Joey... NOT JOEL! and... tell me if you see a seahorse!

We just had a visit from three of our past students... Joey, Jimmy and Jon-Michael. I blogged about Joey not that long ago, and he told me that I had his name wrong! I said Joel... Apparently I had his name correct by his photo, but wrong in my ramblings on. So, Sorry Joey.

Anyway... Joey reminded me of another story of when we were diving together. I was conducting the compass excersize with Andrew (I think) while Joey and Sonny were waiting with JP. I would take one, then the next, then the next, testing their use of a compass underwater.


When we surfaced after the dive Sonny was saying how cool the seahorse was (I think it was Sonny). I thought to myself, they must be mistaken. So I said "What seahorse?" He said "The seahorse we saw." So I said "what seahorse? No one showed me the seahorse!" And Sonny said, "well you were busy with the compass episode." I wasn't very happy, as you can imagine. Not only do I love seahorses, but I haven't seen one here yet! They are pretty rare. So three of my students, my lovely attentive students, all saw the seahorse and no one bothered to show me. O thought about failing them all on the spot, but I'm just too nice.


It must have been the Hippocampus zosterae or the dwarf seahorse, as they said it was really little. They live mostly in the eel grass and are super cute! It may have been another type, I didn't see it, so I can't tell! Seahorses are so cool because they are one of the only species in which the male is pregnant. The female actually puts her fertilizes eggs into the "brood pouch" of the males. Also, the female and males (after an extensive courtship ritual) spend the whole mating season together and even though the female has the capability to reproduce with another male while the male is pregnant, she does not. They remain in a monogomous relationship. The female seahorses remain faithful during the pregnancy by returning to the male’s territory each day for an early morning greeting. During the greeting the pair change colors and dance together for about 6 minutes. This greeting plays an important role in reinforcing the strong monogamous bonds between seahorses. Isn't this amazing? I hope that when I am pregnant my husband will dance with me every morning, while changing color, for six minutes...



The lesson to take from this is... if you see something cool, show your instructor / dive guide / buddy, as we all love diving and the best thing about diving is seeing cool things underwater!



It is funny because I had another diver, not a student, but a diver at Turtle Reef one day, and he also saw a seahorse, but didn't tell me... I just have bad luck.

Anyhow, sorry Joey for getting your name wrong, it in no way reflect my feelings about you or any post course bitterness I have over the seahorse incident.

All the information I got about Seahorses, I retrieved from:


Irey, B. and W. Fink. 2004. "Hippocampus zosterae" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed February 27, 2009 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Hippocampus_zosterae.html.





(Sally wrote this blog ... with the help of Irey and Fink)

New Shirts

Hey everyone! We are getting new t-shirts designed. They should be with us soon, but let us know what you think of the design. We have made the print only one color this time, as with too many colors it was not only expensive, but we found that the printing wasn't that good with gaps in between the color from where they moved from one printing press to another.

Anyway... here is the new design.

The girls is going to be a tank, and the boys a t-shirt. The colors in the picture above aren't the exact true colors of the shirts, but they will be similar... a light blue for the girls and a dark blue for the boys.

Let me know what you think, and if you want one, just ask for one when you arrive. We don't normally ship them out, as shipping from Saint Martin is unreliable and expensive! We are excited to recieve them soon, though.

I will post a real photo once they do arrive.

(This blog was written by Sally :) )

Who are Les Fruits de Mer?

Les Fruits de Mer is an Extreme Shallow Snorkeling (E.S.S.) Team that is based in Brooklyn, NY, however, they travel all over the world in their many expeditions. Their goal is to "explore the world’s shallowest waters and report back on the life within".

We are lucky enough to have hosted two of the key members of Les Fruits de Mer here at Octopus Diving. We had the infamous Marc AuMarc. Marc AuMarc is a co-founder of Les Fruit De Mer as well as co-inventor of ESS. He also happens to be a really great underwater photographer and videographer, documenting all of their hard work. Madam J is also co-founder of Les Fruits de Mer as well as co-inventor of E.S.S. Madam J also specializes in reconnaissance, gathering as much information as possible about new E.S.S. locations as well as local flora and fauna.

If you check out their website http://www.lesfruitsdemer.org/ you will find more valuable information. Here you can see Madam J and Marc AuMarc below sporting their super cool Les Fruits de Mer uniforms which must be worn while on expedition!

Marc AuMarc and Madam J love Saint Martin, and especially Grand Case, so they come here often. In consequence, you will find invaluable information about St. Martin and Grand Case on their website. They also have an extensive blog that they post while on expedition and here there are some wonderful photographs and commentary on all the diving that they did with us.

Here are some photos that I took of them....

This one is Mark in a swim through giving me the "I'm double okay" sign.

Madam J and Mark at the RoRo... the visibility was amazing.

Madam J coming up for our safety stop.

Madam J practicing her photo skills!

Chris and I first met Madam J when we were here scoping out the business last May. As you know we completed the purchase on June 1st, 2008. She was diving with Octopus at the time and Chris and I were simply diving to see what the underwater world in Saint Martin was like. Obviously we loved it, hence purchasing the business, but it also meant that we have a special connection with Madam J as she truly has been with us since the beginning of our Octopus Diving.

Mark and Jenn are super fun to dive with, always pointing stuff out and having a laugh underwater. They are excellent divers. My favorite day out with them was when we closed the shop, Chris and I went out with just Jennn, Mark and another Chris and we stayed out the whole day. We went searching for some new dive sites, including some of the farther wrecks on the far southeast of the island and some new reefs in the channel between St. Martin and Anguilla. We had lunch in Simpson Bay Lagoon at the Simpson Bay Yacht Club, and it was just all in all a brilliant day out.

We also spent some time with Madam J and Marc AuMarc at the first of an annual Tacousteau night. This is a combination of celebrating great Tacos and also their mentor Jacques-Yves Cousteau. As you can see below we all wore our E.S.S. shirts as well as the traditional Jacques-Yves Cousteau red bonnets.

The food was really tasty and we also watched some of Cousteau's films as well. (I think that Chris looks particularly fantastic in his red hat!)

So, check out their website and if you are interested then you can start to do some E.S.S. as well... you won't regret it.

(Sally wrote this blog entry :) )

The Octopus Family

I just wanted to write a quick blog about Chris's parents, who were down in January. This was one of the reasons that I wasn't blogging enough. I know that you want to hear about the diving, but... just indulge me a little bit.

While they were here we took them out on the boat twice. They aren't divers (had a bad experience with a discover scuba dive in Kenya I think and we haven't been able to convince them to try it again!), so we took them out for a couple of boat charters. This included going snorkeling at Creole Rock, takinga mud bath at Tintamarre Island, and also cruising aroung the Simpson Bay Lagoon looking at the super yachts. Here are some photos below.



The first photo is of Trevor and Wendy and Chris at Creole Rock before they went snorkeling.

The next photo is Trevor and Wendy on the boat in the Simpson Bay Lagoon.






Some super mega yachts....



Some more super mega yachts.



Sometimes the mega yachts are dragging a small tender around behind their boat, I don't know if you can see it in this photo below. Anway... the tender is about the same size as our diving boat, so it is just crazy how big they are.

Especially in the economic situation at the moment, and all the jobs that are being lost and all the lost money in the stock market, and foreclosures on homes, seeing this amount of money up close everyday is a little unimaginable. I just don't know where all that money comes from? I just didn't know that there could be that many rich people out there. They are beautiful though.

Anyway.... we had a great time with Trevor and Wendy, and we hope that they come back to visit us again soon.

(Sally wrote this blog).

Students... Students... Students

I'm sorry that it has been so long since my last blog. So much has been going on and I have been neglecting my duties :(

There is so much that I want to say, but this blog is going to be about some of the new divers that have been created at Octopus Diving in February...

I would like to congratulate Sonny, Joel and Andrew. All three are medical students at the American University of the Caribbean and they came to us for their open water certification. I was lucky enough to be their instructor as they are... well... special. Under the surface of the water they were great, real naturals. Above... well... as I already said, they are special. For me the course was super fun, there was loads of laughing, joking around, but also some serious moments too. Sonny, Joel and Andrew did give me a pretty hard time, but it was worth it. They are definetely a bunch on divers that I will never forget.

You can see them here celebrating the end of their final exam with a couple of beers.

Here are their mug shots for their certification cards.

Andrew.... (just kidding, I used the other photo for the actual picture identification card, Andrew didn't want to seem like a boozer on his diving certification.)

Sonny...

Joey...

They did a really great job and make fantastic divers. Congrats Guys!

We also did a few advanced open waters. There was Madam J, Mark, Darlene and Mark. The advanced class is always fun, but on this particular group I really enjoyed the underwater navigation part where the students must navigate a square underwater using only their compasses and measuring their fin kicks. We do this at Creole Rock because it is nice and shallow so if the students get lost they can just surface and start again. The moorings at Creole Rock are secured to the sea bed by these huge concrete blocks. These blocks get covered with a thin layer of algae which makes for a really great writing surface. So I simply write N, S, E or W on the block to tell the students which direction I want them to go in. If you aren't an advanced diver I should explain that in the first part of the underwater navigation adventure dive you must navigate in a straight line, and then back again. So I indicate when we are doing the square excersize by drawing a square and then the direction that we are going in. When I went with Mark and Darlene I drew the square and then wrote an "N" so Mark would begin his square by going North. Then for Darlene I wrote a "W" indicating that she should start her square by going West, and she looked at me like "what the heck?" After a couple minutes of confusion everything was cleared up, but Darlene told me afterward that she thought that I was making her do some sort of zig zag, and she didn't think that was fair as Mark only had to a square. It was really funny at the time.

Here you can see Darlene and Mark below. They are both from Boise, Idaho and did a great job!

Madam J and Mark are both members of Les Fruits de Mer, an extreme shallow snorkeling club that is based in Brooklyn, New York. For them I believe they deserve their own special blog, so I will save that for another day.

We also certified Ed and Michelle as Advanced Open Water Divers. They are the crew from Tradewinds - a boat charting company - that is always sailing around Saint Martin, Anguilla and St. Barts.

All in all we have had some great students this February... congrats to all!

(this was written by Sally :) )