Attacked by a fish!!

So this morning on the dive boat I'm sitting on the stern with my feet hanging into the water... Paco, another instructor comes and sits down with his feet on the ladder. As he is eating his snack some of the crumbs from his bread falls into the water. Well, some fish came up and ate the crumbs... and well my feet must have looked yummy too because one of the fish bit my heel!! They were black durgon fish which look like this...
So I yelped and promptly pulled my feet out of the water while everyone on the boat laughs. Larissa, another instructor, tells me it must feel like a massage and thinks I'm over reacting. So I tell her to put her feet in the water which she proceeds to do. So the fish come up again and she yelps just like I did! Well, the fish got her on the side of her foot and she claims that it's more tender there than on the heel. So I tell her ok put just your heel in and lets see. Well, the fish came up again and got her heel and she yelped again! So the moral of the story is don't put your feet in the water when there is food around because black durgons don't have the greatest sense of what's food!!

New pictures...

So today is my day off for the week and it has been spent sleeping, eating, and swimming with brief periods of laying on the beach. Oh, laundry and a shower in there too. I've put up some more pictures on facebook which can be found at.... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2051033&l=ab021&id=44801562

Also, a group of people that are all friends recently left and we collectively called them the Reef Police. Hats with the title were distributed to the scuba staff. The original couple that started it all have a website which they just updated with pictures from their trip. I made one of them. Check them out at http://www.reefpolice.com
Thanks to the Reef Police for the great times!! See you again soon!!

Flying Gurnard Sighting!

So, one of the divers that I was leading spotted a fish that he didn't know what it was and pointed it out to me. It was the first time I had ever seen it and found out that it is a flying gurnard. The pictures below are in the wings in position and wings out position which we saw. They have a set of sort of modified pelvic fins that they appear to "walk" on. They eat crustaceans and other small invertebrates.

My First Advanced Open Water Students...

So yesterday I finished teaching my first Advanced Open Water class for a father and son from San Francisco. We had a great night dive watching an octopus on Sunday night, Monday was our deep and fish id dives during which we went to 125 ft and saw both lion and scorpion fish. Tuesday was our drift dive which was beautiful and we saw 2 turtles and then our navigation dive which was easy and quick. Congrats to my first Advanced Open Water divers!!

Dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, sleep... repeat

Well, I'm in week 5 of my time here at Columbus and time seems to be flying by. I am diving almost everyday and 2-4 times at that. The diving is beautiful with sharks spotted on nearly every dive. I find it interesting to watch people's reaction to sharks. I've had the range from swimming towards them to hiding behind me or grabbing their children in fear. We also see a fair amount of lion fish which aren't native to the Atlantic and thus have no natural predators. The other dive operation, Riding Rock, on the island actively hunts and kills them to help reduce the population, but I still see them.
Last week on my day off a group of us G.O.s went out to eat lunch at Riding Rock and while I was there I spotted this sticker on the window with many other dive shop stickers.What a small world!! A little bit of Vermont in the Bahamas.