Tuesday, February 22, 2011

19/02/11 Balloons, Boobies and BBQs (Half time at Curieuse)

Celebrations all round this week as we wished Princess Jaximus the most ‘curieuse’ of happy returns (balloon, scrambled egg and chocolate cake); said goodbye to the greatest of Danes, our very own ‘coral groper extraordinaire’, MrJakobBlom (there were tears!), and looked forward to our long weekend mid phase break.

After Monday morning camp clean we kitted up to get back to love of all our lives at the moment –diving! Always good to be back in the water (no matter how much Ozzie bumping an’ grinding round the kitchen table at the weekend).



Pairing up, we set off in search of any sharks… any sharks at all (Jakob we miss you!) and to polish our monitoring skills with all group 1 and 2target fish. We were rewarded at Coral Garden with the biggest school of bengal snappers in the southern hemisphere (well, probably), a few tawny nurse sharks and some succulent sweetlips at AnsePapaie. Next wehit the study books once more to check individual fish, sat another fish exam and debriefed on all our fish identification and survey work from the first five weeks.

It was then time to give Dexter a work out with three trips to our very own Booby island (usually a mere blob on the horizon, picture above) for mid phase fun dive time! While the journey out there attempted to bring up most of our lunch, the dive made sure to bring up the rest as we battled with strong currents down at 18m. Good visibility and plenty of fish kept us happy though - one huge and hungry bumpheadparrot fish was happy to headbut the sand for the camera while some sneaky sharks made an appearance in the distance to keep everyone entertained.

A well earned BBQ topped off incredible first 5 weeks; and, after much raucousness with far too many butterscotch toffees, hair cutting, face planting and the Scottish highland flinging(!)weeach headed off to various corners of the Seychelles for some peace and chillaxing before returning for Curieuse take 2…


View from our island home

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