Operation: Guam: nudibranchs

Our second day of diving started a bit earlier. We had to be up early so the dive master from the dive shop and his driver could pick us up at our hotel at 5am! Needless to say, we were a bit sleepy. I couldn't resist getting a picture of the lovely Christmas tree in the lobby though.

Already set up for breakfast.

Cat napping

After driving for three hours, we finally arrived in Oslob where the whale sharks hang out. There are fishermen here who feed them, so there are about 7-9 that keep returning to this same spot every morning. You can either snorkel or scuba dive with the whale sharks but you have to keep your distance. They have people in the water with you watching to make sure you do not get too close. You are supposed to stay about 40 feet away but if one swims close to you, you don't have to move away. You just aren't supposed to swim up to them. The best time to go is first thing in the morning when no one else is around but since we were staying so far away, that wasn't an option for us. So by the time we got there the place was pretty busy! Unfortunately our pictures of the whale sharks did not come out very well. We were only in about 40 feet of water but the whale sharks are about 15 to 20 feet long and all the other people in the water had kicked up a lot of sand and silt, so the visibility was not very good. Here are some pictures:

Snorkelers heading out to the whale sharks

Guys in blue are the watchers

Carlton heading out!

Sea snake we saw on our swim out!

More beauties on our swim out.

Supposed to be us with the whale shark...

Huge heads!

Here you can see their spots

This one was small - about 10 feet

Close-up to see the gills. He was feeding.

Carlton and the whale shark

Snorkeler with the whale shark

Cool shot Carlton took.

Whale shark feeding

He was hanging out by the boat a lot!

And again....

Tail shot!

Carlton got a couple videos that came out pretty good although you can tell how unclear the water was for us. Check it out!!

After diving with the whale sharks, we continued our dive exploring the areas around us and got some great shots of the other reef life.

More bright blue fish

Carlton shooting me shooting a pic

Carlton's bubbles...cool shot!

Carlton got this reef shot

Hey Nemo!

He was not happy with Carlton

Pretty bluish purple

So I was shooting this....

and this guy swam right underneath me!

Camera hog!

Beautiful colors in the reef!

Eel poking his head out!

Beautiful fish!

A little pink!

Then there were sea urchins...

All over!

Doesn't he look happy?

Carlton got this video of a clown fish who was not happy with Carlton getting so close!

We took a little break out of the water and they moved the boat to another area nearby for our second dive. No whale sharks on this one but we did get to see nudibranchs!!

Our view of the Oslob area as we left shore.

More of the Oslob coastline

Approaching our destination

Sumilon Island for our last dive

One more shot of the Oslob area

Beautiful sea fan!

Sea fan with a bit of red

Hi Carlton!

Puffy starfish (not the scientific name). :-)

More clownfish!

A Nudibranch!! A little blurry but hard to capture!

Selfie!

Another nudibranch!

And then there were three!

Only two of the three in this shot.

Sea worm?

Last clownfish of the day.

This last video shows one of the nudibranchs that we saw on this five. The pictures I took did not come out because he blended in well with the background. Forgive my recording of this guy but I am not used to using the GoPro. These nudibranchs ranged from one inch to about three inches long. So it was very difficult to take pictures of them without the pictures being blurry. Especially since we were floating in water! Harder to take clear pictures when you can't stabilize yourself somehow.

After our last dive, we went back to shore for some lunch and then the long drive back to our hotel. We took a few pictures as we were ending our day.