Napoleonfish Wants to Dive Together
This Napoleon wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) wants to be this diver's buddy. You know, he might make a good buddy. He is a good swimmer, very well streamlined, knows the dive site well, easy to spot thanks to the iridescent blue color... Hmm, on second thought, maybe not... Since he doesn't need to think about bottom time, depth limit, or air consumption, he wouldn't want to come up with you. Never mind...
San Miguel of Fiji!
Diving the Bligh Waters of Fiji is a different experience than the usual Fiji diving. The water is a little colder and the current is stronger, but the sights you encounter is simply breathtaking. The offshore atolls of Fiji are completely covered with soft and hard corals, sea anemones, and tunicates. All around these colorful pinnacles, you see a dense swarm of red, pink, orange, and yellow anthias (those colorful goldfish-like reef fish) just like in this picture. After a few dives we said to each other, "This is like San Miguel of Fiji!" This comment will make sense to the hard-core California divers!
Delicate Soft Corals
A diver admires the delicate translucency of the soft coral in the Banda Sea. You will see them in a wide range of colors including red, pink, orange, purple, and yellow. These attractive soft corals belong to the genus Dendronephthya, commonly called tree coral, carnation tree coral, and cauliflower soft coral.
Fuzzy Table Coral at Banda Sea, Indonesia
When you are diving, sometimes you have to remember to stop and look up. Take this image I took in the Banda Sea for example. The surface of the water, with the silhouette of the boat and the sunlight filtering in, becomes a wonderful backdrop for the table coral (Acropora paniculata) with the reef fish swimming above it.
Nemo's Vacation House in Banda Sea
A family of common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) poses for me. Their home is the brilliantly colored Ritteri anemone (Heteractis magnifica), in the clear tropical waters of Banda Sea, Indonesia. There are many amazing tropical dive destinations in the world, but the density and variety of marine life you find in Indonesia is hard to match. When you dive in Indonesia, be ready to swim from one spot to the next, then another spot, then another, until you are ready to tell the dive guide, "Stop pointing out so many things to me! I can't keep up!!"
