15 Apr, Tues

BEACH PATROL

Beach Patrol for me today at West Bay .... this is the beginning of Semana Santa (Holy Week) .... lots of vacation-ers here from mainland Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador ....it was crowded on the beach today, but i understand the rest of the week will be REALLY crowded ...

a man approached me on the beach asking me what the fish was 'that looked like a walnut with little fins'   ... i couldn't think of what he was talking about ....... but we wadded out into the water, and sure enough ... that's what it looked like ... it was a tiny BalloonFish, the size of a walnut!  .... unfortunately i did not have my camera with me  :(    ...it was in an unlikely place, but appeared to be 'ok' and swimming away from the shore ..... i hope it made it ok .... it was so cute !      ...i walked to get my camera and snorkeled around out there for awhile, but didn't see it  :(

a few snorkel photos ....

Coral Head and tiny 'cleaner' fishes

Glass Eye Snapper

Queen AngelFish

i saw a lot of SharpNose Puffer Fish again today ..... the 'blue color' on them is much more pronounded, that's why i'm thinking maybe 'mating season' ... ???

SharpNose PufferFish

i watched these two Spotted GoatFish for awhile ... either they were defending their territory, or involved in a mating ritual .... either way, they were interesting to watch .... they would charge each other, wiggle their 'beards' at each other, then retreat ...

Spotted GoatFish -- doing battle?  ...or mating ritual?

there were a lot of fishes in the shallow water close to shore, i think because all the people were feeding them with bread and Lord-knows-what-else ...

Chubs

Palometa

it was a pretty normal day except for this girl who was standing on the coral....

Uhhhhhhhhhgggggggg

 when i approached her, she had her mask off and i could tell she was a bit freaked out ... i saw Oscar in the Marine Patrol boat and motioned for him to come in ... he picked her up and took her into shore ... :(

grrrrrrrrrrr ...

then he said,  'me and you, BananaRama' .... normally we meet at Infinity Bay, but i said ok...
we went to BananaRama and he got us chicken sandwiches to go for lunch ... and we returned to West End ... that was pretty cool   :)

i took a nap and woke up in time to go to Monkey Island for Taco Tues and sat with the group that lives here at Casa del Sol ...

i watched the Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse from 1-2am ... it was beautiful here ... this is my attempt at hand-held-time-lapse photography ...  :)

Total Lunar Eclipse  :)