Last Updated Sunday June 10, 2007
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This is the Reef Encounter live aboard dive boat.
When we weren't snorkeling we were enjoying Life Aboard.
Chuck, Nancy and Roy going for a snorkel.
Giant clams, some of many we saw. Some were big enough to make a bed and others were small enough to fit in your hand. Nancy waves her hand over one to get it to close up.
This giant clam is not so giant, about a foot across. It's the blue thing hiding in the coral. It seems the smaller giant clams wedge themselves into coral and come out onto the ocean floor when they get larger.
Chuck liked to dive down to get a closer look at the coral and fish on the bottom.
Some purple coral. We saw every shade of coral imaginable.
The staghorn coral was really huge and there was acres of it. Nancy loved the blue staghorn. Some of it was blue only on the tips and other areas were solid blue.
Fish were every color from dead black to iridescent blue, red, yellow or orange or sometimes both at once. Some parrot fish were dull gray, but most were bright blue or green colors.
In these photos you see what looks like a slash of cyan (light blue) that looks like a defect in the film. It's really an iridescent blue fish that is so bright that the camera can't capture it. There is a blue parrot fish that blends right in on the last photo.
The fish come in all shapes too. In the middle of the picture is a trumpet fish, long and skinny. They hang out just below the surface so they blend in with the waves.
The fish aren't the only thing that comes in all sorts of shapes. The coral does a pretty good job of it too. There are many plate corals that are flat like tables.
Pile of coral with blue starfish. We saw lots of these critters. They were so bright blue that they really stood out against the pastel coral colors. Sometimes we saw only one blue ray poking out from under something.
We only saw a few big green sea turtles and they were hard to catch up to.
You don't have to walk the beach to find shells. Here they are right on the ocean floor.
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