Lionfish & other creatures -

We've been having a great time here!!  Courage found a great dive spot not too far from our boat that has a pass through from the ocean, so it gets fresh water and nutrients.  The coral is so alive, there are so many animals in it, and the water is crystal clear.  We've been there a few times; the first time was awesome.  We saw a lionfish for our first time ever in the wild.  Made a great opportunity to come read about it from our encyclopedia, etc, but without Internet, we have so many more questions about them.  They are fascinating and beautiful little fish.  The second time, we brought the kids, which was great, BUT, there was so much incoming current, it was impossible to go upstream or stay still without a handhold.  I tried swimming with the 2 girls from the dinghy to the dive spot and we were struggling to get past the anchor of the dinghy to the dive spot.  We had to regroup and make our way to some rebar and old fishing nets for a handhold.  The views were excellent again, the variety of wildlife was great, but we didn't see any lionfish.  I think they are too fancy and delicate to be able to be out in the main current.  I think they tuck away under rocks until slack tide.  Or are they out more at night, because this was a morning dive?  This evening again, Courage and I went for a dive and it was spectacular!!  We swam all the way up to the top seeing only one lionfish, then on our way back down they were coming out of the woodwork.  They were in every crack we looked in it seemed and even our free swimming.  I saw an octopus.  I found it myself.  Courage finds them, but I don't usually.  So that was fun, he was in a crack that you could see him from the side as well as the top.  And I got a video of some sea creature that looks like a rope with a frayed end.  The frayed end had tentacle like arms which were short, maybe 8-10 of them, and grabbed algae or something from the rock and rolled it up to his mouth.  When we scared it, it coiled up and retracted under the coral that the other 1/2 of it was in.  Funny little thing.  I've never seen anything like it before and have no idea even how to start looking up what that was.  It's not an eel.  It's not an octopus, it's not a shark, but what IS it??  It was maybe 1 inch in diameter and I saw about 1.5 feet of it.  It was striped longwise and it really looked like a braided rope with a frayed end.  Needless to say, we're going back again, and probably again.

Shannon