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Happy Birthday Rich!!!  We actually celebrated last night with a cake.

Today, we leave the boat for a three hour van ride and then fly to Manila.  I overnight there and then fly back to Narita, then Chicago.

It was a really good trip.  I love the liveaboard lifestyle.  I’m already planning and dreaming about my next one.  Until then, I’ll leave you with this.

On the last dive, they named a Pleurobranch for me:

And there is a popular Filipino song called “Pamela 1” with matching dances… I finally got Hernan to do them for me:

New Noumea Nudis

This is our last day of diving… but we get to do three dives!

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Noumea and today I saw two different species.

I found this one on my own tucked under a coral head. 

44 – Noumea norba

I love the pink/orange/white combination.

45 – Noumea crocea

This one is really yellow but see-through and had a really long tail.

Groundhog’s Day, six more weeks of this kind of winter would be fine with me

Happy Groundhog’s Day!  I won’t mind if this day repeated itself again and again.

We had two dives, went whale shark snorkeling and then a night dive. 

The night dive had eight different species of nudis:  Chromodoris magnifica, Chromodoris geometrica, Halgerda batangas, Flabellina bilas, Phyllidia varicosa, Chromodoris reticulata, Chromodoris kunei, Glossodoris atromarginata. 

There is only one new one for this trip:

43 – Flabellina bilas

I also saw a Plakobranch on the night dive: Thuridilla bayeri. 

Nightlife at the Town Pier

Another five dive day.  Life is good.

First dive was really sunny so I tried taking some upshots into the sun.  Here’s one of my attempts:

40 - Glossodoris cruella

Ambo found this one for me at 80 feet.  It was soooo beautiful.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before.

At night, we dove under the town pier.  I know, sounds crazy but I’ve found it is usually one of the best places to find critters… and the Padre Burgos Town Pier did not disappoint.  We found a ton of crazy critters, including three frogfish and a harlequin shrimp.  Here are a couple new nudis found:

41 - Hexabranchus sanguineus

This is the mac-daddy of all nudibranchs, the Spanish Dancer.  I was fine leaving it alone, but my divemaster wanted to see it dance, so he picked it up and watched the action.  I tried to get a shot or two but they weren’t so good.  Maybe I should have moved to video.

42 - Ceratosoma gracillimum