Destin diving Sep 18th and 19th...

[Puffer Fish]

Did Whitehill (well really close to white hill) on Sat) and Whitehill and the Liberty ship on Sunday.

Should have brought my wide angle and done video, as the look downs, sharks, eagle rays amberjack and Barricuda were out and the water was reasonably clear....

But... there was also a lot of other stuff to take close up images of..

First the bad pictures....

When I first went down, had a bit of lens fogging from the major temperature difference...so the first couple of images were hazy... just my luck to to then find some interesting stuff...

Dave and Lisa found 3 frog fish sort of laying on each other...

and then this large school of lookdowns swam by...

Warning... ugly image.. not a fish to hit with strobes, when the lens if fogged:

Lens cleared and life was good again...

There were frog fish everywhere...

For anyone that does not know, if you see a frog fish with stiff legs, it is because someone has messed with them...

 

[Puffer Fish]

Ok, lots and lots of frog fish:

The above one folded down it's fin, curled up the tail, and made itself round... and made it's surface "sticky"...

This last one was on the Liberty ship.... not the giant foot long ones.. but really well hidden (about 5 inches long)

So I got tired of frogfish... and turned to morey's.. the really big one would not open it's mouth, so did not upload any of it's images.. however, a lot of the others were nice enough to show teeth.

This first is about finger size, and very shy..

Then I got some lovely hole sharing:

Then some of your just general eel pictures:

There were lots and lots of large (some very large) flounder around....but the shark population convinced us to leave them there...

And all the standard fish..

 

[Puffer Fish]

Before leaving the regular fish, on sunday, found this guy...not sure why I saw it, as it is just over two inches long...

Did not have my add on macro, so this is as close as I could get:

Basket starfish were still everywhere, and on Sat, we were lat enough on our second dive to see them start to unfold:

That last one was well over 4 feet across..would love to make a night dive there some day... just being able to see a hundred of so of these guys spread out would be neat to see.

Looked for the anenome.. to get those shrimp images.. but it moved... found it way down in a crack on Sat, and on Sunday, don't have a clue where it was...

Could not get close to it, so held my camera down and just took an image... one of the shimp is in the upper right, and the clinging crab is bottom center (can just see the claw)...arggg..maybe one day.

 

[Puffer Fish]

Sunday, there were octos everywhere...as my luck would have it, when they were out, I was escorting my dive buddy back to the anchor line...so he would not run out of air....but did get some interesting pictures.

This first guy, I found a shell and put in front of his hole.. the first image is him just looking around... the second is him sticking his eyes up to see what I put down:

And some general ones:

As I was swimming back, the one I gave the shell to was completely out, and by the anchor there was a big, completely white one just covering a rock... oh well.

Still, this was a very good weekend.. and to top it off, I finally got a toad fish picture I actually like (after several thousand)..

 

[GLENFWB]

Great stuff as always Jim. I have yet to get an eel picture in the Gulf. I agree, the Toad Fish is a keeper! Thanks for posting them.

 

[FarmBoy888]

I am from British Columbia, Canada and drove through the Destin Area in April/May on the way from Houston, Tx through to the Fla keys and landing in Ft. Lauderdale before flying home. I realized I went through the Emerald Coast and NW Fla way too fast after I had past it. I can't wait to stop and stay for a while next time and enjoy the great area and great people there. Thx for showing me why to come back soon.
Brent

 

[Puffer Fish]

Great stuff as always Jim. I have yet to get an eel picture in the Gulf. I agree, the Toad Fish is a keeper! Thanks for posting them.

Thanks Glen, I took pictures of seven or eight more...would be hard to miss them. The really big one (maybe 5 or 6 feet) would come out at you if you got close, but refused to open it's mouth...

 

[Puffer Fish]

I am from British Columbia, Canada and drove through the Destin Area in April/May on the way from Houston, Tx through to the Fla keys and landing in Ft. Lauderdale before flying home. I realized I went through the Emerald Coast and NW Fla way too fast after I had past it. I can't wait to stop and stay for a while next time and enjoy the great area and great people there. Thx for showing me why to come back soon.
Brent

Thanks, if you are into macro or fish pics, Destin can be one of the best dive sites in North America. If you shoot wide angle, then it is only good a few days a year....