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...

Dauin (Dumaguete), Philippines Scuba Dive Destination Wide angle madness! Apo Island's clear waters Stilted bungalows of our resort   Dauin is a tiny municipality of Negros Oriental, Philippines. Except for tourists coming in for scuba diving the small fishing village vibe still rules here. Ladies set up stalls by the road in the afternoons with all the fresh catch of the day. The men and some women too take out big seine nets right around sunset time and drag them along the shallows. Ten villagers hauling in these huge nets on either side made me wonder how any fish are still out there in the shallows. I got my answer when they pulled the net in the first time and I overheard someone say, "stonefish....we got 1 stonefish." They are hoping to get tiny little fish about the size of anchovies on our pizza here in the States to make little fish pancakes and rice for the next mornings meal. I couldn't believe all the work that went in to such a small...