Day 138

As of Friday night, I am back in the States!  My awesome mother greeted me at the airport with cookie dough and a thermos of milk.  I hit a Taco Bell within 24 hours of re-entering the country.  I've eaten JIF peanut butter, spicy jerky, real Doritos, Reeses cups and Tagalongs.  Life is good in the USA.

But back to Australia, and my lovely last week on a liveaboard boat.  If this experience made one thing perfectly clear to me, it's this: some people are not made to go on boats.  I and another volunteer spent the whole first night out on the cold, wet dive deck floor because we were so violently ill.  I recovered, but he spent the entire next day in bed (literally the entire day--we had to send people periodically to make sure he was still breathing) and was flown back to the mainland the day after that.  But I persevered, took a crap-load of seasickness meds, and actually had a really good time!

The difference between this liveaboard and my last one was mainly in location.  Last time I was with Deep Sea Divers Den on their boat Oceanquest, which sticks to the outer reef sites close to Cairns, like Arlington Reef.  (See the dive flag next to Cairns on the map?  Yep, right about there.)  This week I went out with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions on their boat Spoilsport, and we went waaay up to Lizard Island.  We hit up Ribbon Reef #10, Cod Hole, North Horn and Osprey Reef.  How far is it from Cairns to Lizard Island?  About 10 hours on relatively rough (for me) seas.  We made this trip on the first night, which is why I spent the night vomiting out on the dive deck.

But after I got over the horrible mal de mer the trip got much better!  (Everything is better when you don't feel like you're dying.)  The food was delicious, the diving was awesome, and everyone on the boat was really nice.  Until they discovered how ticklish I am, anyway.

Without further ado, here are some of my photos!  Not all of them are fantastic photos but try to at least appreciate how cool the fish are, and how fun their scientific names are to pronounce.

A blackback butterflyfish, Chaetodon melannotus.

A Forster's or freckled hawkfish, Paracirrhites forsteri.

A parrotfish!

Still don't know what this guy is.  Some kind of grouper, I'd wager?

My first dive on the boat didn't start off well--I was underweighted, and it took me three attempts (each time adding more weight) to sink.  And when I finally was weighted properly, my buddy realised that he never put his weight belt on at all.  We got down on the fourth try and had a lovely dive, and I still have no idea how much weight I need in kilograms.  Seriously, how hard would it be to label the weights?

A pink anemonefish, Amphiprion perideraion!  (Only one kind of anemonefish is a clownfish, and it's not this one.)

More pink anemonefish.  These guys are mauve-ish with a white dorsal fin and one white stripe behind the eye.

More blackback butterflyfish.

A yellow longnose butterflyfish, Forcipiger flavissimus.

A beautiful six-banded angelfish, Pomacanthus sexstriatus.

A saddled butterflyfish, Chaetodon ephippium.

A Celernia starfish, I think.  Isn't it pretty?  I like starfish because I can poke them and move them and everybody's fine.

I don't know what's in these but I'd put my money on 'slimy.'  Cool shape though!

Two more six-banded angelfish.  Angelfish mate for life!

An orange-lined triggerfish (Balistapus undulatus) from above.

That's a male ribbon eel!  They're tiny and I never could have spotted it myself.

Ribbon eel up close!  Too bad it's not a very good photo.  :(

That's enough for today--I'm still jet-lagged and I need some sleep.  But tomorrow I'll post photos of the shark feeding and maybe some photos of a giant potato cod trying to eat my hair.  Don't laugh, it was scary!

Cheers,

Ashton