Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Ocean videos

This time last week we were in Mexico. It rained and stormed a lot, so we didn’t get to do all of the diving we’d planned. This time last year we were in the process of moving. It was hot and dry and smoky and stressful. This week we’re dealing with tree damage at home from Sunday’s storms.

I’ll let you decide which is better, but it certainly wasn’t this time last year.

So let’s talk about last week, instead.

One afternoon we just played in the waves. The water was almost rough, but we had a nice time getting beat up. There’s nothing to this video, but a little girl’s smile in an adult’s happiness.

I recorded quite a few of those. Most aren’t very well composed — waves — but, looking at them now, they were consistent. Every time the wave slipped away from her, she stood up and immediately turned for the next one. She’s not even aware of it. It’s an ingrained move, one stemming from years playing in the waves. That’s what I love.

She’s always looking ahead.

These were the best clips from our two-tanks of diving in Cozumel. As you can see, the visibility was pretty low, but we did see a few nice things.

I’ll cut these into individual pieces for anyone who plays favorites. Some people just like to watch the sea anemone wave endlessly. Also, if you didn’t watch it all the way through — shame on you — there’s a giant turtle at the end.

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25
Jun 24

Feeling like a melted towel

The guy that cleaned our room in Playa del Carmen, Fredy, was a nice guy. Always with an “Hola” and a fresh set of towels. And he took pride in his linens.

He had a sort of dark sense of humor, though.

I’m kidding, of course. The heads just bounce around. There was one of these in our room for three days straight. Why he felt the need to tie down that second guy in rubber bands escapes me.

And I’m not sure why we didn’t get a new character on Thursday or Friday. Maybe he noticed what we did to one of his brilliant creations.

I feel a lot like that guy today.

It looks like I shot 14 videos in the water last week. Five or six of them might be worth showing off. Won’t you come back tomorrow to see them?

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24
Jun 24

When the trees fell

It was a Sunday afternoon swim. And then there was a Sunday afternoon outside, reading in the shade. Then, the clouds darkened to the southwest. We went inside.

Took a shower, sat in my studio office space, where I am typing this right now.

Then the rains came. We’ve been soggy for a week. No big deal. Then there was one great big gust of wind. For that one moment, it felt like the siding and the windows were fighting to stay where they were, or deciding if they’d rather be somewhere else. And then it stopped, as wind does. And you immediately forget about it, as you do.

A few minutes later, my lovely bride says to me, from somewhere downstairs, “We’re going to have a problem when this is over.” So I went to see what that was about.

What that was about was a pine tree. We have three of them tucked up right next to the southeastern corner of the house for some reason. Just sitting there and growing, here on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet. We’d talked with someone about removing the three of them one day, for safety purposes.

Now we only have to remove two of them.

Meanwhile, on the northern corner of the house, a chunk of the Bradford pear tree was sheered off. The previous owners let this thing mature and grow too large and it is a weak tree and guess what we have to deal with now?

One of the black cherry trees in the backyard also has three or four big limbs high up in the canopy snapped off. Some of the trees on the other side of the yard lost some smaller limbs.

The first order of business, after the storm stopped, was checking on our neighbors. Everyone was OK. Joe the Younger, who lives next to us with his young family, had one sickly, stubby ancient tree take a big hit. The lady diagonal from us has some limbs in her back yard. Joe the Older and his wife, directly across from us, lost some stuff in the woods behind their house. Behind us, our neighbor just installed a new greenhouse, one with an automated window that opens and closes based on the temperature. He said it was askew.

So we got the worst of it. And we were lucky.

Joe The Older came outside and said he was going to go check on the farm and his horses, and then he’d be right over with the chainsaw. The farm isn’t far away, and he was back soon. He only has some leaves on the ground over there, he said. And then he cranked up his chainsaw like it was Christmas morning and we cut that pine tree out, and then cleared the garage door. Then we chopped a lot of that wood for the fire pit and started moving the branches around. I did about four more hours of that today.

The power was out for about six hours. I took my second shower of the night, letting the rain wash dirt and bits of wood and bark and sawdust off of me.

My heart hurts about the black cherry tree; the wallet will hurt about the debris removal. Everyone is OK.

adventures / Friday / photo / SCUBA — No comments
21
Jun 24

Diving Cozumel, part two

The weather was no better today. Ports were closed again, both on the mainland and over on Cozumel. Already we had decided against trying to go over there for more dives, even if it was an option. It was a bit of a hassle, and the visibility wasn’t that great. And this was about as good as it got from our balcony view.

So we’re going to be getting some money back from this trip. But we’re mask half-full people. While this was supposed to be a 24-dive trip, it became a vacation with four-dives tied into it.

And here are the photos from our second dive yesterday, the the second in the sea and fourth overall. My lovely bride wanted to a see a turtle that was at least this big.

(And she did. I have video. You’ll see it next week.)

I found a lobster out in the open in the daytime, a rare sight.

And, of course, the ever-present brown bowl sponge.

And another one.

And one more.

I let the current — more accurately, I wisely agreed to not fight the inevitable — float me over one outcrop, between two others and looked to my left to see these grunts hiding out from the water’s energy.

A few more reef fish.

I don’t believe I’ve ever noticed a conch quite like this.

And now I get photobombed at 50-plus feet.

I think she was trying to say, “You have enough photos of these things.”

Some sort of triggerfish. This one always stumps me.

But we all know what kind of ray this guy is. Rays are intriguing and weird and beautiful, all at once.

How many different kinds of fish can you name from this photo? I have four.

At our safety stop we took an anniversary photo. Fifteen years! Almost to the hour.

A few moments later, my dive buddy is at the surface.

And one of the saddest photos you can take on a dive. Here’s the bottom of the boat, and the end of our dive.

Tomorrow, we’ll head back home, and start planning our next trip — probably not to Mexico — which is already a long wait away.

adventures / photo / SCUBA / Thursday — Comments Off
20
Jun 24

Diving Cozumel

It’s raining a lot down here, and often times, it is raining hard. I woke up three times listening to a fast, soaking rain. And then I woke up again with my lovely bride’s hand tapping my leg.

“We have to wake up.”

There’s a sentence I never hear, so I was up and moving before I knew why.

We had to get up because we were running late. And we were actually going diving. This is how our anniversary began.

It continued like this. We got to the dive shop, conveniently located next to our resort, a bit late. They hustled us off to a shuttle right away. The driver took us down to the famed 5th Avenue, where we met today’s host, David, who was also our dive master yesterday.

This poor guy has to put up with us for two days in a row. We followed him to the ferry, and we crossed the 10-mile straight between the mainland and Cozumel. He guided us through some cenote caverns yesterday, and now this.

We arrived in Cozumel and David flagged down a cab. We rode 25 minutes down the coastline to another resort. We walked through the housing area, beyond the pools and he pointed out where lunch would not be held, and where we would, later, depart for our dive. Lunch had been moved from a nice modern building near the beach, back 200 yards to the main building as a weather consideration.

Over a bad lunch — one which made us happy we didn’t stay there, as we briefly considered — I wondered aloud how it was that the weather was risky enough to move the food, but we’re going diving in it. The weather, this afternoon, was merely hot, and humid. And this was how we sat around for an extra time for our boat to arrive so that we could go dive.

Eventually, though …

We slipped below the energetic surface of the sea. Of course one of the first things I saw was a giant brown bowl sponge.

And then some more of those.

This one was quite pointed.

All of the little reef fish were out on their afternoon reef fish business. The visibility was limited by the region’s weather. The good news for you, then, is that between the low-viz and the few dives, there aren’t that many photographs to scroll through.

Here’s an overhead view of a spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis). This is probably the worst photo of the set, so it’ll get better from here.

I had better luck with the sponges and coral this time. I guess because they weren’t moving. We were. The currents were strong, not impossible, but it was obvious why the ports have been closed and the diving canceled this week and last.

Here’s the blue chromis (Chromis cyanea) hanging out over his local sponges. Not all of them look healthy. Also, this water was incredibly warm.

And if you think the best shots might be of the brown sponge, you could be right.

Another smattering of reef fish, and a good demonstration of the murky visibility, and a reminder of how spoiled Caribbean divers can be.

Here’s a stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) that was passing by. This is a mature male, you can tell from his appearance. The parrotfish has two appearances, and they can change their sex. They’re called stoplights because of the yellow flash near the pectoral fin. You can almost see it here as he swims along. Also, I think this color scheme would make for a great sneaker.

I believe this is a permit fish (Trachinotus falcatus), which feed on crab and can be found from Massachusetts to Brazil. But that’s about all I know of them.

I know a bit more about this fish, which is easily the best fish in the sea.

We saw three barracuda on the first dive of the day.

And here’s another stoplight parrotfish, and this one is showing off that splash of yellow.

This is a blue tang (Acanthurus coeruleus), the common name of quite a few different reef fish. This one is an adult. The coloring is the clue. They range from a yellow juvenile, yellow tailed blue subadult to the blue adult phase.

And here’s one more shot of the best fish in sea (still no bubbles).

These are from our first dive this afternoon. I’ll share some photos from the second dive tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have a few videos for next week.

The downside was that after our second dive, and our boat ride back to the island, we changed into dry clothes, and then the bottom fell out of the sky again. We had to run in a deluge the 200 yards back up to the hotel. Another cab, another half-hour ferry ride in a squall the whole way, and then a shuttle back to our hotel. It took 10 hours to get in these two dives.

Also, our romantic anniversary dinner on the beach was canceled. Weather. No one told us. We had late night Italian, of sorts, instead.