Sebastian was right, life is better under the sea

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So four posts in two days, thats a bit too much. This is a quick post on coral reef and fishies here!!! Yay fishies!!! Unfortunately, these pictures aren't my own. I wish.

Earlier today I went on my second snorkeling trip in three days and thus far, I've been snorkeling about 6 times at 4 different places, each time a little better than the last. Always with me underwater is a laminated card with pictures of fish on it. Nobody else in the group brings one but that's their loss; already I've gotten good at identifying some common fish here.

Last night, a couple of us meet three Indian businessmen from Bombay who were in Zanzibar for one more day. They invited us to go with them on their boat snorkeling on Prison Island (the same place where I snorkeled and got seasick). They were pretty cool 20-some year old guys. We gladly accepted their offer and this morning, grabbed some food for the group and headed to the port to meet them.

We arrived at Prison Island no later then 10am, hung out on the beach for a while, buried each other in sand, exchanged life stories, and tried to teach one Indian guy how to swim. Eventually, we boated out to the offshore reef to snorkel for about an hour. I don't know how it was so much better than before (maybe it was we were further offshore, maybe I wasn't seasick) but it was incredible. Saw some real cool fish today and I'm gonna try to post links to pictures of them so you know what I'm seeing.


I guess I'll start with my best sight today, which was a Moorish Idol fish and a Longfin Bannerfish RIGHT FREAKING NEXT TO EACH OTHER. So beautiful together, both with their long tail fins. When I dove down to get closer, they scattered in opposite directions and I ended up trailing the bannerfish for a while.

What else. Lots of butterflyfish. Many purple butterflyfish and saddleback butterflyfish today. Also a sweet Royal Angelfish - check out the purple, orange, white striped pattern on that one. On Friday, I saw a couple amazing butterflyfish including a small school of halfmoon butterfly fish, a long-nosed butterflyfish or two, and what I believed to be a Yellowhead buterflyfish.

Today, I finally identified the fish that had been giving me trouble. I've seen it a couple times on different trips, each time for only a few second and each time more amazed by its patterns and almost glow-in-the-dark colors. But I learned that what I saw was the Two-bar Anemonefish. And the ones today were really tame. I usually saw them when I swam over coral that was only a foot or two from the surface. A couple times, they just stared at me as I passed by them and scurried to hide among the soft coral only when I put out my hand to try to touch them. (no it didn't look like Nemo though, I would have recognized it if it had been the orange specie of anemofish)

What else have I seen. Well, I haven't seen any sea turtles (in the wild, silly), although a couple people in my group have. Luckies. No sharks or anything dangerous either. But I've seen the Bullhead Parrotfish (the picture is of a female parrotfish who is much more striking than the male), Spotted Unicornfish, the Cleaner Fish, some Sergeant fish, huge sea urchins, and lots of schools of hundreds of Tropical Halfbeaks. I see lotsa other fish too each time I dive but I can't identify many of them because their not on my card. Most of them are plain colors/patterns and hell yeah I'm gonna learn them too. These here that I've listed are just the best.

I've never studied animals in depth in my life, thought I wasn't interested. But studying fish is pretty bomb and I'm enjoying fishies more and more. Eating them, however, happens to be inversely correlated with that. Plz no moar fish in mah belly. Zanzibar is a sweet classroom and for once in my life, I'm excited for the test.

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Comments

[Jerry]

Uncle
Tyler, Great to read your postings. Expect it seems like you've been there a long time - having already learned a new language and more about fish than most of us ever will. Seems to be an entirely great experience so far. Best wishes and I'll be following your adventure from my desk. Jerry

[Marcia Garcia]

you've got an audience
I notice some of your blogs have like over 40 views! I'm pressed. Seems like you got about 35 more shout-outs to do. You only did like 5 of them (as per your last posting). lol So all this about fish. Are you seriously getting a lot of them to eat?!?