Another dive!

Looking back as I paddle away from shore. The sea under me right here is about fifteen feet deep, 5m. That's Calvin's Spratnet Beach Bar and Restaurant. I've had some great meals there, and met some nice folks.

It's really beautiful the way the mountain is free of buildings and development. There are deer and iguanas living up there, and one kind of orchid that cannot live anywhere else. A precious place, that mountain!

A Giant Barrel Sponge, X. muta. This one is unusually even with it's jagged exterior walls. This beastie, an animal, is hard and brittle, not like your kitchen sponge at all. It's more than three feet tall, 1m, and has grown at about a half an inch, one centimeter a year. More than seventy years old.

A Blue Tang fish, and some other creatures that are usually ignored in a picture like this, hey?

Ah, just what I was looking for. Two corals battling it out for living space. One is losing, big time. Poor guy. If he'd settled just a little over that way, he wouldn't have this bully overgrowing him.

A closer look at the front line. Squashhhh! lol I once saw a time lapse movie of two corals beside each other, and it blew my mind. The polyps, all together, were huffing and puffing, getting larger and deflating, and whipping each other with their stinging tenticles. A terrible battle in a tiny size.

This is a little different, as the lighter coral is really beating the other one. I'm going to be watching these two in the months and years to come.

OK, see you tomorow! Thanks for stopping by!

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