The Right Blue: Aegean Sea

Showing posts with label Aegean Sea. Show all posts

Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita)

Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita)

by B. N. Sullivan

This week we commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing (by Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969) with a photo of a Scyphozoan known as the Moon Jelly. Jellies of the genus Aurelia are common in coastal waters worldwide, including the Arctic.

In the photo you can see the four oral arms suspended from the body of the jelly, arranged around the critter's mouth. Along the edge of the bell of the Moon Jelly are tiny hair-like tentacles -- not really visible in this photo. Both the tentacles and the oral arms bear nematocysts, the stinging cells used for defense and to immobilize prey. Moon Jellies "prey" on zooplankton.

I photographed this Moon Jelly (A. aurita) in the Aegean Sea, just a few meters from the shore near Vouliagmeni, Greece. This one was about a foot (30 cm) in diameter, although some nearly half again as large have been recorded.

Seeing stars in the Mediterranean Sea

by B. N. Sullivan

If you go diving or snorkeling in coastal areas of the Mediterranean region, you are very likely to see this Red Sea Star (Echinaster sepositus), which is the most common starfish species in that area. Divers and snorkelers have a good chance to spot this sea star resting on the bottom along rocky coastlines. Although there are records of Mediterranean Red Sea Stars found at depths of more than 200 meters, they are seen most often in relatively shallow water -- less than 10 meters.

Mediterranean Red Sea Stars are actually red-orange in color, rather than pure red. As sea stars go, they are relatively large. The one in the top photo on this page was about 20 cm (8 in) in diameter. The individual in the photos below was even larger -- nearly 30 cm (12 in) across.

Like many common sea star species, Echinaster sepositus has five rays, or arms. One time, however, we found a six-armed sea star that looked just like E. sepositus, except that it had an extra arm. At first I was not certain that it was indeed the same species, so I took the time to photograph it carefully. Someone who knows much more than we do about Echinoderms looked at the photos and assured us that the six-armed sea star was a less common, though well-known, morphological variant of E. sepositus.

The two macro photos below are of the unusual six-armed Mediterranean Red Sea Star. In these macro photos you can see the characteristic surface of the sea star, which is uneven -- sort of dimpled. In the first of the two photos below, you can see the tiny structures, called papullae, which protrude from the 'dimple' indentations on the sea star's surface. In the second photo below you can see the animal's tube feet protruding from grooves on the underside of each ray.

Both the tube feet and the papullae facilitate water exchange, and are involved in the animal's respiration and excretion. The sea star 'breathes' by extracting oxygen from sea water. It excretes some dissolved waste matter through the papullae and tube feet, too.

The tube feet also aid the sea star in locomotion. The tube feet in each row move successively, in a wave, using hydraulic pressure from the animal's water vascular system. This allows the critter to crawl along. By a similar process, the tube feet also can be used to pass bits of food from the distal ends of the rays to the sea star's mouth, which is at the center of its underside.

If you look closely at the second macro photo below, you can see that there is a little suction cup at the tip of each tube foot. These structures help the animal stay put after it situates itself on a rock or other hard surface. If a sea star gets overturned, it can right itself by twisting one or more of its rays so that the tube feet can grab hold of the surface and turn itself right-side up again. (This process can take quite awhile and consumes a lot of the critter's energy, so if you pick up a sea star to look at it, be kind enough to return it to its normal position!)

The sea star lounging in an algae bed in the photo at the top of this page was photographed in the shallows of Aedipsos Bay, on the coast of the Greek island of Evia. The two macro images below, of the six-armed Mediterranean Red Sea Star, were photographed at Cape Greco, Cyprus.

Nudibranchs in The Right Blue

Nudibranchs-- also called sea slugs -- are marine gastropod molluscs (snails) that do not have a shell. (The name 'nudibranch' means bare gills.) Most tropical nudibranchs are small and brightly colored, so they are a popular subject for underwater macro photography.

Here is a directory of articles about nudibranchs in The Right Blue:

Trailing behavior in Risbecia nudibranchs (Risbecia pulchella)- Sep. 1, 2008
Exotic Underwater Nudies - The Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineas)- Sep. 18, 2008
Hawaii's Gold Lace Nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis) - Sep. 29, 2008
The Blue Dragon, a Solar-Powered Nudibranch (Pteraeolidia ianthina) - Oct. 12, 2008
Dotted Sea Slug from the Mediterranean (Peltodoris atromaculata) - Oct. 25, 2008
The Blue Sphinx nudibranch (Phyllidiopsis sphingis) - Mar. 9, 2009
How do critters get their scientific names, and what do they mean? - June 13, 2009
All set for a pajama party on the reef? (Chromodoris quadricolor) - June 13, 2009
Purple sea slug (Hypselodoris apolegma) - Apr. 15, 2010

Here is a directory of nudibranch photos on The Right Blue, sorted alphabetically by family name and species name:

Asteronotidae

Gold Lace nudibranch (Halgerda terramtuentis), Hawaiian endemic species, two macro photos - Pacific: Puako, Hawaii

Chromodorididae

Coi nudibranch (Chromodoris coi), macro photo - Celebes Sea: Pulau Sipadan
Striped Pajama nudibranch (Chromodoris quadricolor), macro photo - Red Sea: Egypt
Striped Pajama nudibranch (Chromodoris quadricolor), feeding on sponge - Red Sea: Egypt
Vibrating nudibranch (Chromodoris vibrata) - Pacific: Puako, Hawaii
Purple sea slug (Hypselodoris apolegma), macro photo - Celebes Sea: North Sulawesi
Pair of Risbecia nudibranchss (Risbecia pulchella) - Red Sea: Ras Mohammed, Egypt

Discodorididae

Dotted Sea Slug (Peltodoris atromaculata), three macro photos, incl. feeding behavior - Aegean Sea: Greece

Hexabranchidae

Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus), largest nudibranch species in the world - Red Sea: Gordon Reef
Spanish Dancer egg mass rosettes (Hexabranchus sanguineus), bottom of page - Celebes Sea: Bunaken Island, Indonesia

Phyllidiidae

Blue Sphinx nudibranch (Phyllidiopsis sphingis) - Pacific: Puako, Hawaii

Pteraeolidiidae

Blue Dragon nudibranch (Pteraeolidia ianthina), two macro photos - Celebes Sea: Malaysia and Indonesia

Nudibranch video:

Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus), shows how the creature 'swims'

Who are you calling a worm?!

by B. N. Sullivan

What the heck is that thing? A caterpillar? A centipede? Nope, it's a marine worm called a Bearded Fireworm (Hermodice carunculata). I wrote an article about this critter for Photo Synthesis, and it includes some ultra-close-up shots of this mean-looking creature. Be sure to go and have a look.

Long-time readers of The Right Blue might recognize this creature. H. carunculata was the 'model' for an article I wrote back in 2007 about photographing critters on different backgrounds. The one pictured here, at right was, was photographed in the Aegean Sea, near Cape Sounion, Greece. [Click on the photo to enlarge, if you dare.]

Also posted on Photo Synthesis this past week was an article -- titled Gimme shelter! -- about creatures that live on or among sea anemones and corals for protection. The article is illustrated with some of my photos of clownfish, including the species that was the model for the cartoon movie character, Nemo.

Another Photo Synthesis article was about photographing feeding records of nudibranchs. Readers of The Right Blue already have seen quite a few of my nudibranch photos, I know, but go and have a look there if you'd like to see a few more.

Next was a photo essay featuring Gorgonian sea fans, including macro photos of several different types. Finally, I posted an article about Cerianthid tube anemones on Photo Synthesis, a topic I wrote about here on The Right Blue just about a year ago. Remember Cerianthid Tube Anemones - Flowers of the Deep?

This is my final week of writing for Photo Synthesis. Just a few more posts there, and I will be back to publishing my underwater photos exclusively here on The Right Blue. Stay tuned...

Dotted Sea Slug from the Mediterranean

by B. N. Sullivan

Today we present the next example of 'Exotic Underwater Nudies' -- our series on nudibranchs (a.k.a. sea slugs) from around the world. This particular nudibranch lives primarily in the Mediterranean Sea. Its usual common name is the Dotted Sea Slug. Its scientific name is Peltodoris atromaculata -- but it used to be called Discodoris atromaculata. More on this below.

We have seen this species frequently along the coasts of both mainland Greece, in the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, and Crete. We also have seen this species in the waters around Cyprus. It reportedly exists in many other areas of the Mediterranean region as well, including the Adriatic Sea.

Let's have a look at this nudibranch. Keep in mind that the images displayed here are macro photos. This nudibranch is actually about two inches (5 cm) long. You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them. (Note: The photos on this page all were taken near Cape Sounion, Greece).

The first two photos are of the same individual. The first shows the creature at rest. You can see how it got its common name, Dotted Sea Slug. By the way, the exact pattern and shape of the 'dots' on these nudibranchs is unique for each individual. They are similar enough to recognize that individuals belong to the same species, but they are not identical.

The second photo shows the underside of this creature. (Yes, I flipped it over on purpose so that I could photograph its underpinnings, but I then returned it to its original position before I swam away.) You can see the creature's 'foot' -- the muscular structure that it uses for locomotion -- and you can see how the mantle extends like a skirt to obscure the foot when the animal is in its normal position.

Like many nudibranchs, this species feeds on sponges. For a long time it was thought that it fed preferentially on only one sponge species, but then better and more refined methods of study revealed that it did indeed feed on at least a second sponge species, and it is possible that there may be others in its diet as well, at least occasionally.

The third photo shows the nudibranch on a sponge, Petrosia ficiformis. There is evidence that the nudie has been munching away at it for some time. These nudibranchs eat by scraping off the top layers of the sponge's tissues with their mouth parts. The scars on the sponge may eventually heal over, at least partially.

Now, about the name. Regular readers of The Right Blue know by now that we like to give the scientific names of the critters we write about or show in our photos, because common names often vary from one location to the next, and certainly from one language to the next, while the scientific name is standardized: it is the same for a given species across languages and locations. When we know and use a creature's scientific name, we can be sure that we are all talking about the same thing.

Sometimes, though, the scientific name can change, too. By this I do not mean to suggest that different scientific names are used in different locations haphazardly. Instead, creatures sometimes are re-named. That is the case with the Dotted Sea Slug.

When a new species is discovered, its anatomy is carefully examined in order to classify it. In the old days, this meant dissection in a laboratory so that its organs and other structures could be assessed for how similar or different they were to those of other, known, species. This is still done, of course, but more recently -- thanks to both the accumulation of knowledge and the development of more advanced methods and instruments -- much finer details about a creature's anatomy can be determined. In short, taxonomists (i.e., those whose job it is to categorize life forms) now can identify differences that were not visible before. One animal may 'look like' another at first glance, but when their cellular structures are examined and compared, for example, we may find significant differences that set one apart from the other in important ways.

Renaming a creature is not done on a whim. Rather, it happens when important new information about a creature becomes available some time after it was originally categorized and named. Discovery of sufficient anatomical differences may lead to re-assigning the creature to a different group or, in some cases, establishing an entirely new classification for it.

As best I can tell from what I have read, at the time this nudibranch was discovered and first described, in 1880, it was classified as a Dorid nudibranch, belonging to the genus Discodoris. It was given the scientific name Discodoris atromaculata. It kept that name for more than 100 years. Then, in the late 20th century, taxonomists using more refined methods began to notice anatomical features that seemed to distinguish this species from others in the genus Discodoris, and placed it instead in the genus Peltodoris. Slowly, the literature on this species is being amended to reflect the re-naming. Meanwhile, it is possible to search on either name and come up with information about the same critter.

Confused yet? Oh dear, I thought so. Don't worry -- there won't be a test!

Easter Weekend - 1974

by B. N. Sullivan

Recently we've been reminiscing here about the Marathon Diving Club, the organization that first trained me as a diver so many years ago. Last week I wrote about the kinds of adventures members of that club enjoyed together. Here's another in the Marathon Diving Club (MDC) series.

The photos below belong to my friend Lorna, who was kind enough to let me use them for this story. They document a trip made by several MDC members and their children over the Easter holiday in 1974. The destination was Paros, a Greek island in the central part of the Aegean Sea. [Click on the photos to enlarge.]

The group traveled by car ferry from the Greek mainland to Paros. In addition to the usual assortment of dive equipment, they took along an inflatable boat that was owned by Lorraine and Leonard, two MDC members. The group posed for the above photo at the Paros ferry dock. You can see the inflatable boat on the roof of the car behind them.

Here are the divers on the beach, preparing for the day's activities. In the foreground of the photo are MDC divers Big Jer (standing), with Lorraine, Frank and Leonard (left to right) seated on the boat. The inflatable boat belonged to Lorraine and Leonard. The woman in the blue bathing suit, in the background, is Lorna.

Here's Big Jer consulting a nautical chart, and briefing the others on what he thinks will be the best spot for the next dive.

Fast forward to: Big Jer with his catch of the day -- a grouper that's big enough to feed the whole MDC team, and their families.

Before returning to Athens, the group formed up at an outdoor taverna in the port area for drinks and food and chat. These 'taverna debriefing sessions' were a standard part of every MDC excursion.

Thanks very much to Lorna for unearthing the above photos and sending them to me. Considering that they were all scanned from snapshots that are thirty-four years old, they still look pretty good!

By the way, not all of the MDC members went on that particular trip to Paros. Some of us stayed behind in Athens that weekend, and -- just for the record -- here is what the rest of us did.

We got together at the home of MDC member Phyllis, for food, drinks, and a group sing-along. (Those were the days!) Here we are on Easter, 1974, on the veranda at Phyllis and Jim's house in Kifissia, Greece. That's Phyllis on the left.

I feel very fortunate to have met all of these wonderful people way back when. I feel even more fortunate that so many of us have remained in touch all these years. We became the best of friends, and the adventures we had during our times together have been unmatched. It's no wonder that we are willing to travel thousands of miles for our periodic reunions.

Happy Easter to everyone. And to all the MDC members, thank you so much for the memories -- and for your enduring friendship.

MDC - Diving, camping, hiking, and ... cliff climbing?

by B. N. Sullivan

Recently I've been telling stories here about a dive club I belonged to many years ago. When I first introduced the Marathon Diving Club, I mentioned that most of the club's members were expats of assorted nationalities living and working in or near Athens, Greece from the late 1960s through the 1970s. I explained that the club got its name from Greece's Marathon Coast, where the club was based. We all did a lot of dives along that coast, and that is where the club's instructors trained beginning divers as well, but our diving was not confined to that area, nor was diving all we did together.

Yes, it was called the Marathon Diving Club (MDC), but perhaps it should have been called the Marathon Adventuring Club. We all were divers, but at times it seemed that the diving was just an excuse to pursue many other kinds of adventures.

Sport diving was new then, and we all developed a burning need to dive in as many places as we could, just to see what was under the water's surface. A sort of meta-sport developed within the group: The club's members always were on a mission to discover new dive sites.

Some MDC members traveled frequently on business, and would come home from their journeys brimming with ideas for future dive trips. Not to be outdone, those who stayed closer to the home base would fan out to the shorelines and islands of Greece at every opportunity to scout potential venues for dive club get-togethers.

Those get-togethers often were more like expeditions. The most spectacular of our adventures entailed international travel (more on that later), but most often we all would travel together to explore a promising dive spot somewhere in Greece.

Off we would go in a convoy of a half dozen or more vehicles full of camping gear and dive equipment, including the club's portable compressor to fill our tanks. We would drive -- sometimes hundreds of miles -- to some coastal location that one of the members had spotted. At other times all those heavily laden vehicles would be put onto car ferries that took us to one Greek island or another. Several MDC members owned boats, or had access to vessels owned by their employers, so there were many boat trips here and there, as well.

Since nearly all of these expeditions lasted for at least two days, part of the responsibility of finding a new dive site for the club was to find a place where everyone could stay. Sometimes there would be a cheap hotel nearby, but more often than not, we camped. Certain club members became very good at negotiating with the owners of seaside farms and olive groves for permission to camp on their land. I can't recall ever paying money for the privilege of camping, but barter deals were not uncommon. For example, since several of the club's members were avid spear-fishermen then, giving some fresh fish to the land owner was frequently a part of the deal.

All of us were young -- in our 20s and 30s -- and most of us had small children. We were all far away from our homelands and families, so our kids went everywhere we went. Usually there were a few non-diving spouses in the group, and -- bless them -- they would keep an eye on the children while the rest of us were diving. It was a really congenial group that way.

Some of the places we visited were readily accessible, but we also explored more remote locations. There even were times when we'd have to hike the last half mile to the beach. When that was the case, we'd all have to make numerous trips on foot, in order to get all of our supplies and equipment to the shoreline from wherever the cars were parked.

One place, which became a favorite, was a picturesque cove situated at the base of a cliff. The underwater terrain there was spectacular, but getting ourselves, and the kids, and all of our stuff down to the little beach was a real challenge. The only access was a narrow, steep goat trail that ran down a heavily wooded hill next to the cliff. The trail was so treacherous, even the goats used it infrequently!

I remember our first trip there -- all of us lined up, staring over the edge of that cliff to the water below. The scene was very beautiful, and the clear water beckoned, yet we all stood there contemplating that goat trail, wondering how we could ever manage to get all our equipment down to the bottom without tumbling -- never mind how we would get it back up to the top later on!

After some discussion, someone proposed that we string together collectively whatever rope we had with us (and anything else that could be used as "rope" -- jumper cables come to mind!). Once cobbled together, this would be used to lower the heavy and bulky things to the base of the cliff. I remember watching the men dangle everything from scuba tanks to a hibachi and a bag of charcoal over the side of the cliff, one item at a time. It took awhile, but it did the trick. Meanwhile the women and children carefully picked their way down the goat trail in pairs.

Our efforts were rewarded. We enjoyed a couple of very scenic dives, while the children played on the little beach. We capped the day's outing with a hearty picnic meal before climbing the steep path -- and hauling our gear back up the side of the cliff, piece by piece.

The photos on this page are from that trip. There is a ruin of an ancient temple at this site, located on the Gulf of Corinth, but in 1970 when we first visited the spot, the ruin had not yet been "developed." In fact, to this day, the Greek countryside is dotted with many ancient ruins that are just there: No tourists, no fences, no admission fees, no postcard vendors -- just some remnants of centuries-old stone structures, overgrown with grass and wildflowers.

In the top photo you can see an old stone pier. At the base of the pier, on the land side, were some large rectangular blocks of cut stone. Other than that, there was very little evidence of what turned out to be a temple to the goddess Hera, from the Classical era.

Years later the ruin was completely excavated and now has been developed for tourism, as well. The last time we visited, we hardly recognized the place. Not only was there a large paved parking lot near the top of the cliff, replete with marked parking spaces for tour buses, the ruin itself turned out to be quite extensive. There are wide paths leading down to the cove now -- no more need to use the little goat path! -- but I doubt if diving would be allowed there these days.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page about the Heraion of Perachora, as the temple is called. The first photo on that page shows how it looks today. The second photo on that page looks more like it was in 1970. They certainly had to remove a lot of trees and bushes, and move a lot of earth during that excavation.

Coming up on The Right Blue: More MDC stories from the 1970s, including a spectacular cave diving expedition, a trip to the island of Paros, and our first dive trip to the Red Sea -- illustrated with old photos that MDC members have sent to us to use here.

Learning to dive, 1970 style

by B. N. Sullivan

From the moment I first put on a dive mask at the age of 10, I was hooked on seeing whatever there was to see under the surface of oceans and lakes. And from the time I knew there was such a thing as scuba diving, I wanted to learn how to do it. My chance to become a scuba diver came in 1970.

I was living in Greece at the time. In those days, most Americans living in Greece belonged to the American Club, a focal point for expat activities. The club was housed in a once majestic old hotel building in Kifissia, a suburb north of Athens. Among other amenities, its facilities included restaurants; a bar; a bookshop full of the latest American newspapers, magazines, and books; meeting rooms that were let out to members for various activities; and a very nice swimming pool. Every American I knew stopped by the American Club at least once a week for one reason or another.

One day in the spring of 1970, I dropped by the American Club and saw a hand-lettered notice on a bulletin board there. It advertised an upcoming scuba diving class. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was ecstatic!

The scuba diving classes were being offered by an organization called the Marathon Diving Club (MDC). The club was founded by a couple of American men who had learned to dive in the U.S. Navy. They started the club as a means of getting together a pool of potential dive buddies in the Athens area. The only trouble was, scuba diving was quite a new sport in those days, and there were few people about who had learned how to do it. So, hoping to recruit new divers into the fold, the club's founders decided to offer diver training classes.

They ran their first class in 1969. I was in the second class, in 1970. The basic classes were held in a meeting room at the American Club. The MDC instructors had learned to dive in the Navy, and since that is what they knew, we learned to dive the U.S. Navy way.

They put together their own syllabus, and taught us the basics of underwater physics, diver physiology, principles of diver safety, and dive gear maintenance. We had no text. Instead, our instructors gave us hand-outs that were excerpts from the U.S. Navy Diving Manual. (I subsequently ordered a copy of the manual from the U.S. Government Printing Office, and I still have it on my bookshelf -- all 668 pages, not counting the index!)

When we had learned all the theoretical bits to their satisfaction, and had passed our written tests, our instructors took us into the American Club swimming pool. There we would eventually learn basic practical skills and try the equipment, but not before the instructors were satisfied that we could 'handle ourselves' in the water.

We had to demonstrate that we could swim the length of the pool underwater, without coming up for a breath. We had to retrieve heavy objects from the bottom of the deep end of the pool, after having swum there underwater from the shallow end. We had to tread water for what seemed like hours - with no fins, and with hands above the head. Only then did we get to put on a mask and a scuba tank to see how that felt.

We learned how to clear water from our masks and our regulator mouthpieces. Then we did an exercise called "doff and don," in which we had to go into the pool in full scuba gear, swim to the bottom of the deep end, take off all the gear, put it in a neat pile, and swim back to the shallow end without it. That was the "doff" part. For the "don" part, we had to dive back down to the bottom of the deep end and put all of the gear back on, piece by piece, and swim back to the shallow end of the pool underwater with everything on correctly, masks cleared, and breathing through the scuba regulator. We did this exercise over and over and over.

When the instructors were satisfied that we knew how to use the equipment properly, they took us to Schinias Beach on the Marathon coast so that we could repeat the exercise in the sea. The spot they selected was about 30 ft deep, with a sandy bottom. We had to suit up on the beach, swim out to a marker, dive down to the bottom, remove all of our gear, pile it up on the sandy bottom, and make a free ascent to the surface. After a few breaths of fresh air on the surface, we had to free-dive 30 ft back down to the bottom, put all of our gear back on, and then make a controlled ascent to the surface.

For those who managed to survive the dreaded doff and don exercise in the Aegean Sea, the final phase of training consisted of diver harassment. Yes, that's right -- harassment. Remember, these instructors were Navy divers, so they taught us much like they had been taught themselves. Hey, if it was good enough for U.S. Navy divers, it was good enough for us!

As the students swam around underwater on their first dives, happy as all get out to be diving in the sea on scuba at last, the instructors would sneak up from behind and turn off a diver's air, or suddenly pull off his/her mask (and other such indignities). The rationale was that a diver had to be ready for any emergency or irregularity, and be able to solve the problem in place. We were supposed to be able to cope, without panicking. In short, we had to know how to rescue ourselves.

This brand of diver training was not for wimps, to be sure, but the upshot was that the MDC instructors turned out a lot of very competent -- and confident -- divers over the years. I did not realize how good my initial diver training had been until, years later, I undertook several more advanced training courses. For example, I remember noting that most of the emergency procedures and 'advanced' self-rescue principles that were taught during my Rescue Diver course were a mere review for me. I had been required to learn most of that in my initial course, so many years before.

Next, I'll begin telling our readers about some of the amazing adventures the members of the Marathon Diving Club had together, way back when. First, I'd like to say thanks to an old friend, "Big Jer," my first dive instructor. We chatted at length on the phone yesterday, reviewing how the MDC and its diver training course came to be. I wanted to be sure I had all the details right, before I set forth the story here for all the world to read. (By the way, Big Jer still dives!)

Preview of things to come, based on things past

by B. N. Sullivan

I have just returned home from a week-long trip. (Did you miss me?) I went to the reunion of a dive club I belonged to many years ago.

Earlier, I briefly mentioned the club when I wrote about our training as divers. I first learned to dive through classes offered by the club. That was in 1970.

Members of that dive club were my first dive instructors, and my first dive companions. Several of them appear in the photo at right, also taken in 1970.

At the time we met one another, all of the members of this particular dive club resided in Athens, Greece and its suburbs. While the membership included a handful of Greek nationals, most of us were foreigners living and working in Greece. We were a diverse lot in terms of nationalities and occupations, but we all loved the sea and the outdoors. That was our commonality.

Although we could not have known it when we joined, the club would become a central focus of our lives for years, and its members would form close, enduring friendships. We dived together, went on camping trips together, and groups of us traveled to other countries together.

We all were young then -- in our 20s and 30s -- and most of us were married and had infants or small children. Far away from our homelands and our families, we became one another's support group. We celebrated holidays together, and our children played with one another. We behaved like a large extended family.

We've lost track of some of the people who were members of that dive club. Others have passed away. But remarkably, quite a few members of that old dive club have remained in touch all these years. Our children now have children of their own, but many of them still stay in touch with one another, too.

We are quite literally scattered around the globe these days, but a number of us still come together periodically for a reunion. During our most recent get-together this past week, I proposed that the story of this remarkable group be set forth in The Right Blue, and everyone in attendance agreed. As we reminisced, we prompted one another for half-forgotten details of our past adventures, and I made notes. Everyone agreed to contribute old photos from our dive trips and other gatherings, too.

We're going to relish recounting our tales here, and we hope that readers of The Right Blue will indulge us while we do just that. Stay tuned...