Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Day 160

We had an alternator meeting this morning where Bob came over to see if he could help Papa find the problem. We eliminated possibilities and heard about Whippoorwill and Vertigo and how they had left Bimini but supposedly had turned back again. Unfortunately they didn’t get the alternator problem solved but we now know it is not due to a bad cell in the batteries, which is a HUGE relief.

We headed up to the office before snorkelling to talk to the warden about where the best snorkelling spot would be as well as to check in. Up on the deck of the office was at least 50 of the little birds we saw on the way in yesterday. They are called bananaquits and are sugar eaters. I happened to have Oreos in a baggy in the dingy lol so watch and see what happened x].

Ok so the video wont load =[ basically I took the center out of the oreos and I had like 6 birds on my hands at once x].



After we left the office we headed out to a reef and got our gear on and saw 4 HUGE eagle rays with a 4-5’span!! They were use to humans and didn’t mind us at all! We also saw some sharksuckers attached to the eagle rays, some small stingrays, sand tilefish, a few different kinds of squirrelfish (LOL Shelby), some fairy basslets, some Nassau grouper, some yellow jack (I think), different snappers (mahogany and yellowtail), several grunts, lots of angelfish (queen, blue, and lots of gray), some chromis, a few little gobies (not bridled though =[ ), LOTS of bluehead, and tons of parrot fish (from stoplight to queen and blue and rainbow and redband to princess and stripped. I only didn’t see midnight parrotfish), some triggerfish (queen and gray). In coral we saw elkhorn, staghorn, club finger, finger, green cactus, yellow pencil, rough scarlet, smooth starlet, mountainous star, lobed star smooth star, ivory bush and tree, scroll, rose, ribbon, all types of brain, some common sea fans, and a lot of other stuff (the listed things are what I noted we saw in my small coral and fishes book)!! The whole time the Eagle rays circled us (this is where they live and in a non threatening way) cutting back and forth under us on occasion.

We eventually went to check out a few other spots, Emerald Rock and a sunken haul near mooring ball #9 (apparently there is a nurse shark that spends most of its time by the sunken haul). Emerald rock was small but amazingly crowded with fish and even a HUGE lobster. The hull we found and saw another 2 lobsters, one being the bigger than I could have thought possible, but no nurse shark.

Tonight was happy hour aboard Brandaris and as we were sitting chatting a nurse shark came by =]!



Niki

3 comments:

Rob MacFarlane said...

Wow that is a lot of fish to see and list lol

Darcon said...

Hey guys! Just got caught up on the blog today, been watching for Niki on MSN, but haven't seen her, so thought you were still roughing it without wifi... Sounds like you guys are really having a great time. We are spending lots of time in arenas...Spencer's team just won quarter finals against Bayfield/Clinton/Hensall. It took us all 6 games to put them away, finally finished them off last night in Clinton. It seems as though everyone on the team got Daryl's cold. Spencer got it and missed a week of school. Phillip missed 5 days, i'm still fine. Daryl was sick for 2 weeks. Anyhow, with the whole team taking turns getting sick we weren't playing our best, hence the difficulty in the series. We are now moving on to semi finals and will soon start playing West Lincoln whick is between Hamilton and St. Catherines. Google says it is a 2hr52min drive from Blenheim. Looking forward to it, NOT! It IS exciting to go this far in playoffs, doesn't happen every year. Spencer has been playing so awesome, you would be proud. Phillip's team has already dropped down to league playoffs, and still aren't doing very well. We have a tournament booked in Aylmer in april to keep the team busy. Also, we have a couple of 3on3 tournaments booked where the kids make up their own teams, should be fun. well, you can probably tell their isn't much going on here that isn't hockey, so i won't bore you further. I will let you know how Spencer's team makes out in this next round (another 6 point series as far as i know....). Keep having fun! c.

Sammeh said...

x.x so just to let you know. I totally just googled like half of those fish
and then gave up x.x
too many
but YAY my short~
I was wearing yours the other day :D