Malta, Post 4

Justin is finishing up his last group project and saying goodbye to some classmates who have finished the course and are heading home to their respective countries, so you're stuck with me again!

Oh hai there!

There is no theme at all to today's pictures, so I'll loosely group them and tell you some stories!

Yesterday I talked about the underwater cameras we were using (thanks again, Christian!), and how the red filter helps to counteract the overwhelming blue tint to underwater photos. I thought these next two pictures demonstrate just how red that filter is. They also show how difficult it was to get in and out of the water in some places! Those rocks were sharp!

Here I am getting the perfect shot

The camera was just on a wrist strap so it could float out of my way when I wasn't being a shutterbug. My dive computer is the yellow thing on my right wrist

This isn't my personal dive computer, but it shows what we're looking at. From the top left: current depth 5.4 meters, max depth during this dive 19.7 meters, 3 minutes left on safety stop, water temperature 16*C, 31 minutes current dive time

Speaking of difficult entry points (above), I had spoken about getting ready on the side of the road beside the salt pans, then tiptoeing along the edges of the pools to the water. I thought this picture shows I'm not exaggerating!

Here are a few more wildlife pictures that I missed in the last post, or that have been shared since (thanks Josh!), enjoy!

Octopus in the crack, and a fireworm to the left. We were warned not to touch the fireworms as they have a nasty sting. They can also 'swim' (although I'm not sure how much control they actually have) in the same way that an earthworm can swim

I don't know what this is, but if anyone else does I'd love to know!

This is a scorpionfish, I thought he was particularly handsome!

Older scorpionfish (at least I think so!), less handsome

This lobster looked enormous, but everything is magnified underwater, so it's kind of hard to tell

Another octopus! I found this guy hiding in the rocks, and was very proud of myself. He was just next door to his lobster buddy. If you watch the video below you can see my hand excitedly pointing them out to Phil, who was filming at the time. If all you want to see are moving pictures of these animals, skip to around 6:45

Phil swimming up a rock chimney and meeting some friends

I do know that this is a flatfish (and likely a flounder)! Flatfish creep me out. They start off as 'normal' upright fish as babies, then one eye migrates around to the other side of the body so they can lie on the bottom, perfectly camouflaged.  Many of the fish you eat look like this: flounder, fluke, plaice, sole, turbot and halibut. This guy shows how well he blends in to the ocean floor (if we hadn't seen him swimming we wouldn't have known he was there, they even dig themselves into the sand a little), but you may not be getting the full picture of how weird these guys are.

Argh!!
Photo credit (and interesting flatfish information): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/07/09/dawn-of-the-picasso-fish/#.Vy0qEGa72Rs

After that bit of weirdness, let's just have some soothing underwater pictures to cleanse our palates (or maybe you find us as weird-looking as the flounder; who knows?).

 

As I think I said before, one of my favourite experiences on this trip was our night dive. The sun was setting as we were getting ready, and we had just enough time to get underwater and let our eyes partially adjust before the light was completely gone. We each had a flashlight, and otherwise it was pitch black. I'm not kidding: 

Since many underwater animals are nocturnal, we saw a ton of creatures on this night dive that we didn't see the rest of the week. Josh went through his videos and found a couple of screenshots of our favourites. We tried not to put our flashlights directly on the animals in case we scared them, blinded them, or burned their skin (those flashlights are strong!) 

In the center of this picture is a cuttlefish (related to squid and octopus). Look at Chris' arm, and move three large 'brown things' to the left, following the line of his arm.

This baby octopus was very lazy and didn't want to get off of his pile of rocks. This picture is a good example of how we tried to keep our lights aimed away from the animals.

Flying gurnard! This handsome guy was like a flying fish but underwater instead of on the surface, and the pictures aren't really doing justice to the electric blue along the edges of his fins

This little moray eel (probably a few feet long) was not thrilled to see us. He's trying to warn us off

Seeing all these animals and the biodiversity on display was fantastic, and because we were there before the real 'start' to the scuba season, there was minimal litter and trash. However, as our guides reminded us, 'every dive is a dive against debris,' and we did our best to keep the ocean clean.

Way to go, Leah!

Time for more underwater selfies! (Welfies? Underwelfies?)

 

I'm rather proud of my trim here (how flat my body is). Scuba is all about energy saving and being as streamlined as possible. Any extra effort uses more gas, limiting your dive time and increasing your risk for complications. This is one sport where it's better to be lazy!

Ninja face

One of our friends had us all trying the 'reg (regulator) out' picture because she looked so freaking good in it. I mean, look at Alice's face here:

Cover of a magazine-worthy

 And then you see our sad attempts:

 

... Fine, we'll keep our regulators in our mouths.

Let's revisit the P-31 with new pictures!

Another reg-out fail on my part, and another Alice who is really good at it

Justin descending into the ship

Tubeworm and peacock's feathers

Cardinal fish in the hold of the ship

Something that made me laugh about the P-31 dive was the realization that everyone truly looks the same underwater. I looked up through this hole (it's in the deck of the ship, same as the one Justin was swimming down into - there is a ladder running 'up' to the right of this picture) and saw a friend, waved to them to pose, and took their picture. Only later when looking at the pictures at the farmhouse did I notice the snorkel on this person. None of our group had snorkels. So either this man was nice enough to indulge me and pose for my picture, or he had no idea I was a stranger either!

Just because it's going to rain tomorrow (on my Saturday off, not that I should be surprised by now by crummy British weather), here are a few nice pictures of the Malta skies and weather again:

Pretty much the whole island was terraced to increase the available land for farming

This was the sad farm across the road from our farmhouse. I'm not sure what that pony is surviving on.

Here is the view from the other side of the farmhouse - much better!

Same skyline, from our back balcony

I really loved these Maltese sunsets

And the night view from our front balcony! How lucky were we?

And I think I'll leave the last Malta post for Justin to share his thoughts, along with the few pictures and videos I haven't posted yet. If it hasn't come across yet, this was a really amazing week. The warm weather, the chance to really improve my scuba skills, socializing with other like-minded people (even if they are all ridiculously young), and getting such a major break from the usual UK routine, all really meant a lot to me. I had just a fantastic time on this trip. Special thank you again to Whitney for changing the date of her trip over to the UK to visit us, so that we could go to Malta as well. I'm so grateful for having had this experience!