The Blue (chapter 1)

A gush of cool water surrounds me and fills my wet suit as I jumped off the back of the boat. Salty, Cool, Refreshing, Beautiful. I signaled I was ok as I carefully set my mask adorned face into the water: looking at the bottom to see what lay ahead in this dive. The heavy steel tank on my back weighted very little in the very boyant salt water: it felt like nothing now that I was excited. I barely even heard the splash as my buddy joined me. Even 35 feet above the coral, it showed reds, purples, oranges and many other colors. It looked quite lively with the thousands of fish that were swimming over and around it as one great, flowing body. A friendly Yellow Tail Snapper came a foot away from my mask, only to swim away, but not before taking a good look at me. Once my buddy was ready, we began our decent. I wished that I was an owl, because no matter how much, or how far I swivled my head, there was always much more to see. We brought ourselves to a hover about 4 feet above the reef. The Sargent Major's and Yellow Tail's were incredibly thick: like a clound ingulfing us. With every kick and propeling movement, the cloud parted and the reef revealed just a bit more of itself. After a few minutes, the fish thinned out and we could begin to see more of the reef. It was incredibly beautiful: the exotic shapes that the coral grew in, the christmas tree worms as I call them, the feather duster worms, the anemone's as the gently swayed with the action of the water. Lobsters poked their antenae's out from underneath of small rock caves. My finger quivered on the top of my camera housing. A Blue Chromis flitted past my mask: just slow enough for me to shoot a picture of him. I took a quick look at my depth guage: 37 feet, beautiful. I spotted something moving underneath a rock ledge, and made a motion to my buddy that we should go check it out. We dropped lower as I held my camera ready for action. I peeked underneath the ledge, what I saw stunned me: I saw the biggest deflated puffer fish that I have ever seen, or heard of. I laughed at the thought of what would happen if he inflated, and began choking on water. This puffer would be stuck if he inflated. I moved on, spotting a very long spined urchin. I was about to shoot a picture of a four-eyed butterfly fish when I glint of color caught my eye. Quickly shooting the photo: I spun around just in time to see a beautiful Queen Angel fish dart into one of many rock caves. Queen Angelfish are known to be as shy as they are beautiful. We floated around this rock cave for about 5 minutes, cameras armed and ready, waiting for the ever-elusive queen angelfish to return to the open: it never happened. We finally moved on to photographing Tunicates: beautiful bluish purpleish almost translucent thing with many small barrels that are open at the top. From what I've learned about them they are a top of Sea Squirt. This one was stuck on a piece of Stag Horn coral. A beautiful fan coral stood eerily in front of us: dominating the scenery. After shooting many photos of it, we regreted to see that we had to return to our boat due to low air. Climbing back aboard the boat we now remembered why dive: for the fun, the trill, the beauty, the excitement and even for the social aspect of it. It was also a nice thing to know that this was just one of many dives to come.