Tag Archives: octopus

Mullet Bay

December 17, 2009 Maurice Leave a comment

Wednesday dawned clear and warm – barely 90 degrees, so we put on our sweaters and headed to Mullet Bay. It is a large sweeping bay, on the south side of the island. It’s also near the main airport, on the Dutch side, one beach over from the famous Maho Beach. The water was warm and calm, with a beautiful soft sandy beach, about a mile long, in a long gentle curve.

We entered near the left side, and quickly found tons of fish, some we’d never seen before. It wasn’t long before we saw our first octopus. He was partially concealed under a rock, and stayed there, watching us warily as we dove to take pictures of him. We left him alone and quickly found another slightly larger octopus also partly concealed. We took a few pics of him. We found a third octopus hiding under a large rock. He’s probably the biggest one we’ve found on any Caribbean island. We struck out across the bay to the far right side and quickly ran into another octopus. That’s right! We saw octopus all over this bay! At least eight, maybe more, including one little tiny one about three inches long.

There were lots of fish I tried to get pictures of, but following my recent lucky string, I got El Zippo. Sorry folks, but I just suck with a camera. One of Olympus cameras has bitten the dust. It keeps saying close the cover, when it is! LOL Anyway, we’re down to the old repaired Olympus, and it doesn’t work completely. All the buttons except the on/of and the picture clicker don’t work.

We’re off to see Turtle Reef tomorrow (Thursday), so we’re hoping this sucker will last, AND that we come back with pics of turtles. I took 170 pictures at Mullet Bay and about 10 were reasonable.

We snorkeled a long time here at Mullet Bay, and just had a blast. We came out for a beer and a rest and plowed back in for another short dive. It was just as fun, seeing another couple of octopus. We saw this really cool fish, divided perfectly in half, one side silver, the other side black, but of course none of the pics I took turned out.

The sun was setting as we came home, and we passed Maho Beach. It is famous for being the closest you can legally get to jets while they are in the air! We managed to see one plane land. We’ve been saying we’re going to have to come to this beach during the day, but we’re quickly running out of time.

As we drove home in the dark, we saw lots of homes decked out in Christmas lights. Some are really quite swell and extravagant.

We had dinner at Beau Beau’s because they have a lobster medallions special, starting with a lobster bisque, and an ice cream dessert. You can skip this meal as it is passable, but hardly great.

Curacao, Vacations

Wednesday in Porto Mari

May 28, 2009 Maurice 1 Comment

We went back up to the area we were yesterday, looking for Porto Mari again. We found it this time, and what a find it turned out to be! The beach itself is a labor of love for a family who has lovingly restored it. They’ve added a boardwalk so you can walk the 2 kilometers without burning your feet on the hot sand.

There are lots of chairs and umbrellas, palapas and even some larger shaded areas for large families. There is a dive shop, a restaurant and facilities. Lots of great parking too. The strange thing is, we saw way more scuba divers than snorkelers.
BUT the snorkeling was amazing! AMAZING. Yesterday I mentioned how we had run out of new fish to see – well was I wrong!! This site provided us with some stunning fish to see, and lots we had never seen before. The highlight was seeing another octopus, but there were several rainbow flounder, and some fish we can not identify, since we forgot our fish book at home! Smart huh? We saw a couple of morays, and one kind of moray eel we had not seen before.

The entrance to the water is fairly good, some minor rocky bits, but we both got in quite easily. Right away, we saw these amazing silver fish, quite large, 12-20 inches long, with long dorsal fins. They schooled in groups of 8-15 and swam with us for a long time! Quite cute actually…
One thing that has surprised us, is that the Sergeant Major is not as prevalent as it was in Aruba and the Caymans. We’ve seen them, but in nowhere near the quantity we’ve come to expect, and the Dusky Sergeant Major is far more common than the yellow/black banded one.

For dinner we went to The Wine Cellar. We chose that particular restaurant because they provide a free shuttle from our condo! Pretty scientific huh? Well, it was quite simply fantastic. The Wine Cellar is a French restaurant, owned by a Dutch couple who have been on the island for 39 years. The restaurant is indoors, and very cozy with wonderful art on the walls. Service, food, ambiance – all impeccable.

—–
A couple of movies — first, here is a picture of the octopus. Do you see him? They can blend in very very easily, and sometimes the only way to notice them, is if they move.

Well, I dove down to take a picture of the black fish above, we thought was a grouper (turns out it is called a coney). I thought I’d spied something, so went back up to get my bearings then went down again. Well, when I came around a piece of coral, I startled an octopus and he flashed his warning color.

I’ve added two movies here – the first is the “discovery” video, and the second is a short 15 second piece of him getting agitated.

I thought I had an amazing movie of him flashing color, then moving across the ocean floor, while a blue peacock flounder moved beside him – but guess I forgot to turn the camera on! LOL Same thing happened with the moray – had a great movie of him moving across the ocean, then raising his head to me and opening and closing his mouth to flash his teeth at me. Sigh – ah well – guess we’ll have to find another moray to get a movie of!

Another short movie of the octopus.

The domed shapes are called reef balls, and are used to help coral reefs recover. Fish love ’em! When the coral covers the domes, they kind of just fade away. They are made of a material that will eventually just disappear, and leave the coral that has encrusted them to start a new reef.

Aruba, Vacations

Our last full day in Aruba

December 16, 2008 Maurice 2 Comments

On Friday, our last full day in Aruba, we split up the pack. Pete rented a jeep and toured the island with a local woman he met while at our first condo.

Pam, Mike and I were happy to see calm, clear oceans, so we headed north to the lighthouse, and Arashi beach. We had jumped in here early in the first week. The water is clear and calm and we saw some things we’d never seen before!

Tops on the list, was an octopus! Was that cool! Mike spotted him as he moved from the sand to over a rock and changed color from sandy white to a mottled kind of color matching the rocks. He was as tough to see initially as the scorpion fish. If you look at the enlarged picture, you’ll see his eye, and toward the center/right you’ll see one of his tentacles turned over, exposing his “suction cups.”

Some other intriguing fish we saw were the Queen Angelfish, a brilliantly colored fish that is on the cover of our “fish book” for identifying species. We’d never seen one in the ocean, and she was certainly worth the wait!

Also appearing was a lobster, a huge school of Caribbean reef squid, another Queen triggerfish, a smaller barracuda, and of course the French Angelfish.

By early afternoon. we’d tired ourselves out, so we decided to pack in a bit of shopping. Pam and I had been shopping for pinky rings, but had found nothing we really liked. We stumbled upon a nice small shop, A Touch of Gold, run by a nice family. Pam regaled them with her Punjabi swearing, and we had buckets of laughs with them.

It’s funny – you go into a jewellery store, tell them you are looking for a pinky ring, wanting to spend in the $500 range, and suddenly $1500-2500 rings are appearing. Nice – thanks for listening. I tell these guys what I wanted, and they show me 3 rings all under 600 bucks. Guess what? They got the sale! Then Pam started with her tales of Punjabi cussing, and suddenly she’s layered in gold! hah If we ever come back to Aruba, you can bet they’ll get a return visit from us!

Pam wanted another night in a casino, so we went over to the Seafront Casino. Nearby was a nice little shopping mall, open late. There we had dinner at a restaurant recommended by Linda earlier in the week, the Waterfront Crabhouse. Dinner was terrific! I had the same dinner I ordered at the disastrous Petit Cafe. The fish was PERFECTLY cooked, the shrimp were stunningly prepared and scallops a thing of beauty. A wonderful singer performed for us a few short steps away. The full moon was gorgeous; the stars twinkled merrily in the sky; sadness was in the air, but it was really a perfect finish to a really marvellous vacation.

I want to thank Pete and Mike for coming with us and joining in the fun. We had some fun times, some great meals, saw terrific vistas, met some great people, saw some amazing fish – all in all, just a great time.