Drove under the west side of the bridge for a look after this morning's dive. Getting *to* the water looks doable, but I'd have to have great expectations of something really cool to see in order to risk busting my ass (and camera gear) as I stumbled over the rocks *in* the water.
Identified a bad/weak camera battery on this dive. :depressed: Grrrrr. Was only able to get a few pics of the garden eels that I'd never run across previously at the bridge. These guys are *way* bigger and much more colorful than any I'd seen previously. The viz wasn't tremendous this morning and the dern sun wasn't out. My camera and my old eyes definitely prefer sun.
After the eels, I found my "Ent" decorator crab, again, though it took me a *long* time to identify him - and he was only about six inches away from where I'd spotted him the previous two times - and the dern thing is four inches tall. He still blows my mind.
YouTube - ‪We're Not Worthy or The Ent.avi‬‏
The camera battery completed died about there, so I got no shots of the next two things I'd never seen before. There was a *huge* Helmet Conch. It was about the size of a football helmet. With the smaller shells attached, I actually thought it might be one of those hidden cameras operated remotely like you see on TV around lions or polar bears. Even when I got up close to it, it didn't look like anything "real". Hope to get to see it again, tomorrow. How far can a snail go in 24 hours?? It looked a lot like this one:
Helmet Conch - how it walkson the bottom | Flickr - Photo Sharing! , but you could see its pretty, yellow "foot" circumferentially, along with its two little "eye stalks" (I assume, as it had no "eyeballs" on the ends of them).
Also didn't get any pics of my second box crab ever - and this guy was big, too - like six inches across. Guess it was a Flame Box Crab. Really cool looking, and was in the same general area where I'd seen my first box crab - a much smaller one - recently.
Diving's a *whole* lot more fun (to me) with a functional camera. . .
Kevin
Didn't get time to do it this week. We leave for NC on Saturday and won't be back until the following Sunday. I have root canal on the 11th and an appt. for the knee surgeon to look at my MRI on the 12th.
Now, I put two tanks in for hydro today and one tank in for VIP. The hydros will be done when I get back and the VIP will be filled for our Venice dive on the 9th