I am not a great fan of beaches, in that i hate sitting in the sun and sand annoys me intensely. However, i do love snorkelling and swimming in the sea - swimming pools don't attract me that much , i like to be able to see wild life and excercise at the same time.
Yesterday and today have been pretty good as i've timed things well- we get to the beach about 6pm , spend an hour in the water non-stop and then head for home, exhausted.
Its still warm at that time and the sea is a comfortable temperature for swimming.
Yesterday didn't look like a great day for snorkelling since the sea looked very disturbed and dark. However it turned out to be excellent visibility further out and there were a huge number of fish shoals.
Its a lot of fun to swim through shaols of tiny fish though i have to say that occasionally teh theme from Jaws comes into my head and I'm very aware of being in the midst of a very interesting food source. Still , most of the time i can concerntate on watching the fish.
Yesterday's shoals had encouraged some really large fish -maybe 18inches long- to cluster around the various little fish shoals and while i was watching an octopus darted out of a rock cave and tried to catch one of the big fish.
I've never seen an octopus before while snorkelling. I've caught a tiny squid and a puffer fish in Scotland [these being the most exotic animals i've seen in the sea previously] but the octopous was a fantastic surpise.
They are generally nocturnal and usually are keen on crabs; but 18 inches of fish must have been too tempting.
The octopus was maybe 20 inches or so- it was difficult to work out the size as it was moving pretty quickly. It was longer than the fish anyway.
I could see that it had caught sight of me and it changed colour in the blink of an eye - from a sandy mustard colour to a brown-ish green colour which blended in with the rocks and weed.
They have very fascinating eyes - very well developed and it was clearly watching me to see what i was doing.
I tried to alert my kids to the octopus but by the time they reacted, it had gone.
This is somewhat inspired by the octopus i saw.
Sketchy swimming octopus
Of course today we spent ages looking for octopuses - we found some likely 'caves' that had empty crabshells lying outside but no octopuses showed themselves.
Today was the day of blue fish - tiny fish that were remarkably similar to the ones you see in fish tanks and some large fish with with big turquoise blue spots.
I also saw some of the black sea urchins that are common in the area and are eaten as a delicacy. There are several fishermen aroudn here who collect these every day and sell them from a barrow in the town. When my kids first saw them they were really excited at the thought of trying sea urchin.
The fisherman allowed my kids to have a taste and they were smitten. I ended up buying a dozen sea urchins and being told by my 5 and 3 year old [at that time] that i had to taste them or i couldn't say i didn't like them! Tables turned lol.
There were lots of very large crabs around today- with shells about the size of my hand and i spent some time watching one eat.
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1 comment:
I've only seen a living octopus one time and that was when I was snorkeling in Hawaii. It scared the crap out of me because it was so unexpected, and moved so quickly. But then when I calmed down, I felt lucky to have seen such a shy creature.
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