Spain: Day 3 - L'Estartit Dive #3

July 5th

So, originally we were going to spend all day today in Barcelona because our next dives weren't until Monday.  However, something got miscommunicated and we ended up doing a morning dive today and one on Monday.

Dive #3:

For Dive #3 our guide was Judit.  We also went with a French family, parents and a young boy.   

This dive was located along the coast at Negre del Falaguer (I think it translates to "Black Hope" or something like that).

 Getting ready again.  

So as much fun as the diving has been, most of the other divers have been French.  There is nothing wrong with this; however, the French don't have any modesty concerns.  I saw soooooo much old French butt.  They would just strip down on the boat to put on bathing suits or wetsuits before the dives and then would strip out of wetsuits and bathing suits to put their clothes back on after the dives.  The worst was one guy who didn't put a bathing suit on and then had trouble getting into his wetsuit.  There was a lot of....flopping.

ANYWAY, Diving!  WOOOO!

 Ready to go!

 Ah the Common 2-Banded Seabream.  Never seen one of those before!

 Red Starfish.

 Another Common 2-Banded Seabream.

 Unknown fan or coral.

 Sea Urchin.

 Seabreams and the sea floor.

 This Seabream seems displeased.

 More Sea Urchins.  There were actually a lot of them.  They may have rivaled the Seabreams.

 I took the GoPro for this photo only.   Hi Dan!

 Some sort of snails or mollusks and possibly an anemone type thing.

 Hello!

 Damselfish.

 There's an octopus in this photo somewhere, I swear.  I should have circled him. 

Okay so...there's the big rock in the middle and it has two smaller rocks above it.  The octopus is hiding in the spot where the three rocks meet.  There's a video of him later, don't worry.

 Seabreams hanging out.

 Just chillin' cause, ya know, they're fish.

Red Starfish.

Sea floor with lots of little fishies eating.

Closer to the fishies eating.

And fishies eating on the rock.

Diving with Damselfish.

It sounds like one of the less interesting Gilderoy Lockhart books.  

More diving with Damselfish.

Seabreams!

Looking up the sea wall.

Lobsters!  

These might be some kind of Wrasse who have joined the Seabream party.

Or they're just ganging up on that one Seabream.  Maybe Wrasse are jerks.  I don't really know.

Dive video!  The first bit is just diving and the second bit is the Octopus.  Enjoy!

This concludes our diving adventure for today.  Next on today's list: Barcelona.

Spain: Day 2 - L'Estartit Dive #2

July 4th Con't

Howdy!

This is our second dive for today.  We again went out with Francesc, but this time we went to the Medes Islands.  Our dive spot was Dolfì Nord also known as the Dolphin Cave.  

Given my panic attack at the first dive, we did not do the cave.  

Instead we dove the coast line along the cave entrance.

Dive #2:

Some type of Mullet...maybe.

Mediterranean Moray.  Dan spotted this guy.

Weeeee Diving!

A Dusky Grouper.

Our buddy the Common 2-Banded Seabream.

Unknown yellowish spotted fish.

Many fishies on the sea wall.

A school of Damselfish.

Close up of the sea wall and some little coral.  

(It's supposed to be red, but....well...there wasn't enough light.)

On the bottom here is coral with "flowers."  

The flowers are actually some sort of symbiotic bacteria or something like that.

More flowery coral.  Again...supposed to be red.

Mediterranean Moray again.  A better view this time.

I don't know if this is the same eel as before, but I think it is.

Remember the eel from Super Mario 64?  That thing gave me nightmares.

An unknown fish and the sea floor.

Dan selfie.

This is some sort of Rockfish.  I circled it because it's doing a good job of pretending to be a rock.

Out into the  blue.

Dusky Grouper and many little fishies.

Unknown fish.

Unknown fish escaping.

And a compilation of the videos Dan took while diving:

I felt a lot better during this dive and wasn't having as many issues with buoyancy.  I do flail a bit though.  Dan might say I flail a lot, but....I flail a lot on land and I'm probably not going to change.

This more or less concluded our diving adventures for today.

Spain: Day 2 - L'Estartit Dive #1

July 4th

Happy 4th of July American friends!  

Also this is my 150th blog post.  Wooo!

Today we went diving.


Dive #1:

Our first dive was a coastal dive at  Punta Salinas (Salinas Point).  I had not really been diving (excluding Marmaris, Turkey) since I did my check out dives in 2012.  I reviewed my diving book and everything, but when I got in the water, I had a panic attack.  Luckily our guide, Francesc, was great.  He got me to calm down and I was able to do the dive.  I was very grateful that we had him as our guide and that it was just Dan and I with him.

We purchased a GoPro camera to take diving with us.  Because of my nervousness with the dive, Dan was in charge of the GoPro.  I have tried to color correct the underwater photos as everything pretty much goes blue after 5 meters depth. 

Rinsing my mask so it doesn't fog up while diving.

Dan forgot to look at the camera.

A Red Starfish.

There's my butt!  Also our guide Francesc.

Common 2-Banded Seabreams.  

We saw a lot of these, be prepared to see many photos of them.

Sea floor.

Common 2-Banded Seabreams.

Isn't dive gear sexy?   

The water was around 20º C (68º F) so we were wearing hooded 6mm wetsuits.

Dan selfie!

Common 2-Banded Seabream.

Unknown stripy fish.  (It's in the middle on the rock.)

Diving!

Sea floor part two.

I think these stripy fish are Sand Smelt.  (They're on the rock in the middle.)

Fishies feeding.

ENHANCE.

ENHANCE.

Dan scared the fishies away. 

Lots of fishies out in the blue.

Sea Urchins!

A Damselfish.

Hello!

Hello again!

Sea floor part three.

Another Red Starfish.

Ah yes, the rare Common 2-Banded Seabream.

And here it is again.

Just keep swimming.

Looking up.  Maybe Dan wants to be where the people are.

More diving.

Completed dive! 

  

I had some trouble with my buoyancy during the dive, but it was good once I calmed down. 

The boat had a fancy dive elevator thing that lifted you out of the water.  It was pretty sweet.

I do not currently have the software to color correct video installed on my computer, so here it is as is.  In the future I may upload corrected video, but I wanted to get this post up in a reasonable amount of time (unlike some of the past posts).

This concludes our first dive adventure.