Beautiful Day for a Dive

Went with the company AcquaSub to dive out of Guaraparí (beautiful beaches south of Vitória). As I said yesterday, my underwater camera is unoperational, which is reallly realllllllly sad because I saw an octopus!! It was maybe about 6" in diameter and red when I saw it. I was so shocked! They're typically very difficult to spot. No one else saw it, and as usual underwater, there was no way for me to catch their attention. When I turned back to him, he had disappeared under a rock, but I could still see his legs twirling around one of his eyes as he hoped to avoid me.

We did two dives in full suits. The first dive I didn't have enough weight (which I'll blame on having a full wet suit and faulty conversion from English to metric units), so it was a little difficult. But there were some beautiful cliffs down there with TONS of wildlife- midsize fish, tiny fish, urchins, coral, eels, and (I'll say it again cuz it was pretty sweet) an OCTOPUS! We did the second dive at the same location, but in a drift (so the boat picked us up at a different location while we drifted through it all with the current). We saw a moray eel on this dive (I'm pretty sure. The eel we saw on the first dive was probably a spotted eel.) I also think I saw a type of spider crab and maybe a Peterson shrimp.

I liked the drift dive because it was a little less work, but the current was cold and sometimes too fast to really get a good look at the animals. I don't know- the boat ride and being underwater really made me think twice about marine biology. :) But I still have ear-pressure/water issues, so maybe I'm making a wiser career move. I'll keep diving though!

I returned to Vitoria quite exhausted, having woken up really early (also the night before last was my first time sleeping in a hammock! Exciting, but not the most restful.) Coralie wanted to go to the beach, so with the setting sun (we left pretty late), I slept. I stayed in, opting for a warm bed and movies to an all-night music festival (though it sounded like fun too..)