27-28 Mar - Diving--Native Sons

27-28 Mar - Diving with Native Sons

27 Mar, Fri:
Ron and Patricia are from Montreal and i met them the first year i was here ... they come back every year in Jan and stay until April .... they always dive with Native Sons Dive Shop, .... the girl in the room next to me calls herself 'V' ... and she is doing her Dive Master Training with Native Sons ... and i have met some other fun girls from there as well ...

i decided it was time to do a couple dives .... so i signed up for Fri and Sat at 11am with Native Sons, knowing my friends would be there.

the weather has been beautiful since i arrived in Roatan ... Fri morning the weather changed a bit, and the wind picked up, and it got a little rough .....    but we had a great dive ... Gumbo Limbo Dive Site ...

the first part of the dive was a white sandy bottom, with lots of small coral patches around ....
this is our Dive Master, Eddie ... he is looking for SeaHorses, but didn't find one today   :(

the first thing i saw was this Nassau Grouper ....

then i saw a White Spotted FileFish ... i LOVE them ... 
their coloring is strange ... patches of oranges and greens together, with spots of Yellow .... unfortunately my camera lens fogged up, so these photos are a little fuzzy and not clear ...  :(

i never understood why they called them White Spotted FileFish, when they were Orange , Yellow, and Green ... until i saw this one .... on the left .... with lots of White Spots   :)

maybe they change colors when they are mating ?   ....interestingly beautiful fish !

love the white sandy bottom ...

we moved on and circled the coral wall ...
it's pretty down there; but difficult to get good photos with my camera ...

towards the end of the dive, i spotted a turtle in the distance ...... i watched , hoping it would come closer ....

then it turned and swam towards us ... i am happy  :)

closer and closer to me ... great for taking photos ...

and he continued to come right at me .. i thought it was going to kiss me ... actually i wasn't sure what it was going to do, but i realized i needed to get out of it's way .... that's when i got this shot ... i looked right into his eye ... it was very cool  !

fun fun dive  :)


28 Mar, Sat:
it rained off and on last night, and was raining in the morning .... i don't like diving in the rain, or when the sun isn't shining  ...whineeeeeeeeee   :)

but i showed up and we headed out .... the waves were REALLY big and we didn't go very far outside of the Bay .... it was a Dive Site called Moon Light ...

i love these Blue Azure Vase Sponges ... i'll probably never stop taking photos of them ....

and i'll probably never get one that shows it's true beauty   :(

this is what it looks like when a diver spots something, and everyone wants to see it and take a photo of it  :)

i just stayed back and took this photo of this cute little Green RazorFish that was probably wondering why no one was paying any attention to him  :( ...

then the guy with the 'Big Guns' showed up and everyone stepped back ....  i would like to see the photos he took ...

this is what they were looking at ...    :)     ...it was about 1"  long   ...

everyone was 'stumped' as to what it was .... even the Dive Masters .... it looks like something in the book called a 'Lined Sole'   ...that would be in the 'flounder' family ...

it was rough getting back in the boat after the dive ... big waves ...

it seems we are in for some not-so-nice weather for a couple of days   :(