TGIF
April 17th is National Haiku Poetry Day and to celebrate, we offer Blenny Haiku. Please, no judging or heckling – just having a little fun here – but feel free to contribute your own by commenting at the end of this post.
We just had three great days of diving at the Blue Heron Bridge having planned our trip to head home after this morning’s dive, before the Memorial Day holiday weekend craziness started. But we didn’t expect the craziness to start with an overzealous law enforcement officer (accompanied by a TV cameraman) whose boat snagged Eric’s dive flag in her effort to bust Ned, because his dive flag was not flying fully upright. A sagging flag is apparently an extremely dangerous infraction, which … Read more
Happy Friday! The photo above is an Urchin Carry Crab (Dorippe frascone) doing what it is supposed to do: carry an urchin for camouflage – that’s how it got its common name. These particular crabs of the family Dorippidae, have modified back legs that they use to grip the urchins or other assorted matter like leaves or discarded shells. They are muck diving icons – we see them on many dives. Below is a picture of a crab that has … Read more
Happy Friday! Blennywatcher is on the road, so I’m sharing some amusing marine life encounters from the archives. We don’t seek interactions with fish and critters – sometimes they just happen. The Goliath Grouper, hanging out in an area where some dive operators fed fish, stalked us, hoping for a hand-out. The head shaking behavior, shown in my video at the end of this post is interesting because a friend showed me similar footage of a grouper in Bonaire, where … Read more
From the Sort of Diver Archives: The N.E.D. (Non-Educated Diver) Certification, circa 1988. If you want to read the details, click on the image to upload a bigger copy. To read more about Sort of Diver, A Scuba Diving Lampoon, check out my earlier post, Humann Turns Fishh.
In 1995, our good friends, Patricia and Richard Collins, published Volume 2 of Sort of Diver, A Sport Diving Lampoon. It was a pretty funny send-up of the dive magazines of the day, complete with advertisements for indispensable products like Camel Spit Defog and articles like “In-depth Buyer’s Guide to Snorkel Holders.” We spent many hilarious evenings around the dinner table at Paul Humann’s house listening to their latest ideas for SOD. We were all invited to participate and nothing … Read more
Under the Laha dock in Ambon is not the most scenic dive site in the world, but what an amazing place for critter watching. This seahorse, pointed out by my friend Wendy McIlroy, looked like it was eating a nudibranch. Theoretically nudibranchs exhibit aposematic coloration, bright colors that warn would-be predators that they are toxic or distasteful, but maybe this seahorse was colorblind. Once I settled down and focused, it was obvious that the little flabellina wasn’t breakfast – it … Read more
Update July 2017 ~ We are no longer selling blenny shirts online, but do print them from time to time. Send us a note if you are interested. The Blenny Week t-shirts were a big hit, so we decided to put them online – available to one and all. But Joanne, our design diva, caught Blenny Fever and ran with the idea so we have more, much more. If you have a blenny enthusiast on your holiday gift list (and … Read more
This week we are attending DEMA, the dive industry trade show. We aren’t party animals, but last night we spent a couple of hours with friends at the Wetpixel/DivePhotoGuide party. For some reason Sort of Diver, A Sport Diving Lampoon, published in 1995 by dear friends Patricia and Richard Collins was on my mind after we left the party. So, inspired by all the dive equipment and dive talk this week, it seems appropriate to share a favorite photo borrowed … Read more