AMAZING!

Ok - that's the title of this blog for multiple reasons. First reason being that it was an unbelievably amazing day to be facedown in the ocean today. It was some incredibly good visibility today. Steve and I snorkeled for more than 2 hours straight - and the only reason we got out was because I gave up and admitted I was cold when my hands went too numb to grasp stuff any more. Second reason it was amazing is because I found a Lionfish at Playa Shacks. We had done the "stomach-sucking-in-scoot" across some of the shallow reef east of Shacks to look in some of the deeper holes. I thought I saw a large feather duster coral on one of the short walls, and I was getting ready to swipe the water in front of it to watch it pull into its tube, when I thankfully realized that it wasn't quite moving the way I thought it should. Turns out, it was a good sized Lionfish hanging out in the reef. Talk about dodging that bullet! The guy was beautiful, but definitely not something I wanted to tangle with! I couldn't believe what I was seeing, because they are NOT native to the Caribbean waters. When we got home tonight, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and found this interesting little tidbit:

The lionfish is not native to the tropical region of the world, but various species can be found worldwide. Due to a recent introduction, the lionfish has been spotted in the warmer coral regions of the eastern Atlantic Ocean around the Azores and extending into the Mediterranean Sea, and also in the Caribbean Sea and in the [Red Sea] .[2] It has been speculated that this introduction may well have been caused when Hurricane Andrew destroyed an aquarium in southern Florida.[3] DNA from captured lionfish in this region shows that they all originated from the same six or seven fish.

I'm posting a picture I found on the internet - alas - I didn't have my camera with me.