i'm beat

and if you tell anyone, i'll deny it...

so originally we were supposed to leave for the island one last time on may 20 for the full moon. well on may 16 we started noticing TONS of big grouper at pta. coyote, which is right next to the harbor. we saw lots of gravid females and brad said they have to be spawning here i don't think they can hold their eggs like that. so we thought hey we'll save some money and stay local and see if we can see spawning here and see if there is a buildup of activity leading up to the full moon.

well, it all started out fine. we could see grouper and we could see big ones (but not as many big ones as at pta lobos).

and occasionally i would sink down a little further to see other stuff. just off the rocks at this place and going down to the bottom is tons of black coral

now i know what you're saying...that's not black silly!

i KNOW. actually the skeleton of this coral is black and the polyps are this fluorescent yellow. very cool.

another thing that is cool about this point is that there are TONS of BEHBEHS! little baby grouper. so they may not only spawn at this location but also recruit there as well. this little guy is only 20 cm (that's about 8 inches for you gringos sheesh)


so things seemed to be going well when on the third day, i got a major squeeze over my right eye. ithought i was going ot die. i've never had a squeeze before and this was awful. by the time we got back to the apartment the pain was over my right eye, over my right jaw and in my right ear. it was like the pressure just kept building and it had nowhere to go. my right eye was watering from the pain and i was nauseous. so to bed i went.

then the next night, not only was i worried about the squeeze, but then the vis just went to hell. we couldn't figure it out. it was the thickest, snottiest water we've ever seen.

that dark yellow-green blobby thing in the background is black coral. you couldn't see a thing. then we talked to rafa and he said oh i've seen that, i think it's the black coral spawning. and sure enough it was and since there is soooooo much of the stuff at that location it just wrecked the vis. and since the whole point of going there was to watch and document the spawning we thought we should go ahead and make the trip to pta. lobos.
so one more time we load all our shit on the boat


that's my HUGE boat on his bow. that's pta tintoreras in the distance. we round that point and then we camp at the beach between pta tintoreras and pta lobos.

so this is rafa driving the boat...

what the hell? who's driving?? i can't believe i'm paying this guy!!!

actually, rafa is an angel. he has been diving here forever and he is so worried for the future of the marine park here with all the overfishing and development. i honestly don't think i would be able to do half the stuff i need to do without this guy.

ok that's all i have time for today. stay tuned!