Muck dives

 Friday we started out with a wide angle dive and followed it up with two muck dives. I suck at wide angle under water, for a combination of reasons. First and foremost, while it pains me to say so, I may have talent limitations. I also only have one strobe and wide angle is much better with two. My one strobe is occasionally temperamental and doesn't work. I also don't always position it well and we all know lighting is everything in photography. And finally, while I am using an ultra wide lens, I have a flat port on my housing which is restricting its reach. Note to self, get a dome port.

When we returned from the wide angle dive David showed me a new pygmy seahorse! Same site, but we didn't quite get to the fan coral it had made its home. I am begging to go back there, which one group did while we went muck diving. While I am determined to get back to that seahorse I am not one little bit disappointed that we did the muck dive instead. It was a wonderful dive, no current, shallow, long and full of little underwater weirdos. Here are some of my favourites.

anemone shrimp without an anemone

tiny little nudi

fire urchin

mantis shrimp in hiding

flounder

 Our third dive was also a muck dive and not nearly as good as the second which was jam packed full of critters. The visibility was rubbish but we did find a few things including a juvenile puffer fish which was adorable but I didn't get a good shot unfortunately. I did get these though. And while I haven't yet seen a frog fish, the other group has now seen two.

clown fish

crocodile snake eel

delightful tiny little cuttlefish