28, 29, 30

OK. Wrapping it up, boss.

These are photos, videos and details from the last three dives of the St. Thomas trip.

We did our two boat dives, then, wanting to see the Coki Beach area by day after the night dive the previous evening, we talked Peter into giving us a couple full tanks to do a quick spin around Coki.

Before the dive we hung out with one of the beach cats.



Then off to the first site.


Grassy Cay, St. Thomas, USVI
Nov. 14, 2008
Logged dive: No. 28
Max depth: 65 feet
Bottomtime: 52 minutes

Below is a video snippet of manfriend's macho back roll.




And then the second site.


Lovongo Cay, St. Thomas, USVI
Nov. 14, 2008
Logged dive: No. 29
Max depth: 55 feet
Bottomtime: 50 minutes

And finally Coki to finish off the trip.


Coki Beach, St. Thomas, USVI
Nov. 14, 2008
Logged dive: No. 30
Max depth: 45 feet
Bottomtime: 35 minutes

From here on out I get lazy. You just get a photo blog. Captions, if I write them will be under the photos. And there are a couple little videos in there.

So really, you should keep reading.

We actually saw these dolphins later into the second dive. But I wanted to post them toward the top here to make sure people stuck around long enough to see them. Manfriend took the photo. I was too in awe to collect myself enough to use the camera. Plus these babies were cruising by pretty fast.
They were also far away, but he got a decent shot.

MF, who is fascinated by anemones, took the two photos above.

This is MF's picture of an eel that I spotted tucked into a crevice.

I like this shot of coral, also by MF. Something about the grayness of it is so nice.

From here down are my shots. They will not all have captions.

This is a detail of a sea fan. I like the lacy look of them.

On the beach dive from Coki, we were followed, quite closely, by a large group of yellow-fin snappers. Turns out they get fed by the snuba people and the snorklers and some divers. So they did not just really, really like us. They were moochers.

What IS it? So fascinating.

This video is of a tube worm swaying with the current. They look like plants or flowers until you get too close and they WHOOSH! pull themselves back into their tubes.

That is the tube some sort of tube worm retracts back into.

My eel picture.

Yes, another.

Stop light parrot fish. Love these guys.

Again, what the heck IS it?

My two brains. I liked the contrasting colors of these brain corals. A meeting of the minds.

Here is the turtle from the Coki dive. I looked up, just to see what the light looked like, and saw him swimming over head. As I shot the video, he swam deeper, coming down just to the side of me. This is some really nice footage.

This guy runs a daquiri stand at Coki Beach. He was quite friendly and made a mean daquiri. He said this concoction, the Island Girl, was the specialty. It had strawberries, pineapple, mango, banana and rum. Maybe some other stuff. But once I heard rum I really stopped listening and just said "Yes, please!"

And yeah, it was awesome. This was my end-of-diving treat.

Now, even though I have been home for more than a week, it is just about time to bring this blog back to reality.

One more post, probably tomorrow, of some here-and-there shots around the island.