The semi-official Wanda site was on Jazz’s list from the first week, and she was determined to make the dive happen. We had several times made plans to visit, we were thwarted by committee votes for other sites. So, since we were diving solo, after a snack of empanadas from the dashboard oven, we headed a bit further south for our second dive of the day at the fish-gazing site called Wanda.
The crevalle jacks from Larry’s Lair apparently thought that was a great idea and followed us down.
This site has a nice mix of soft and hard corals.
This leads to lots of places for fish to “hide” really ineffectively, like these schoolmasters.
Speaking of hiding, we’ve mentioned how trumpetfish like to shadow-hunt behind other fish; here’s another example. And a black margate that kind of looks like it’s doing the same to a schoolmaster, though actually they’re just floating.
We see a lot of hermit crabs on these dives, but rarely take pictures of them as they (also) like to hide. Here’s a rare example where the crab hiding in a vase sponge looked like it might come out on camera. Opposite, a graysby perches on its pectoral fins.
We also had a rare sighting of a pair of porcupine puffers, one with stripes and one with the faint beginnings of stripes.
Back on the topic of things hiding among the corals…
On the way up, we ran into a few big schools of fish. First chromis, and then a mix of schoolmaster and mahogany snapper with a bunch of black margates sprinkled in.
And then, as we were almost out of the water and the GoPro battery had died, along comes a grand finale, a spotted eagle ray! And the camera managed to turn back on to grab some seven seconds of video.
