Two Hour Night Dive

I have not been on the internet at all.  I don’t have an international cell phone plan and there is no WiFi on the boat.  I could ask someone to let me use their hotspot but I don’t really want to.  I am thinking a little bit about what is going on back at home with the holidays coming up.

This morning we are going early and doing a place called “Shotgun”.  Clearly this will be a drift dive with a lot of current.  I think I’m still going to bring my camera.  There is always time before/after the main drift to find things.

Since I’m not finding a plethora of slugs, I’m working on compiling my life list of nudis.  It’s kinda fun because I’m going back through all of my lists and seeing how many of the ones in the book I really have.

"Fin-coming" is my new skiff term.  Once I take off my fins, I yell that as I toss them in the boat.

Today was two “meh” dives and two AWESOME dives!

The second dive was called Police Corner and it had an overhang that was huge.  I barely made it through an eighth of it because it was so packed with nudis.  Alice joined me and she is really good at spotting them!  We stayed right next to each other and were there so long that she hit her max bottom time (given that she was on air, not nitrox).

The afternoon dive was lots of hard coral (yawn) but at the end we found a little tiny flamboyant cuttlefish on the sand.  And the sand looked pink, so that was sorta cool.

We didn’t go in for the night dive until almost 8pm but it was an incredible dive.  We (Tamrind and I) stayed down for 120 minutes and I shot so many things!  I am bummed because Mark made a claim of seeing the Asteronotus cespitosus, but I didn’t see it.

Here are the nudis I saw today:

34 - Phyllidia coelestis

35 - Phyllodesmium sp. 8

36 - Nembrotha lineolata

37 - Phyllidia sp. C

This was tough to ID.  I thought: Phyllidia elegans but there are yellow apices.  From Pirjo: These are a nightmare.  I think this is not P elegans.  Have a look at Jim Anderson's web site nudibranch.org: Indonesia nudis: there he has Phyllidia sp. C which looks very similar.

38 - Caloria indica

39 - Unknown (like Phyllidiella pustulosa but the rhinophores are yellow)

40 - Unknown (maybe Dermatobranchus striatus)

41 - Hypselodoris decorata

42 - Reticulidia fungia

43 - Nembrotha chamberlaini

44 - Hypselodoris maculosa

45 - Dermatobranchus kokonas

46 - Favorinus tsuruganus

47 - Phyllidia sp. 2

48 - Hypselodoris tryoni

49 - Unknown (cryptic and pink maybe Hallaxa or Rostanga)

50 - Pleurobranchus forskalii

51 - Glossodoris acosti

52 - Chromodoris strigata

53 - Unknown (creamy yellow maybe a Goniodoris)

54 - Marionia sp. 15

55 - Ceratosoma gracillimum