"A bait ball occurs when small fish swarm in a tightly packed spherical formation about a common centre.
It is a last-ditch defensive measure adopted by small schooling fish when they are threatened by predators."
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_ball)
Schooling fish are always pretty cool to see on a dive.
But when hundreds or thousands of fish join together to form a giant bait ball, it's an incredibly cool and amazing thing to see on a dive.
The sheer number of eyes, the flashing of light reflected from the fishes scales, seemingly random and super-fast changes of direction: all these combine specifically to distract and confuse larger, hungry, predator fish - and amaze and delight divers.
And we've been amazed and delighted a lot these last couple of months by this:
How come...? Here in Curacao, there's an abundance of "fish food" floating around in the ocean from August-ish to October-ish, as a result of the coral, sponge and algae spawning. Not surprisingly, this coincides with an abundance of fish. (Ain't Mama Nature clever?)
We're lucky to see 'gangs' of blue tangs and creole wrasse cruising the top of the reefs pretty much all year round. But from October-ish through December-ish, there's almost always a large, resident bait ball of Big Eye Scad on the Dive Bus house reef, Pierbaai and over Car Pile. And this year's has been the largest we can recall. Ever.
The baitball hangs out until December-ish which is usually when the local fishermen drop their nets into the water and make their money for the Christmas holidays and New Years celebrations. They sell kilos and kilos of freshly caught and cleaned "masbangu" to never-ending lines of excited, eager cooks.
And the 'cleaned' parts of the fish are thrown back into the ocean to feed the ones that got away.
This time.
(The baitball in the video is still here as we write this - guess the fisherman were on vacation this year...)
According to The SeaChoice Program, Big Eye Scad are a sustainable fish that you can enjoy without depleting natural resources.
So whether you need a fix of beautiful scuba diving, a good laugh at what else goes on in the daily life of a scuba instructor, or want to see what really happens on those Dive Bus does Bonaire trips, you got it.
Check out the new Dive Bus movie channels here:
(You may want to grab popcorn and a coke first.)
Got jealous friends, family or colleagues?
Show them how easy it is for them to dive toooooooo!
Are you one of the stars of The Dive Bus movies? Feel free to like and share your movies - and make your buddies and colleagues really jealous. (Try it, it's a lot of fun.)
Photo courtesy of the amazing Starlette - thank you!
And none of us knew what the heck he (or she) was?
Well it took us a while to find out and you'll never guess what the answer is....?
.....Pleurobranchus Areolatus.
(Told you.)
Fortunately for the Pleurobranchus Areolatus, it's also known as an Atlantic Sidegill Slug or a Warty Side-Gilled slug.
Whilst common to the Pacific coast of North and Central America, they're pretty rare and unusual in our neck of the woods (hence why this guy was such cause for excitement for us dive-nerds.) According to the slugsite.us website, apparently they can reach lengths up to 150cm in California and Brazil. We're really hoping this isa typo on their website, because you wouldn't want to meet a 5ft anything on the reef, in the dark, eh? As if three monikers were not enough for the tiny little guy photographed on The Dive Bus Curacao reef(where things are apparently / fortunately smaller than California and Brazil) he's lately become more popularly known as the Pizza Crust sea slug. So there you go, it really was the most amazing Curacao night dive ever. We're hoping to match it during the second and final Coral spawning season of the year...
And if you don't hear from us for a while, it's because we did come across a 5ft Californian Warty Atlantic Sidegill Pizza Slug with a Brazilian accent, on a surfboard, wearing a thong.
On the last day of spawning, Neptune let us see: 2 batfish grinning 1 coral spawning And a sea slug not in a pear tree :) Oh, and an octopus that ratted on the super-cool sea slug's location.
And spiny lobsters, tons of brittle sea stars, a huge crab, loads of eels, heaps of banded coral shrimps - and before we even descended - a huge peacock flounder in Pierbaai Bay.
It was AWESOME!
Check out what we're talking about / photo-proof, courtesy of our awesome local diver and wonderful underwater photographer, Starlette:
NA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA - Batfish! (A rough-backed batfish, in case you were wondering, No he's not having a bad night, that's just how the poor dude always looks.)
Starlet coral (no, really, that's its name) releasing eggs and sperm -
One of Dive Bus Mark's dreams has always been to discover a new type of fish. As the discoverer also has the honour of naming the fish, he already has the names lined up.
As a pretty major fish geek (kinda goes with the dive-shop-owner- territory), he thought he'd come close on a couple of occasions. But, as you're probably already aware, you still wont find the Dory or the Doris fish anywhere other than here at The Dive Bus.
Mark trying to sneak on board the sub. (Not very well.)
Fortunately for the world, some clever scientists from the Smithsonian Institute are also on the case.
Each summer for the past few years, Smithsonian scientists head to Curacao for several weeks, to spend their days hanging out on Curacao's reefs in a small, orange submarine, at depths up to 600 feet.
Hosted by the good people at Substation Curacao, the scientists' mission is to discover new marine life forms. And our wonderfully talented buddy, Barry Brown, has the honor of photographing these discoveries.
Barry's photos are so beautiful that ten of them were released as a beautiful collection of stamps , as a "tribute to the outstanding collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and Substation Curacao." (More info here.)
The latest clever scientists' discovery is their fourth new deep-reef fish species in two years: this cute little Goby. In recognition of the little sub that could (and still, quite clearly, can!), the new find has been named Coryphopterus curasub.
The Curasub goby is different in size and colouring from the rest of his family members. And since he likes to hang out at around 70-80 meters, unfortunately, not many of us regular divin' folk are likely to meet him whilst out and about on the Curacao reef.
Many congrats and thanks to all involved in this latest find - looking forward to hearing about the next new discovery. Perhaps they'll call that one Dory or Doris..?
Mark hanging out on the Curasub - STILL didn't find new fish species...
(But can be taken out by a tiny damsel fish.) (Which has got to suck.)
Of all the super-cool, amazing critters in the Caribbean waters of Curacao, the Caribbean Reef octopus has to be one of the coolest.
SUPER hard to spot by recreational AND professional divers alike, octopus have an exceptional ability to suddenly change color and textureto blend in with their environment and escape predators - including other octopus and the most aggressive fish in our waters, the damsel*, whose attitude is a gazillion times larger than its body.
(*to date, the only marine critter to bite Suzy. Ever. Twice.)
The Caribbean Reef octopus has superlative cloaking skillsany superhero would kill for - over and above those of their octopus relatives.
That's because they possess more chromatophores(color-changing cells) than other types of octopus. Within seconds, they can flash an incredible range of huesfrom bright red to dark green to vivid blue, whilst simultaneously changing their skin texturefrom smooth through bumpy in the blink of an eye.
Not surprisingly, not much is known specifically about the Caribbean Reef octopus. Given their awesome cloaking techniques, the fact that they weigh an average of only 3 pounds and that they are noctornal hunters / feeders, the Caribbean Reef Octopus is even more difficult to study than it is to spot.
What is known is that, although very cool, they're not the most socialof sea critters. They're fiercely protective of their personal lairs, fighting off other reef octopus that dare to venture too close, and scurrying away once they realise they've been spotted by ectastic scuba divers thrusting GoPros at them.
Speaking of which, check out this awesome GoPro video from Zoe at Tugboat just the other day:
The only time octopus play nicely with others is
mating time.
As with most males, when the mood is right, they engage in elaborate mating dances to entice
the hot, sexy lady cephalopod that takes their fancy...
...The horny male darkens his entire body except for one arm, which he illuminates
and waves around wildly. If this seems to be doing the trick, he moves slowly towards her, displaying a vivid
array of different colorsto further tempt her into mating with him...
(Somehow this isreminiscent of other species male-mating behaviour, right..?)
So it's official: octopi rock.
Respect.
Damsel fish still suck though. (Guess who wrote this Blog post.)
(Thanks to this website for octopus facts and congrats to Zoe for the awesome video, shot at Tugboat, Curacao, Jan-2015)
If you've been diving with The Dive Bus for a good few years now, you have a distinct advantage over those who have only recently discovered us / the wonders of diving in Curacao to answer the question:
What are the top 3 MOST rare spots whilst diving in Curacao...?
None-the-less, the challenge is on: in the comments box below this Blog post, list YOUR answers to the above question. Winner gets a Dive Bus goodie delivered to their doorstep....
Most of the time, we dive the East and West coasts of Curacao. Since there's no South here (don't ask, we're special) that just leaves the North coast...
The North coast is wild, deep and unpredictable. BUT it's a great one to tick off your list and it's a good opportunity to possibly, possibly see those elusive creatures: SHARKS!
So the other weekend, The Dive Bus headed out there with a bunch of brave local divers. Check out the adventure here and enjoy!
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What a week it was last week at The Dive Bus! Dive Bus trips, PADI dive courses and lots of diving on on our beautiful housereefs. Busy, busy, busy and fun, fun, FUN.
Between the Dive Bus instructor team - Mark, Chris and myself - we managed to spot everything that Curacao's diving is famous for! Eagle rays at Pierbaai Reef, Tarpon at Carpile,
a Music Volute and a nudibranch in the bay right across the road, sea horses everywhere (well, at several sites anyway) and even the infamous - and often invisible - frogfish
on several trips!
To continue the "Cool Spots" contest, I am declaring myself, Senor Frank, the current winner, having spotted this particularly cool frogfish. Since my
GoPro froze minutes before finding this awesome spot, these awesome photos are courtesy of local Dive Bus diver, Linda, who's camera didn't freeze... (Thanks Linda!)
That's all for now folks, enjoy the photos and see you soon :o)
The Catlin Seaview Crew films Curacao's reefs,
equipped with the SVII camera. (Photo Credit: Catlin Seaview Survey)
The Curaçao coral reef, one of the most beautiful in the world, can soon be seen via the popular Google Maps ‘virtual diving’ platform. The Catlin Seaview research team, an underwater film unit, has spent the past several weeks surveying and photographing the reef for Google as well as collecting scientific data to be utilized in future reef research.
In addition to traditional dives, the research team utilized the popular tourist attraction, the submarine Curasub to capture footage of the reef. Because the Curasub travels at greater depths than divers can reach, it’s often used for scientific marine research.
More than one third of the island’s coral has been filmed, at depths varying from 30 feet to 300 feet. Curaçao’s coral reef is the second reef to be captured in this way; the first was the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
To learn more about the island of Curaçao or request a FREE Curaçao information package, please visit Curacao.com or call 1.800.328.7222.
A group of 4 crazy French folks on a PADI Discover Scuba Dive at Pierbaai Reef didn't realise how lucky they were, when a pair of Spotted Eagle rays cruised by.
However, DM Marky Mark nearly lost half a tank of air- just like DM Franky-Doodle-Dandy did, when he spotted them the previous day.
No cameras present to capture their beauty, so photo courtesy of our buddies at Turtle + Ray Video Productions (thanks!!)
