards, we had dinner at Turtle Bay.
Friday, September 14, 2007
My "Birthday" Dive





The ride back to Lobos was smooth and uneventful. Zooming between the rocks at Lobos on a calm day was fun. Dive 2 was at RG Burger. I had an orange soda ice cream float instead of the usual milkshake. Yum yum.
I did a little research on the dive sites around Yankee Point to try to figure out if this pinnacle has a name. Phil said it was just somewhere around Yankee Breakers. According to the GPS coordinates on Brian Hackett's dive site page, this site is "Que Paso?". However, from my discussions with other people who have dived Que Paso, the depths do not exactly seem to match up; so I'm not convinced. By the way, I love Brian Hackett's website -- where else can you find dive site coordinates and papers on program analysis in one place? :)
The pictures from today are here.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Counting Nudis with Kevin
We moved onto the next transect after stopping to visit Itchy and Scratchy. Here we saw more of the usual, plus two Festive Tritons and a Triopha Catalinae. I also saw a Cadlina flavomaculata and another Aegeris. So not too bad, but still no Rostangas despite spending a lot of time looking on orange sponge. Kevin told me afterwards that he was looking at orange sponge too, and couldn't find any. Apparently Clinton also didn't see any (or very few) on his transects. So I guess it wasn't just me. By the time I was done on this transect, I was freezing, so we sprinted back in. Actually we were goofing off a bit in the sand channel on the way in. We both flopped over on our backs and looked up at the surface (which makes me nervous in doubles... worried I won't be able to right myself). We finally surfaced at the mouth of the cove, and swam in the rest of the way. 78 minutes, 49 feet, 50 degrees
We decided to punt dive 2, so we could get lunch and still get home not too late. I didn't bring the camera, since I didn't want it to get in the way while counting. Sorry, no pictures :(
Saturday, September 8, 2007
To Cannery Point and Beyond




Afterwards, we had to rush off to make it back to Anywater Sports before closing so we could get fills for Sunday. I guess Rob is right about the need for a second set of doubles :)
Monday, September 3, 2007
Beto's Reef





No cats were harmed in the making of this report, other than having to pry my dive computer from Pepper's jaws to get the depth and time (mmm, bungee).
Pictures from the day are here.