Shark! Jellyfish!! Turtle!!!

After my moonlit dip, I slept like a rock, as I often do when there's an ocean nearby. Unless there's also a fog horn. Or a mosque.  I woke up to use the bathroom and realized that dawn was just breaking. It was a gorgeous morning, so I decided to climb the Kanawa Island hill to watch the sunrise. It was beautiful.

The sun rising over Flores

I also got a great view of our resort.

A birds-eye view of Kanawa Island Resort

The thatched buildings are the bungaloes, which we moved to later in the day. Even from that high up, you can see how clear the water is. The black in the water is the cool coral reef. Oddly, the photo looks like I used a fish-eye lens, but it was just my iPad mini. Funny how the mind plays tricks.

On my way back down the hill, I saw Tadashi walking along the water, then I saw him hauling a$$ back to the bale-bale. I knew he must have seen something cool. And sure enough, I learned later that he saw baby black-fin reef sharks hunting in the shallows! The same shallows that I swam in last night. I didn't feel so silly about be afraid of my shadow any more. 

When I got down from the hill, it was still really beautiful and the water was so calm that I wanted to snorkel before breakfast. My fishing friends are always saying that fish are more active in the morning, so I figured that this would be a good time to go snorkeling. And it was! There were a lot more fish about than we had seen the previous afternoon. Although we were also in a different part of the reef, so maybe that was part of it too.

We saw a ton of cool stuff. It was just like the exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, except better, because we were in the exhibit. 

I had a number of fish swim straight at me, only swerving with a few inches to spare. It's startling and funny all at once. I saw a seahorse and a bottle-nosed fish, which is really similar to a sea horse, except it has a straight tail. We saw crazy chocolate chip and purple star fish, and live clams that were two feet long. 

At one point, Tadashi yelped, and he tought he was bitten by something. I went under, and saw a moon jelly just six inches from him. I know some of those can hurt like a SOB so I frantically motioned for him to swim away. And he did -- quickly. 

Tadashi wound up with stings in his torso and his arm. The jelly must have gotten caught inbetween the two. He's okay now, but he felt like he was on fire at the time, so we were going to head back in. 

Somehow we started going the wrong diection, and boy are we glad we did, because not five minutes later, we saw a sea turtle! It was so majestic. This was the classic kind of sea turtle, and it blended in with the coral really well. It was about three feet in diameter. We hung out for about fifteen minutes, watching it eat breakfast in the coral. It was sooooo cool.

The sea turtle was one of the a few things I really really wanted to see. Turtles and manta rays. Hopefully we'll see rays in a few days when we go to Manta Point.

After breakfast, we moved from our bale-bale to a cabana. Lucky us, we got the best one in the resort, right on the end, set a bit by itself (#1).

A few hours after we moved, Tadashi spotted four more baby black-tipped reef sharks in the shallows right in front of our cabana. I was thrilled!  We watched them for nearly an hour. It appeared like they were collaborating to catch a school of fish. They were about two feet long, and really cute. Tadashi had a polarizer on his lens, so his photos are better, but here are a few of mine.

By the time we finished watching with the sharks, it was laye afternoon and the light was georgeous.

The tide was low so I went snorkeling for the third time today with our new friend Cynthia. The reef is so close that at low tide, everything is at eye level. It is absolutely surreal.

Tadashi and Cynthia kicking back on the cabana's veranda

We are really regretting not bringing Tadashi's prescription-lens mask, and an underwater camera. We're hoping we can pick up a mask in Bali in a few days. For now, I think well try to get in the water for low tide -- but not too low, otherwise there won't be enough clearance for us to go over the coral.

Basically, we hung out with the entire cast of Finding Nemo today. It was epic!