Capturing the Moment

Smooth Seahorse in Maui   It finally happened! When we first moved to Maui, Heidi and I bought a fish ID book to learn all the local fish and try to find them all. There are only a few very rare ones that I haven't seen. And until now the seahorse was one of them! I was starting to believe that I would never see one in Maui. But thanks to Heidi's sharp eye as we were finishing up a nudibranch dive and were on our way back in we stumbled upon this little yellow guy! Backlit Underwater treasure hunt success!     Known as the Smooth Seahorse, or Hippocampus Kuda , this is one of our rarest finds. I have always looked for them as we swim over beds of halimedes grass but never really expected to find one. If you ask people who have hundreds of dives in Hawaii if they have ever seen a seahorse their answer will most likely be 'never.' That will be my answer no more!    We found this smooth seahorse in about 10ft of water with his tail wrapped aro...

Colors of the deep, who knew?   Scuba Diving Gato Island, Philippines    Since the discovery of a thresher shark dive near Malapascua Island, adventurous divers have been flocking to the golden sand shores of this little tropical island north of Cebu, Philippines. Everyone wants to see big animals like the threshers. Those in the know come here for two reasons; thresher sharks and tiny macro critter hunting. The place to go for the latter is a nearby rock, jutting straight up out of the clear blue water, covered in dense jungle. Terns squawk as they fly in and out of caves and overhangs, but the real wildlife lives just underwater. Gato is famous for sea snakes but also houses treasures like sea horses, nudibranchs, frogfish, and even little white tip reef sharks.    Colors and patterns of all kinds shock the senses as you dive around the island. The shallows are best for nudibranchs and frogfish, while the sea horses like it a bit deeper. Wi...