Monday we headed out to Boca Catalina beach. The weather was amazing, sunny and calm. As we approached the beach, we noticed a lot of snorkelers in the water. And with good reason! The water clarity was the best we’ve had so far. Near the shore, it is quite sandy so it was a little cloudy, but once out about 15-20 feet you could see for miles! We got some really amazing shots. It was hard to pick just a few for the blog!

Here is a movie of what we think is a green turtle. I’m including both movies I took, Just Because it is so awesome to swim with these dudes! The Red Sail snorkelers had gone right over the top of him and missed him. I saw the guy, took a few pictures, then dove down hoping he’d some up for a swim. Well, he didn’t disappoint us! One of the girls from the Red Sail group couldn’t stop giggling with glee when she saw him. Lucky for them, Pam called them back for the view!

We also saw so many Queen Triggerfish I can’t believe it! It’s a fish I just love! It’s so elegant in the water, with such amazing colors and patterns. I’m posting pictures of two in particular, an adult one, and a juvenile one. The juvenile one has a more delicate color, almost lavender, and she was about eight inches. The larger one is a deeper blue, with darker colors on her facial features. She was well over a foot, maybe eighteen inches. They are usually tough to get a picture of, because they swim away from you, but the little one in particular let me take a lot of pictures of her.

I was busy taking pictures of a French Angel, when Pam said to me, “Are you taking pictures of the Angel, or the scorpionfish?” I hadn’t even seen the scorpionfish! And this brief movie will show you why it’s so hard to see them! He’s laying right on the shelf and looks like the rocks and coral he’s around!

The picture of the French Angel is kind of remarkable too. Usually they swim away from you too. They just don’t like you pointing a camera at them. This particular Angel kept coming right up to us, approaching within three or four inches! The sun hit her at a remarkable angle, and made her gleam and glint with amazing sparkles. I really like this picture!

Another shot I managed to get was of a barjack. These fish are tremendously fast swimmers, and come shooting across the reef, usually in small schools, but sometimes they are alone. The other fish scatter in their path, because they are predators, using their speed to snatch the unwary. This jack was very large, and paused right beneath us, allowing me to snap this shot.

We saw a large school of Caribbean Reef Squid, maybe the largest we’ve seen. Usually these fish will move away when you get too close, but again, they just hung around. Not sure what it was about today, maybe all the great sunny weather made them lazy! Anyway, here’s a brief movie of them just hanging around. Interesting colors on them in this movie.