Did a night dive on the Ed Robinson boat last night at Marty's reef and we had an uninvited guest show up and pretty much changed the rest of our dive. We were happily checking the various cubby holes, nooks and crannies for the various lobster, crab, nudibranchs, found several interesting fish and an hunting octopus when a large fast swimming shadow came down around us.
At first all I could think was we had a large grouper
joining us but suddenly it was swimming with us, a Hawaiian Monk seal. It was about 8-9 feet long and glided through the water with almost no effort. It was making good use of our dive lights to do a little fishing, it seemed to like trumpet fish the best. It caught several and one it seemed to be using as a chew toy, it just swam around with it hanging out of its mouth... It had big brown eyes and it seemed curious about us but not enough to stop fishing! Later we all kind of thought of it as just a big puppy dog... awprint:
It didn't seem afraid of us at all, just kept swimming around catching anything that got near its mouth. Needless to say we pretty much stopped looking for anything else and spent the rest of our time just watching the seal until it was time to surface..
One of the best night dives I've ever had.
Bob
At first all I could think was we had a large grouper
joining us but suddenly it was swimming with us, a Hawaiian Monk seal. It was about 8-9 feet long and glided through the water with almost no effort. It was making good use of our dive lights to do a little fishing, it seemed to like trumpet fish the best. It caught several and one it seemed to be using as a chew toy, it just swam around with it hanging out of its mouth... It had big brown eyes and it seemed curious about us but not enough to stop fishing! Later we all kind of thought of it as just a big puppy dog... awprint: It didn't seem afraid of us at all, just kept swimming around catching anything that got near its mouth. Needless to say we pretty much stopped looking for anything else and spent the rest of our time just watching the seal until it was time to surface..
One of the best night dives I've ever had.
Bob
