Nudi Gal: Two Dozen Nudis, just what I ordered

Yay!!! We FINALLY get to dive today. I’m so excited. It’s pretty much been a whole week just getting here. Ugh.

I woke up at 3am. I couldn’t freakin’ sleep anymore.

I sat on the sundeck in the dark and watched a thunder and lightning storm roll in. It was raining intermittently, but I used it to go in and out using the bathroom and getting more coffee. I read the NudibranchBehavior book. It was so fun and I believe that might just be my favorite book of all time. J

It is really warm here. I am wearing my old wetsuit and it is just fine (although I’m having trouble getting it over my calves!). I haven’t got a chill at all yet.

After dive two, I already had 17 nudibranch species identified.

Cheryl pointed out the Chromodoris dianae and I told her the story about how Dave Behrens named it after his wife on their anniversary, but his wife said that she would much rather have had some diamonds.

Topside today, the islands were gorgeous… and we were the only boat at most of the sights. We encountered mobula rays, bride whales and saw a double rainbow. Um, it will be tough to beat that.

I put my little guy “Chad” in the rubber bands of my external hard drive. It looks so funny like I have tied him up.

My camera is working as it should. Hooray! But I forget to turn off the face recognition feature. That was changing my focus spot.

I’d still like to figure out the best setting for the strobes. I still don’t feel like I know how to get a ton of light on my subject. I’ll try to read up on it.

We found a red frogfish today which is pretty rare for this region.

I was also able to photograph a “Santa Claus” seahorse. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these.

We had dinner outside on the sundeck and the rain held off until just after we finished dessert. I forced myself to sit with “the other group” of divers not from Rich’s group. It was actually fun to hear how they met, what kind of diving they like to do, etc.

Today I got up to 24 species of nudibranchs:

1 - Chromodoris annae