Recharge

I recharged my dive computer battery and changed the battery in my housing.  I also added a couple of floats to my camera arms.  I’m not sure if it helps any.

Oh man, my counts are so low.  I really have to step up my game.  But Pirjo is here so it should get better.

The first two dives today were really good.  Slow and searching for nudis.  It was good to dive with Pirjo again.

There was another big rainshower while I was down on my afternoon dive.

We did get to go on the boat night dive today.  It was great!

I wore my grinch dress to dinner since it is the first day of December.  The dog hated it and growled at me.  Understandable.

We saw this really fat Gymnodoris which probably just ate another huge nudi.  I think it looks like Garfield after eating a lasagna!

Counts are only trickling in.  I am only ahead of one other year now.  I need to keep at it!

The Trickle

138 - Tritonia sp. 10

139 - Paradoris liturata

140 - Thecacera pacifica

141 - Trapania vitta

142 - Ceratosoma gracillimum

143 - Unknown

144 - Dermatobranchus semilunus

145 - Marionia rubra

Weather Woes

We dove the Cathedral and Wolong Cave again this morning.  There were still good nudis and even a juvenile Spanish Dancer.  Which is good since I was missing a photo for that one.

Pirjo and Francis arrived today.  I got to talk to them over lunch and then Francis and I did an afternoon house reef dive.  It was a little slow but we saw the resident black frogfish, a couple of egg masses and a one eyed eel under the dock.  I found an ornate ghostpipefish on my own and pointed it out to Francis.

I stayed in my wetsuit during the surface interval and read my book.  We were all set to do the 5:30pm night dive when a SERIOUS storm rolled in.  So bad that they actually canceled the boat dive.  It was the right thing to do.  They still allowed us to do the house reef.  But with pouring rain, lightning and thunder… I wasn’t willing to jump back into the same dive site I just got out from.  I’m sure it would have been fine below the surface.  And I think six divers still went.  Rain has only impacted my dives one other time in five years.  And that was just a slight delay.  It didn’t get canceled.  So that’s a pretty good track record.

Pirjo has some edits to my species list.  I am glad because I was just kinda winging it on my own.  And moving fast, so I’m sure I made mistakes.

Mona was singing the chicken dance for some reason, so I told her the story about Chicken Stu.  They have one here too.  I guess a group brought it recently.  They call it the Chicken of Shame.  The legend lives on.

Once the boat dive was canceled, I took a shower in the rain with lightning and thunder going on around me.  It was pretty cool.  We lost power and the backup generator kicked in.  This is a real storm.

Little List

134 - Samla sp. 1

135 - Trapania palmula

136 - Phyllidiella nigra

137 - Phyllidiella annulata

Cannibal Lecter

One of the guest who arrived yesterday cannot find his passport. Yikes.

Two new couples arrived.  One from Germany, one from Austria.

Nikko is back diving with us!  Hooray!

I actually took a picture of a shrimp.  I mean, it is pretty great under the diopter.

I found a Phyllidia ocellata with a pattern that looked like eyeglasses.

We saw the most amazing scene of a Gymnodoris inornata eating a Platydoris sanguinea from the underside.  It looked like the Gymnodoris was wearing the Platydoris as a Halloween costume.  Soooo Soooo Cool!

I had a really good night dive on the house reef where I saw about 10 nudis in a five foot diameter just to the right of the mooring block.  I didn’t know that area was such a hotspot.

It was Lynn’s birthday tonight.  They turned out the lights and brought her a birthday candle on her coconut cake and we all sang to her.  

Nudipalooza

119 - Ceratosoma trilobatum

120 - Odontoglaja guamensis

121 - Eubranchus sp. 26

122 - Hypselodoris nigrostriata

123 - Hypselodoris confetti

124 - Mexichromis mariei 

125 - Phyllidia sp. 1

126 - Goniodoridella sp. 5

127 - Hypselodoris decorata

128 - Mexichromis sp. 3

129 - Goniobranchus leopardus

130 - Mexichromis trilineata

131 - Atagema sp.

132 - Goniodoridella sp. 6

133 - Verconia simplex

Found Frogfish

I FaceTimed my family in Joplin during their Thanksgiving meal.  It was really fun to see and talk to everyone for a bit.  I’ll be there for Christmas.

Ben was our guide today and it was just John, Cathy and me on the boat.  We did two reefy currenty dives… and on the second one I found a red frogfish and pointed it out to them.

There are three new divers here who came together from the UK.  Two are a couple and then there is one other guy.  The gal called him her extra dive buddy.  I’ll call them the “Air and a Spare”.

On the night dive I tried again to “snoot like a lady”.  OMG.  Still terrible at it.  And I am not sure my results were all that good.

I put on my meal info that I don’t like tomatoes.  They are doing such a good job of giving me a salad without tomatoes and tonight I got eggplant without tomatoes.  It was so great.

There was a little bit of thunder tonight.

Oh no, my counts are WAY DOWN today.  I attribute this to the sites we went to and the fact that we dove with Ben today instead of Nikko.  I miss Nikko.  He had a stye on one of his eyes.  I wonder if that was why he needed the day off… or if it was just his regular scheduled day off.

The found froggie:

Slug Line

109 - Dermatobranchus rodmani

110 - Sagaminopteron psychedelicum

111 - Sagaminopteron sp. 1

This one is really special.  I haven't seen it before in Alor.

112 - Nembrotha kubaryana

113 - Cratena sp. 2

114 - Phyllodesmium briareum

115 - Miamira sinuata

116 - Thuridilla albopustulosa

117 - Chromodoris annae

118 - Chromodoris cf. strigata

Air 2 Déjà vu

I woke up to the power being out again.  It seems like it happens about once a day.  If Uri is awake then he switches us to the backup generator.  But this morning we are not on it yet. The weird thing is that the WiFi is still working.

I walked over to the common area and its power is fine.  There is just something wrong with Bungalow Three.  Later in the morning the power was working again.  Who knows?

I had to do a software update for my Mac which is always tricky when I’m on a trip, but it went through pretty well, even on this WiFi.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.  There are five Americans at the resort right now.  Two guys from San Diego and a couple from Oregon and me.  I don’t think there will be any turkey on the menu.

The two mucky morning dives were on fire.  Totally fan-tab-ulous.

After lunch I jumped the house reef.  OMG.  What a dive.  First I found a beautiful sea rose on the mooring.  It was really calm so I decided to meander over to the second mooring where I found a Goniobranchus fidelis.  I was taking lots of pictures when a sea krait swam right up under me.  Gah!  I was pretty calm about it though and still took a few more nudi shots.  Then I started to inch my way back to the main trench when I came across a Glossodoris sp. 4.  OMG, so gorgeous and out on top of a rock.  I took a few pictures and then decided to snoot it.  Even though I was alone, I made it a point of trying to be calm and organized in setting up for the shot.  I think I got a few good ones.  As I was putting everything back together I noticed just a little stream of bubbles coming out of my Air 2.  Damn the Air 2.  I had some issues last year as well.  Air 2 Déjà vu.  Oh man.  I decided to hit the purge.  Bad idea.  It started free flowing.  Argh.  Well, I wasn’t loosing air that fast so I was still able to do a good safety stop.  Then at the surface, I played with it and it seemed to be fine.  I still had Uri look at it with me.  We took it apart and cleaned and reseated it.  It seems to be OK, but I am going to let Nikko know anyway.

At the beginning of the dive I found a Spanish Dancer under a cement block but it was so far under I couldn't get a picture.  I called Nikko over to help, but it was no use.  The thing crawled under further.  Do I count this one or not?  

At dinner we had BANANA ice cream.  OMG.  It was so good.  I am totally getting the recipe and the machine they have to make it.

Banner List

85 - Bermudella brunneomaculata (old name was Okenia brunneomaculata)

86 - Thecacera sp. 5

87 - Nembrotha sp. 1

88 - Gymnodoris sp. 19

89 - Aegires sp. 2

90 - Thorunna daniellae

91 - Favorinus tsuruganus

92 - Stiliger sp.

93 - Trapania aurata

94 - Hypselodoris skyleri

95 - Favorinus mirabilis

96 - Discodoris boholensis

97 - Godiva rachelae

98 - Goniobranchus fidelis

99 - Glossodoris sp. 4

100 - Hexabranchus sanguineus

This is not the specimen we saw today.  This is from a dive a few days later and it is a juvenile.

101 - Phyllodesmium poindimiei

102 - Cyerce cf. bourbonica

103 - Marionia sp. 9

104 - Stylocheilus striatus

105 - Phyllodesmium koehleri

106 - Phyllodesmium cf. opalescens

107 - Notarchus indicus

108 - Pleurobranchus forskalii