This World Of Water

I love snorkeling. Swimming in shallow water, near the shore and finding cool new-to-me life forms seems so comfortable. Inducted on to my list of favorite things to do last fall, now when I am somewhere I can snorkel, I need, want, have to go. Mr. D also enjoys swimming and looking for interesting sea life. My favorite animals in the ocean are turtles. I also love the colorful coral, beautifully decorated fish, and anything else interesting that I find. 

So on this trip, we bought a couple of underwater cameras to try and capture the magnificence of the water and variety of life that can be found right near the surface. Another snorkeler took this picture for us. Too bad I wasn't looking at the camera....And guess who came out to see us? We found this cool little rocky cove just a brief walk away from the always populated Napili Bay where there were nearly NO people and probably more than twenty turtles. It is so cool to watch them swim!
This turtle almost seems to be conversing with the little fish swimming around him..."So, little buddy, whadya say we show these people the spirit of aloha?"

Here is sweet husband-o-mine posing with a fairly small turtle...I bet it still weighs more than me though!
Here I am, but my turtle decided to take a breather rather than pose....
The guy with the yellow fin in the corner threw bread crumbs in the water and TONS of fish showed up. I am totally against feeding the fish since it messes with the ecosystem of the reef, but it was pretty cool seeing them swarm around like that. This was at Black Rock, which is like wal-mart for snorkelers as far as I can tell. TONS of people in the water and not much else.
Right near the shore, there was this huge school of dark fish. They were really fun to watch!
My darling husband is always adventurous, so here he is free diving to get a better view of the coral. The water can be so clear or so blurry....and it is hard to tell which from the shore! This day it was super clear!
We had a lot of fun snorkeling and just looking at everything we could find. Turtles are so fun, so cool, and so gentle that it makes me sad they are so endangered. One of the guides told us Hawaii is unique in how many turtles can be found. He said other islands such as Fiji and Tahiti allow the fishing and hunting of turtles for food and they are fairly scarce there. So we feel pretty lucky to have seen as many of them as we did!