Awesome Snorkeling, Part One

We missed the first day of snorkeling because we were kayaking.  You can't do everything all the time in life, but you can do a lot.  We did one kayaking and two snorkels.

We've gone snorkeling a lot of great places.  Nothing has matched our first snorkel, at the Great Barrier Reef in 1989 (pre-blogs, believe it or not), but the Galapagos comes pretty close.  And remember, no matter how bad the snorkeling is anywhere else, it will never be as bad as snorkeling in Cancun in 1992.

The biggest highlights were snorkeling with a white tipped reef shark, penguins, and a sea turtle.  But even beyond that, the diversity of fish was pretty impressive.  Large colorful fish, small colorful fish.

The penguins zipped by so quickly I barely saw them.  I've snorkeled with sea turtles in Hawaii and St. John -- earlier this year I saw three sea turtles pass right next to each other at Maho Bay.

But the shark was different.  Seeing a shark, even one that showed no interest in humans, gave me a spike of adrenaline.   The shark spent a bunch of time just being there, so watching it was pretty easy.  If you want to attract a bunch of snorkelers to a spot, just be a white tipped reef shark.

Snorkeling where we did, between Sombrero Chino and James Island made for a stunning setting, and it was a calm setting, not much chop to the sea.

I bought a new underwater camera for the trip.  I had regretted not having one in February in St. John, so I vowed to fix my mistake.  The camera is the Olympus Tough, which got the best customer reviews on some photo equipment sites, as well as a good write-up on a photo website.

Well, it wasn't easy to take pictures underwater.  I had no idea what to expect, and once I started shooting, I had no idea what I was doing.  I couldn't really see the screen underwater, it was not that well lit, and I ended up deleting most of my pictures.  I took "point and shoot" literally, as I pointed the camera and shot a lot, often getting nothing or just half a fish.

I did get a handful of okay photos, and since they are my first ever underwater photos, I've posted them here.  They certainly aren't brilliant shots or anything.  I've got a lot to learn about using a camera underwater!  I'm happy to take advice from any loyal readers.  Heck, I'm so desperate I will accept advice from any disloyal readers too!

Starfish are pretty nifty.

My first ever Chocolate Chip Starfish.

I didn't know they existed. . .and they

are pretty cool!

The bigger fish are more colorful than

the picture indicates.  The smaller

fish are more plentiful than the

picture indicates.  Great picture, no?

Galapagos penguins!!!!

Imagine this fish more brightly

colored and you'll understand why

I shot it.

See caption above.

Snorkeling, the orange on this fish

is absolutely brilliant.  Trust me,

even if you can't trust the photo.

Bruce getting a good shot of an iguana.

Glen getting a good shot of Bruce.

Click on this picture to enlarge (works

for any photo on the blog), and you'll

see it was the clearest photo of a fish

that I shot.  And of course the picture

was from above, so I got the smallest

profile and least interesting angle possible.

The murky photo of the shadowy shark is

posted simply as proof of shark sighting.

Click on the pic to enlarge.