tawny arrives

after a couple of weeks without an assistant (which was fine because i could go out with Rafa on a bigger boat and still get work done) my second assistant, Tawny, arrived

Unfortunately because I was taking advantage of the "no assistant" time to do some much needed repairs on my boat, the boat was still apart when she arrived.


so we went out on Rafa's boat. which obviously didn't disapoint because there were pilot whales on the way to the dive site.


pilot whales are toothed whales so they're closely related to dolphins but don't have the pointed snout, they have more of a melon head like orcas, but without the distiinctive black and white markings. They are also a little bit more timid than dolphins, so they don't approach your boat and try to ride the bow wave and jump in the wake like bottlenose dolphins do. but we were patient and they eventually would pass close to the boat.

we ended up diving at punta lobos (the main spawning site) first. at the end of the island, before the rest of the point is submerged, there is a cool little cave. i've never been able to spend any time there or pass through it because we're usually in such rough conditions and out on my tiny boat that we usually get in, work and get right out so we can head back to the campsite before dark





at the bottom of the cave are some medium to big boulders that are rolling around in there. while we were in there, i saw Rafa grab a good sized one and haul it out of the cave to the boat. it seemed fairly heavy and he struggled with it a bit. i asked him what he was going to do with it and he said he needed it to put under the tire of his trailer. what? like there aren't a million rocks and cinderblocks around in Loreto to do that with. **this will become important later!**

on our second dive we couldn't go to the seamount we wanted because someone was fishing there (bastards!) so we went off to the side a bit. i was bummed because it's been about 6 years since i'd been there. but the next dive was interesting and i found a little nook where some recently recruited rock croakers were hanging out. the two small ones in the picture are less than a centimeter in length.

trying to get caught up on photos and blogging

i still have photos from before june 9 but, sorry i'm starting from there, since it's now the 20th and i've been in the water everyday and have seen fantastic stuff every! single! day!

and actually, this photo is from the 5/31 photos that accidentally got erased and was only able to recover them partially. i was trying to get a picture of me with the clear azul water and the boat in the background and what i managed to do is take a picture of my [scottish accent]HEAD![/scottish accent] with what looks like my leg coming out of my shoulder. i like it! heh

and for those who haven't seen me in awhile, yeah, i bleached my hair on my birthday just to do something crazy cuz i never got to go through that phase as a teenager. at least, that's my story and i'm sticking to it!

and by now, it looks completely different and i MAY post those photos...haven't decided

[scottish accent]HEAD![/scottish accent] below
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on another dive to a place i hadn't been before i was cruising around and came upon this cleaning station: just a truckload of barberfish (Johnrandalia nigrirostris) in this rock valley waiting for clients to be cleaned. the fish signal the barberfish by either changing color, facing head down in the water, or both. i have yet to capture a photo of actual cleaning because typically the cleaners and the cleanees disperse when divers approach.


another fish i hunt with my camera is the sawtail grouper (Mycteroperca prionura), which I consider rare because I only ever see one or two at only one or two spots in the park. i get very excited when i see them too, because even thought they are small (they get bigger) they are gorgeous AND it helps me hope that there could be more. these two just kept teasing me and staying just outside my camera's reach so these are 3 of the 400 i took of them.

list of things to do for Saturday

i have been diving diving diving everyday for the past two weeks. Rafa was going to take me to San Nicolas to meet with commercial fishermen to get some large cabrilla but then he said that he has to go to the church on Sunday for his cousin's (Daniel's son, Luis) confirmation (because Rafa is Luis' godfather) and needs to rest some (because he has been diving everydayeveryday AND has a family) and fix his trailer. so i said, cool, no worries i have a huge list of things to do on saturday so have a nice weekend.

THE LIST:
- sleep
- clean house
- clean yard
- pull otoliths
- paint boat parts
- inflate, clean and repair boat
- find pieces of carpet for trailer boards to protect boat
- go to saturday farmer's market for produce
- enter data
- organize gear
- build collectors
- buy fan
- laundry
- clean camera housings
- fix weight belt
- upload pictures
- update blog

as i'm drinking coffee and contemplating the enormous list i have i hear knocking on the gate. i look out and see rafa's sandals under the gate and say "hay voy!" so i can look for my keys to open the gate. then i see him jumping up to look over the gate as i approach to open it.

"que onda? te desperté?" (what's up? i woke you?)
"no, solamente tomando cafe" (no, just drinking coffee)
"pues, tengo clientes. quieres bucear?" (well, i have clients. do you want to dive?)
"um, YEAH!" (um, YEAH!)
"ok, juntamos en la tienda a las 9" (ok, we meet at the store at 9)

list? what list?

This is Rafa's uncle Daniel. He usually drives the boat.


I was dying when I saw his shoes, because he cut the tops off the rubber boots that are ubiquitous here on fishermen's feet. I told Rafa, DUDE! your uncle made mexican crocs!


over the course of diving i would notice that Rafa and Daniel called each other "P" like Hey P, is this where you want the anchor? i was curious because i knew that Daniel was his uncle but i could only think that p stood for primo (cousin). so finally I asked Daniel "que significa 'p?' es primo?" (what does "p" mean? is it cousin?) and Daniel laughs and says "no, cerdo." and for a minute i'm really confused because cerdo means pig. and then i realize they're calling each other PIG! but because of spanish the letter I is pronounced like a hard E and g is either silent or soft so they're saying PEEg to each other. when I asked Rafa about it he laughed and said, yeah all our lives we are PEEg. heh

on Coronados Island, the obligatory after diving stop is the "white beach." i found this cool ghost crab (Ocypode occidentalis) and was surprised i was able to get that close to her, but she might be stunned because she's out in the daylight because they're crepuscular.


she got swept in the water by the waves and was able to get this cool shot. i showed it to jealous Rafa saying, "you can put this up on your website to advertise dolphin dive. i'll let you use it." and he said "oh that's a nice shot but I would rather just steal it from you and take the credit"

Last week

There was this big group of fishermen that came that weren't using Arturo's so they set up shades on the other side of the beach to receive the boats and filet the fish. One of my friends, Rodrigo, told me that he will be fileting and the group will be fishing about 4 days so I should go there to look for cabrilla.

These are the shades on the beach. Wow, what a cool truck in the foreground



This is Rodrigo (on the left) and a couple from Argentina on the other side of the table. They are Diego and Victoria. They were staying on the beach in a van so they would hang out at the shades to see the fish. They were super cool. One day they pitched in to help and on the day I ended up pulling otoliths they jumped right in and helped and were asking me all kinds of questions about what i do and about the fish that were coming in.


This is Diego, Victoria and Fermin. I've known Fermin for 4 years now, he's been hustling gear up to people's rooms since he was a little kid. He's a good guy but can be a bit of a rascal.


I just had to get in this closeup of Diego because whenever I looked at him I thought, damn he looks a lot like Gael Garcia Bernal

The guy from Amores Perros, y tu mama tambien, Motorcycle Diaries, Mala Educacion

busy busy days

by now if you don't know i'm on the "big garropa hunt" then you obviously haven't been paying attention.

so right now i'm blown away that the last three days of diving have been garropa-mania. of course, don't get your hopes up that visibility was good enough for me to take that award winning national geographic photo but i've got video (that pinche rafa took, but technically it's mine because it was MY camera) and some bad photos, BUT the most important is that they were IN MY TRANSECTS. RANDOMLY.

i swear.


so now i'm very happy that i know of FOUR places that i have seen more than 2 very LARGE garropa. at one site we saw at least 6, at the next we saw at least four, and then the next four again. and when i say "at least" i'm referring to the number we saw at one time or very close in time, or were very clearly a different size than the others if some time had passed upon seeing the next bunch.

if that makes ANY sense whatsoever.

on the cabrilla front, i'm not seeing so many, just 8 to 10 at a time, but i am seeing LARGE cabrilla, like maximum size cabrilla. i have a site on myspace now so i'll probably post some video there since i can't do it on flickr.

we've also been seeing mobulas and dolphins on the way out to sites. of course, rafa had to cut in front of me to get pictures of the mobulas so i have a great picture of his back while he put his camera in the water and got some great video (PINCHE RAFA!)

and i'm such a girl too because, really, i get SO excited EVERY TIME. like it's the first time. that i seeee them. dirty people.


i like this picture because it looks like a painting.



mobulas at the surface, they kept swimming right around the boat for about 5 minutes. we were going to swim with them but rafa took so long to get his wetsuit on that they left by then. *sigh*

in other news there was a group of fishermen (about 30) that went out for four days and i have some interesting stories there too. but now, i go to bed, to get up early and hunt garropa with my camera.

jealous rafa**

this is rafa. he is probably mad at me because i saw something cooler than he did or he saw something cool and i saw it too. we are always in competition with each other over the cool things to see and photograph.

last week on may 31 (the full moon) i had a fantastic dive and came up with a photo of a dark blotch scorpionfish, a species i don't have a picture or illustration for in my book. i was so excited. did the second dive and got some good pictures there too but i was seriously stoked about the dark blotch scorpionfish. the other thing that happened right before these dives is that i had read on Sasha Frere-Jones' site (he's music critic for the new yorker) about his issue with data recovery and that he lost a ton of photos on a disk drive.
soft drive
postscript

i read that and thought, damn, don't i know how rough that is losing two hard-drives in a dell and having recently recovered an external harddrive (THANK! GOSH!). and so now i'm super paranoid about it. i was recently backing up stuff on disk.

somehow i managed to lose the whole set of photos with the dark blotch scorpionfish. i had downloaded the pictures onto my harddrive, put a new battery in the camera and left to go take pictures of the rising full moon. when i got back i downloaded those pictures. looked at all my pictures and then went to bed. woke up the next morning and all the dive pictures are gone.

sick! sick! sick! to my stomach i tell you. so i start looking on the web for something to recover it and found something but it could only recover the second part of the first dive and the entire second dive but NOT the DBSF. @#$% the moon pictures had overwritten them already.

stoopid moon




**disclaimer: rafa is muy buena onda and i wouldn't have accomplished half of what i have without his help.