24 Apr 2023
Welcome to Pura, the site of our first dive!
Our guides taking one of the speedboats out to check site conditions:
Dive #22 – Landai Salib
Today, we had two options for our morning dive- Limarahin, a muck dive site or Landai Salib, a wall:
Map by Nora Niggs
I wanted to do both! but we could only do one and the rest of my group wanted the wall, so that’s where we went.
There were a ton of anthias here, so I made it my goal on this dive to finally get a good shot.
Scalefin anthias:
Threadfin anthias:
Ringtail cardinalfish:
Darkfin chromis:
A pair of Ringtail cardinalfish:
Black-bar chromis:
Dragonet:
Blackspotted puffer:
The top-down view of a Ceratosoma nudibranch, gracillimum, I think:
(this is the back end, his face is behind that coral on the right)
A whole school of juvenile Spiny chromis:
Bicolor angelfish:
Anemonefish:
A whole mess of Slender sweeper fish:
Blacklip butterflyfish:
Coralscape:
Darkband fusilier:
Ribbon sweetlips:
An odd looking nudibranch- Jorunna rubescens:
Orangutan crab #1:
Orangutan crab #2:
A seriously tiny (<1cm) coral crab:
Humphead bannerfish:
Another one of those funky Jorunna rubescens nudibranchs:
and another!
(once you know what to look for, they aren’t too hard to spot)
Leaf scorpionfish:
and another, one of the most colorful Leaf scorpionfish I’d ever seen!
Dive #23 – The Arch
Dark clouds rolled in as we moved north to Reta for our next dive:
I feel like there used to be an arch that is now collapsed, but I really don’t remember (sorry Nora, I promise I was paying attention to the briefing!):
Map by Nora Niggs
Anemonefish family:
Threadfin anthias:
They have such pretty tails!
Finally! A Twospined angelfish out in the open!!!
and, there he goes 🙁
A very active Nembrotha chamberlaini:
he was swinging his head all over, which made it surprisingly hard to focus on him
Another slightly less active Nembrotha chamberlaini:
but he was still on the move
A very pretty Pteraeolidia semperi:
I had seen this guy a few times before, but couldn’t get a shot of him- this is a Blackbelt hogfish:
Phyllidia varicosa:
Emperor angelfish:
Regal angelfish:
Anemonefish:
Threadfin anthias (male- top, female- bottom):
A young Brown tang:
Anemonefish in his anemone:
A whole harem of anthias:
A small school of Spiny chromis:
There was so much life on top of this reef- I could have spent all day exploring!
Dive #24 – Current Alley
Surface conditions continued to worsen- more rain and now waves as well:
We headed back to Current Alley, a site from a couple days ago where, unfortunately, the current was also picking up:
Map by Kevin
Always disappointing to see fish traps- I really wanted to cut this one lose and free the fishes!
Twostripe damselfish:
Bicolor angelfish:
Orangelined triggerfish:
Blacktip grouper:
Fingerprint toby:
Solor boxfish (female):
The tiniest little lobster!
His body was just over an inch long!
Pteraeolidia semperi:
A very well camouflaged coral crab:
This is a Pontohi seahorse- if he stretches out (which he’s doing), he’s a little over a centimeter long. There were actually 2 of them, but there was also a crazy current trying to rip me away so this is the best shot I could get (his tail is in focus):
Ugh, so frustrating!
Blackbar damselfish:
I don’t remember what the dessert was (though I do remember it was quite tasty!), but I loved the little sharks they decorated our plates with:
I didn’t have the heart to destroy mine, though I did add some gills 🙂