Sea Turtle says: You go that way, I'll go this way.

What: Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) on a Malaysian reef.
She decided to head in the opposite direction from the divers in the background!

Where: I took this photo while diving at Pulau Sipadan,
off the coast of the Malaysian side of Borneo.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Stingray City, Grand Cayman Island

What: Divers interacting with Southern Stingrays (Dasyatis americana).

Where: I took these photos while diving at Stingray City,
a well known dive site in the Cayman Islands.

[Click on the photos to enlarge.]

Shell Collecting and Diving

by B. N. Sullivan

Awhile back, a repairman came to our home.  As he passed through our house on his way to the offending appliance he was there to fix, he screeched to a halt beside a display case in our dining room.  Inside the display case were several hundred small seashells.

He told us he was an avid shell collector and asked if we would mind if he took a moment to look over our collection.  We told him to go right ahead.

He stood there for awhile, quietly reciting the names of the different shell species as his eyes passed over the rows in the display.  It was obvious that he knew something about shells.  At length, he looked up at us and declared, "This is a really beautiful collection!  You must have spent a fortune for these."

Jerry and I exchanged puzzled looks, and then one of us told him we had paid nothing for the shells.  We had found all of them.

The repairman's eyebrows raised in surprise.  He said, "You must be divers -- and you must do a lot of deep dives."

We acknowledged that this was so, but then asked how he knew that.  He said, "You have a lot of shells that are never found on the beach, and a lot of those only live in deep water.  If you didn't buy them, then you must do a lot of deep diving to have so many different deep water species."

Then he looked at the display case again and commented, "Funny, though.  I don't see any cowries. Most divers who collect shells have at least some cowries..."

The cowries were in the next room, we told him,  in a separate display case.  We led him there to see our cowrie collection.  His gaze zeroed in like a laser on a small cowrie in the middle of a row in the display.  He pointed to it and gasped, "You actually found this one?!"

We told him where we had found it, and he shook his head in amazement.  We took the shell out of the display case so that the repairman could have a better look.  As he turned it over in the palm of his hand,  he said he had been trying to acquire an example of that shell species for years.  Several times, he told us, he had seen one for sale at auctions, but he never could afford them.  He said they always sold for more than five hundred dollars.  

Now it was our turn to be amazed!  We never buy shells, nor do we sell them, so we never had thought of  our shells in terms of monetary value -- and the one that was supposedly worth so much wasn't even among the prettiest of our shells!  We do  have lots of very pretty shells, but the most cherished shells in our collection are those  that have a personal story attached to them. 

In the next post, we will give our readers some pointers about how to find shells while diving, and then we will tell about -- and show --  some of our favorite shells.  Stay tuned.

About the Photo: That's our friend Dan, looking for shells among the rocks in a surge area along the coast of Puako, Hawaii.

Fish Tales: Encounters with the Napoleon Wrasse

by B. N. Sullivan

Imagine that you are on a dive boat in the Red Sea. The boat has just tied up to a mooring at a place called Jackson Reef in the Tiran Straits. All geared up, you jump off the stern platform of the boat and begin your descent. As you drift down gently through the water column, something off in the distant blue catches your eye. At first all you can make out is a hulking shape that looks vaguely like a Volkswagen beetle, and it is moving toward you. As it lumbers along, the shape tilts this way and that, and as it gets closer you are able to make out pectoral fins, big eyeballs, and huge fat lips. You realize it's definitely not a Volkswagen; it's a great big fish - A Napoleon Wrasse.

Earlier this week, for Wordless Wednesday, I posted a photo of a Napoleon Wrasse. Readers commented on the size of the fish, on its shape, and on its prominent eye.

These guys definitely are big: adults usually are close to four feet in length, although I read somewhere that there have been reports of older males of the species occasionally reaching a length of about six feet. Females tend to be smaller. In any case, they are said to be the largest species in the Wrasse (Labridae) family.

They are heavy-bodied, and weigh several hundred pounds. Because of their bulk, they usually lumber along, but make no mistake - they are capable of very quick speeds, too, at least over short distances.

Their eyes are large, and each can move independently. The eyes protrude and rotate in a way that might remind you of the ball turret on a World War II B-17 aircraft (without the gunner). When they are close to you, they tend to tilt to look at you with one eyeball, much as a chicken would.

The common name, Napoleon Wrasse, arises from the prominent bump that protrudes from the foreheads of fully grown adults, giving them a profile that is reminiscent of Napoleon Bonaparte with his hat. Another common name for the fish is Humphead Wrasse -- take your pick -- but in either case, the scientific designation for the species remains the same: Cheilinus undulatus.

These fish can live for thirty years or so, and they seem to have long memories. When we first began to dive in the Red Sea a few decades ago, dive guides there sometimes would entertain their clients by hand feeding boiled eggs to the Napoleon Wrasses. After awhile, once everyone finally realized that this was not an ecologically sound thing to do, this practice was banned.

Unfortunately, no one sent a memo to these fish to tell them not to expect boiled egg handouts from divers. For years after the practice of feeding them boiled eggs had stopped, the Napoleons still converged near dive boat moorings as soon as they heard the sound of the boats' engines approaching. There they would lurk until they spotted divers descending, at which point they would approach the divers at quite close range, hoping for a free snack.

Sometimes the Napoleons would do more than wait. If a diver reached into the pocket of his vest for any reason, the Napoleon would quickly swim right up to that diver in anticipation, sometimes nudging the diver with those great big fat lips. We've heard countless of stories of divers who had to physically push a Napoleon away from them repeatedly before the fish finally got the message that they had no eggs to hand out.

In an extreme case that we actually witnessed, a friend who was diving with us lost an important piece of gear to a Napoleon, and almost lost his hand as well.

For the benefit of our non-diving readers, let me first explain that these days, scuba regulators (the device that reduces the pressure of the compressed air in the cylinder so that it can be breathed) usually have two second stages, i.e., the part that includes the mouthpiece. The primary one will be used by the diver to breathe underwater. The secondary one, though fully functional, is a back-up. As such, it is usually attached to the diver's vest by a clip or similar means, or stuffed into a pocket.

So then, on this particular dive, the clip that usually held our friend's back-up second stage had broken. Rather than let the device trail behind him, he held it at waist level, cupped in his two hands, as he swam. Now, these devices come in a wide variety of colors. Our friend's happened to be white. (Can you see what's coming?)

Along came a Napoleon. It saw the round white shape cupped in our friend's hand and apparently mistook it for an egg. First the fish swam back and forth excitedly around our friend. Then it nudged him. Annoyed, our friend put out one hand to push the aggressive fish away. At that instant, the Napoleon lunged and snapped the white regulator out of our friend's other hand -- or tried to. The regulator was attached to a hose, of course. When the Napoleon bit, the hose partly detached and it began to froth like crazy from the rapidly escaping compressed air. That scared the fish, which went zooming past us with our friend's glove hanging from its mouth!

That was the end of that dive: time to initiate emergency procedures. A fourth diver who was with us immediately handed off his back-up second stage to our stricken friend so that he could breathe. Meanwhile, Jerry swam around behind him to turn off the valve on his cylinder, stopping the uncontrolled flow of air. Then, with the two divers sharing air, we all swam back to the boat.

Once on board, we inspected the damage. The hose had to be replaced, and although the white second stage that had been bitten probably could have been repaired, our friend announced immediately that he would replace it -- with a black one! No one ever saw the glove again, but our friend was happy enough to have relinquished it, since he still had his hand.

By the way, we have seen Napoleons elsewhere -- especially in the waters around Malaysia and Indonesia -- but only the ones in the northern Red Sea were so bold. The ones we saw in other places tended to keep their distance from divers. Apparently they had not been fed by divers. In fact a dive guide in Indonesia told us that Napoleons had been a favorite target of spear-fishermen there until quite recently; thus, they had learned to be wary of humans underwater.

About the photos on this page: Each image shows a different individual Napoleon Wrasse, and each was photographed on a different dive. I took all three photos in the Red Sea: the top photo was taken at Jackson Reef in the Tiran Straits; the other two photos were taken at Ras Mohammed, near the tip of the Sinai Peninsula. And in case you are wondering, the Napoleon in the third photo is not about to bite the leg of the diver on the left. It's an optical illusion created by the wide angle lens. The wrasse actually was positioned between the two divers.

What Brutus the Great Barracuda Saw

by B. N. Sullivan

In the previous post I wrote about a Great Barracuda named Brutus who liked to follow Jerry around the reef at Puako. If you read that post, you'll recall that after a few experiments, we concluded that the big fish actually was attracted to the yellow sleeves on Jerry's wetsuit, probably because the color stood out so well against the background, compared to the black and dark blue suits the other divers in our group were wearing.

Today I was looking through some recently scanned photos, and by chance I came across this nice shot of Jerry with a school of Horse-eye Jacks. I took it with natural light -- no flash -- at Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Looking first at the thumbnail, I thought, "This looks like a Right Blue photo." But when I enlarged it on my monitor, I knew instantly: "THIS is what Brutus saw!"

See what I mean? (Insert 'big grin' emoticon, heh heh.)

[Click on the photo to enlarge]

WW#28 - Diving on the Wreck of the Zenobia

[Click photo for larger view.]

My previous Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wordless Wednesday home page.

WW #26 - Photo of a diver taking a photo of a diver

[Click photo for larger view.]

My previous Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wordless Wednesday home page.

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.

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...

Diving then and now - Part 1

by B. N. Sullivan

One of the earliest posts in The Right Blue tells about our training as divers. In the post I mentioned that I first learned to dive in 1970. That's right -- 38 years ago!

Diving has changed a lot since 1970, mostly because of improvements in equipment. We decided it would be fun to review the progression of those changes for our readers. This exercise will take several posts, so bear with me.

To start things off, have a look at the picture at left. That's me, in 1970, when I was a newly minted diver. (No, I wasn't angry -- the sun was in my eyes!)

When we first unearthed this old photo, I had to laugh. That red thing I'm wearing looks like a life vest pilfered from an airliner, but it's not. Known as a 'horse-collar' vest -- for reasons I'm sure are apparent! -- it was used primarily for surface flotation.

Dive gear is very heavy, and can be cumbersome. Swimming on the surface with, among other things, a metal tank on your back, and lead weights arrayed around your waist can be incredibly daunting at times. When the flotation vest was inflated, it helped counteract that weighed down feeling, and enabled divers to keep their heads above water while waiting for a boat, or swimming to shore. Those horse-collars were not very comfortable, however.

The vests had little CO2 cartridges inside. The CO2 could be released to rapidly fill the vest in an emergency, but most of the time, we blew the things up by puffing into the little inflator hose. The CO2 cartridges were single-use only, and it was expensive to replace them all the time, so we really did restrict ourselves to using them only when we were struggling or in a jam.

Fortunately those dopey horse-collar vests with the CO2 cartridges are no longer used by sport divers. They've been replaced by buoyancy control devices (BCDs for short), in the form of vests, jackets, or pouches (called 'wings') attached to a harness. These days, BCDs are inflated at the push of a button, with air supplied from the scuba tank through a special low-pressure hose. Divers can and do still use the BCD for flotation on the surface, but they also make use of the device underwater. By adding a little puff of air to the BCD at depth, divers can adjust their buoyancy, compensating for the weight of their gear.

The next thing I spotted in the photo was the tank -- or rather the valve on the tank -- and the regulator. We were using "J-valves" on scuba tanks at that time. There was no such thing as a submersible pressure gauge, so we could not monitor how much air we had left in our tanks once we entered the water. Tanks fitted with "J-valves" had a mechanism that blocked the diver's air supply at a certain (low) pressure level. The valve had a lever on it that the diver could pull to release the remaining air, known as the 'reserve' air. Believe me, that reserve wasn't much, but it would provide a few more breaths -- usually enough to get to the surface (we hoped!).

The regulator in the photo is a single-hose demand flow regulator, which was a pretty sophisticated rig at that time -- compared to, say, a double-hose regulator. Those old double hose regs required the diver to sort of suck the air out of the tank! We still use single-hose demand flow regulators, but the ones we have now have numerous ports on the first stage -- the part that attaches to the tank valve. To those ports we attach various pieces of gear, including power inflators for our BCDs, submersible digital pressure gauges so that we can continuously monitor our air supply, and one or more extra second stages -- the part of the regulator that has the mouthpiece -- to facilitate sharing air with a dive partner if need be.

Note the clunky old analog depth gauge that I'm wearing on my wrist in that photo. Key pieces of dive management gear in those days were the depth gauge and the dive watch or timer. Those relics now have been replaced by digital electronic decompression computers which continuously sense depth, keep track of elapsed time, and recompute every few seconds how long we can safely remain at a given depth -- as well as many other bits of information that I won't go into until another time.

Even our wetsuits have changed. The one I'm wearing in the photo had no lining and was extremely difficult to get into -- just rubber against skin. Everyone carried a box of cornstarch or a can of talc in their gear bags then. We applied it liberally before donning our suits, but it made quite a sticky mess, and often didn't help the process all that much. These days our suits are lined with Polartec or other soft materials that make them as easy to slip into as a pair of jeans.

Ahh, the good old days!

Wordless Wednesday #14 - January 2, 2008

[Click photo for larger view.]

My previous Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wordless Wednesday home page.

Wordless Wednesday #6 - November 7, 2007

[Click photo for larger view.]

My previous Wordless Wednesday posts.

Wordless Wednesday home page.

Picture this! -- Photographing the photographer

Recently someone asked us, "How come there are hardly any pictures of Bobbie on The Right Blue?" The answer to that question is that I've always been the one behind the camera instead of in front of it. As a result, we have very few underwater photos of me.

Ever since we began The Right Blue, Jerry has been going through the thousands of slides we had stashed away, methodically looking for the ones that have a story. Several days ago he came across the one at right. Fortunately it was filed away along with the one below. Jerry scanned them both and passed the images to me to write about.

The first photo was taken by a dive guide and given to me as a souvenir of a trip we made to the Turks and Caicos islands. That's me, stalking my prey -- sneaking up on an interesting photo subject.

The second image is the photo I snapped a few moments later. I had followed this pair of critters around the sand flat for nearly ten minutes before they lined up just right for me to take the shot. I've mentioned in earlier posts that I really love to take pictures of critters' faces and especially their eyes. My next favorite theme after faces and eyes is behavior.

The dark colored fish in the photo is a Bar Jack (Caranx ruber). This fish makes its living as an opportunistic feeder, so it is swimming along a little above and behind a Southern Stingray (Dasyatis americana) hoping to snag a free lunch.

The stingray rummages in the sand looking for little creatures to eat -- worms, small clams, tiny crabs, and such. To locate its prey, it fans away the top layer the sand by fluttering its wingtips.

The crafty Bar Jack follows closely, letting the stingray do the excavating. If the stingray uncovers something that looks tasty to the Bar Jack, the jack will snatch it in a lightning strike, then resume its position keeping watch over the stingray's shoulder, as it were.

We've seen Bar Jacks throughout the Caribbean. In addition to pairing with hunting stingrays, we've also seen them following goatfish -- another species that digs around in the sand and rubble for food.

By the way, the Bar Jack doesn't always look so dark. When it's not feeding, it is a handsome silvery blue color, with a black bar running along its back from its dorsal fin down to the lower lobe of its tail fin like a racing stripe.

Underwater boogie

If you think that all divers do underwater is swim around and watch pretty fishies, think again. Check out this video of divers Doug Silton and Dax Hock demonstrating their underwater dancing prowess. Not everyone can do the Shim Sham and the Lindy Hop 22 meters below the surface!



(If the video does not display or play properly above, click here to watch Doug and Dax on YouTube.)

The video of Doug and Dax was shot while they were on vacation last year at Ko Tao, Thailand. Thanks so much to DougSilton for posting this terrific video on YouTube for all of us to enjoy. How about a nice round of applause for Doug and Dax!

[Tip of the hat to Craig McClain for posting the video on his blog, Deep Sea News, which is where we first saw it.]

Diving at Puako: There's no place like home

Last week we began to tell our readers about Puako, Hawaii -- the place we consider to be our home base, as divers. Puako has a magnificently rugged shoreline formed by an old lava flow. There are a few small sandy beaches there, but most of the shoreline is rocky and very irregular.

It makes a pretty picture, of course, but it is what's offshore under the water that draws us back there again and again. The photo at right shows our favorite entry point for shore diving at Puako.

We have waded into the ocean hundreds of times at this very spot to begin a dive. In fact, we have dived along this section of Puako's coast so frequently that we have come to know the terrain there as well as we know our own back yard on land.

We know where all of the resident critters live along that stretch of the coast, and we gave names to many of the 'regulars.' We've drawn maps of the reef there. We know every landmark and topographical feature, and we named those, too. In fact, we know the area so intimately that we like to say that if someone so much as turned over a rock, we'd notice!

If that sounds like an exaggeration, think of it this way: If you lived near a park or a wood and you walked through there several days a week for years, wouldn't you know it as your own? You would know where the terrain was flat and where it was hilly. You'd come to know which kinds of trees were there and where they were located. You'd learn what kinds of birds and animals lived there, and you might notice where they nested. Well, it's just like that on the reef, except that there is coral instead of trees, and there are fish and crabs and octopus instead of birds and squirrels and deer.

There's probably only one other diver who knows the Puako reefs as well as we do, and that would be our old friend Dan, a.k.a. 'Puako Diver Dan.' That's him in the photo at left. (Everyone say hi to Diver Dan!)

Dan lived in Puako for many, many years and was our most frequent dive companion during that period. He was with us on most of the hundreds of dives we made at Puako, and he did a lot of critter naming and landmark mapping there, too!

We know that he's been reading The Right Blue since it was launched, and since so many of our stories about diving at Puako are Dan's stories, too, we hope he'll soon stop lurking and help us to tell the tales!

Prologue: The supporting cast

I mentioned in the introduction to The Right Blue that this project is part memoir, and part travelogue. Of course, we didn't do all of those thousands of dives or travel all of those thousands of miles alone.

Over the years we have enjoyed the companionship of many other divers and fellow travelers. In many ways, the stories we will tell here are theirs as well as ours.

We're still in touch with many of our old dive buddies and travel companions, so we decided to tell them about The Right Blue project, and to invite them to participate in whatever way they wish.

We have no doubt that our old friends will be interested to see the photos and read the stories we post here. We have no doubt that this project will evoke memories for them as it does for us. What we are hoping is that they will be inspired to add to what we have to say by sharing some of their photos, adding their versions to our stories -- and telling some of their own tales as well.

At the very least, we are asking our old friends to add their comments to the blog posts, and to give us permission to post some photos we have of them. At best, we're hoping that we can convince our lifelong friends to contribute some of their own photos, and to write guest posts about their undersea experiences, too.

So here's a shout out to all of our former dive buddies and travel companions (you know who you are!). Dig out your old photos, conjure up your memories and write them down, and then email the lot to us. We'd like nothing better than to turn The Right Blue into a community project.

P.S. That's one of our long-time diver friends in the photo on this page. I wonder if she'll recognize herself and be able to recall when and where the photo was taken...