First Days on The Sea

2/2/19

At 5:30am- it was time to move. We headed out further from Koror; my father and Troy went on their first dive while we headed to the beach in the smaller boat and took a shore dive with the captain to complete our first of four mandatory open water dives before certification. A nap and several hours later, we took our second dive off the boat. Back in Dallas, we completed all of our instruction, test, and pool dives with Janie over at Scuba Source. She works out of her home pool, and I highly recommend her for anyone in Dallas looking to get PADI certified. She's great! Reasonable pricing, and private classes at her Bahama-esque home with a heated pool. http://www.thescubasource.com/

2/3/19

Our first dive was at 7am at the Ulong Sandbar. We made our first stop at the cleaning station where a young manta ray was being serviced. He circled around the entire time we were sitting at the bottom, which we did for a while. These are such inredible animals!

Black Morph Manta, 8Ball

ULONG WALL

Morray Eel

Now, we're certified! And to begin Nitrox certification which we should obtain sometime next week.

2/4/29

BLUE CORNER

The current at Blue Corner was pretty strong and required the use of a reef hook so that we could remain in the same spot while watching the action around us. Many sharks could be seen here, as well as large groups of schooling fishes. A small  Napoleon wrasse, craving attention, swam right up, bumping into me and getting all up in my face. I gave him a nice pet (he was quite soft), then he visited Ken and my father for more attention. He must have been just as curious about us as we were him. This guy was huge, to me anyway, but smaller in the grand scheme of things and maybe around 4 years old.

Napoleon Wrasse 

GERMAN CHANNEL

In search of nudibranchs, we headed back to the German channel. Because the water was so much clearer than the day before, and the moon had changed, we went back to to the cleaning station where we saw three huge mantas. Each circled the cleaning station for a good 5-10 minutes before the next would arrive. I have always been fascinated by rays and have only seen one beneath the water's surface while on a boat or in aquariums. There were lots of teensy tiny garden eels and goby shrimp holes nearby as well. They have some kind of special relationship which I will get into later. So fun to watch!