Two more photos to share with you today. One of probably the smallest subject I photographed and one of definitely the largest animal I photographed during the dives. Again, I apologize for the bad blue color cast to the photos, these really aren't great photos, but I wanted to share them anyway.

If you're confused at what you're looking at there, I apologize, the scene was really much more interesting without that blue color over everything. Almost dead center of the photo, you'll see a small fish. There was a pair of these fish using this shell as a home (the other is on the left edge of the photo, but facing the camera and thus hard to distinguish). They were black and white and orange (I think it was orange, but I am second guessing myself now) and I almost completely missed them, but cause a flash of color as they darted into their shell. I managed to get myself down and out of the current and sat patiently waiting until they came back out of their hiding spot and went back about their business. They really were fantastic little fish, and I wish I could have come back with a better photograph of them. Oh yeah - and they couldn't have been more than half an inch long.

This guy, on the other hand, was absolutely massive. No lie, he was the size of a small car. I would have liked to have gotten a shot of him with something to give the photo some scale, but when we drifted by him, the current was pretty strong. I was towards the front of the group when we saw this behemoth, and honestly I didn't realize what I was looking at was a turtle at first. He had his head tucked under the coral branches you see in the left of the photo. As our group approached, he gently lifted his head, checked us out, and decided it was time to find somewhere else to nap. There is someone in our neighborhood that has one of those Smart Cars, and I think this this was about the same size as that car. We saw turtles on pretty much every dive we went on last week (including one that landed on our instructor - Mike's shoulder and kicked me in the hand and camera when he swam away), but this one really will stick with me. The others were all generally smaller and had that typical fun quality that sea turtles have to them, and produced a kind of happy, carefree feeling to watch them. This one, however, just seemed to strike me with an overwhelming sense of awe and reverence - to be in the presence of a creature so massive and obviously so old (if I had to guess, this particular turtle was probably three times my age). I remember thinking that this is why I enjoy scuba diving so much - so that I can experience these kinds of creatures first-hand instead of seeing them only on nature documentaries (which I watch tons of). But at the same time, I felt the twinge of sadness knowing that we're destroying the habitat and environment for such majestic creatures such as this.

Large or small, both of these encounters are things I won't soon forget. I know the photos I have of them aren't that clear, but the memories I brought back certainly are.

- Bill