Month: June 2016

On my top 10 favorite animal list… Sea Turtles!  My featured photo is of a species called the Hawksbill Turtle.  I enjoyed my encounter with this favorite sea friend at Blue Peters Reef in Grand Cayman on June 16th… YUP! on World Sea Turtle Day!!  Serendipitous!

Sea Turtle Day 2016

It let me approach closely I believe because it was very busy eating a shell.  See it in the turtle’s beak shaped mouth?  Odd, because they are omnivores that eat eel grass, sea sponges, sea anemones and squid.  Perhaps this was a female that needed some calcium in her diet to produce her own eggs???  Hypothesis.  Maybe one of you could do some research to figure this out for me.  Check out the VIDEO footage below of “her?” eating.

On a sadder note, like most sea turtles, Hawksbills are on the Endangered Species list; mostly due to being hunted for their beautiful shell… Tortoise Shell… that in some places is still used to make jewelry, hair accessories and decorative boxes.

Here is a video that Taylor took of another Hawksbill that we saw while at a dive site called Rays Bedroom. Taylor was coming back up after finishing our 60 minute dive and doing a decompression safety stop.  Taylor had to stop between 15 and 20 feet for three minutes so he could not move back down towards the turtle.  Luckily the Hawksbill was curious enough to come check Taylor out.  The cool thing though is that Taylor was able to get beautiful footage of the Hawskbill’s shell from above.

In the videos you can really see how much of the color Red is lost.  Please question or comment.  I’d love to hear from you!

Before sharing sea animal photos (and VIDEOS!!)  I must give credit to my co-photographer, dive buddy and son, Taylor, in the featured photo above.  I was a bit challenged by the GoPro equipment at the start but Taylor was able to get the ball rolling and teach me the ins and outs of the camera.  The GoPro Hero we used was fitted with a red filter to help us compensate for the loss of “ROY”.   “ROY” who???

As you will notice in the photographs and hopefully remember from our light energy lessons in science class… “ROY”, of ROY.G.BIV ,is often absent in our underwater photos. The deeper we were the less sunlight was able to penetrate the water to be reflected to our eyes and the camera lens.  Red is the weakest end of the visible light spectrum and thus the first color to be lost as we descended.  The red filter helped to add some red back in.  A flash on the camera would have been better.  The best photos of sea life I will share are at shallower depths (40-50 feet) where more of the full visible light rays were able to penetrate.

Today I begin a blog series recapping my undersea adventures in Grand Cayman earlier in June. Grand Cayman is the largest of a three island archipelago in the Caribbean Sea.  Just a short 2.5 hour flight from Houston, it is one of the most beautiful places to scuba dive in the world. All of my diving on this trip was on the dramatic North Wall where the Cayman reef drops off to depths of over 3,000 feet. The sea life is diverse and plentiful. What makes this one of my favorite places to dive is that the visibility in the water is always 100 feet +.  That means that even when I am diving 100 feet below the surface I can still see the boat.  That is VERY clear water that provides a crystal view of all the awesome corals, sponges, fish, turtles and more.  Another HUGE plus for me as a recreational diver is that the water temperatures are a balmy 84 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.  You will see I still wear a 3mm thick full wet suit.

Another of Cookie and Brownie’s offspring is happily settled into a new home.  Kayleigh has named this REALLY big and perfectly patterned Okeetee baby… Qbert.  I think he will be the spitting image of Brownie.  Keep us updated Kayleigh on all of Qbert’s milestones!   Quick update on the remaining 9 babies… all but one little stubborn hatchling ate a hearty third mouse meal.  Hoping he eats tomorrow!  Any babies that do not find their forever homes  with LC5 families by Tuesday (6/28) are headed to Pets-A-Plenty.

Just thought I’d share the AMAZING photograph that Maria took last night of our beautiful full moon.   Can you see all the mare?  They really do look like seas or oceans!  I can understand how poor Galileo was confused.  Check out the rays shooting out in all directions from the huge lunar crater, Tycho, that Maria captured.  Hooray Maria!