Kuriat Islands, Tunisia

They are about 18 kilometers off the coast of Monastir, Tunisia.

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This is our pirate ship. I'm holding the camera about one inch above the surface of the water.

I'm in the water, behind our pirate ship.

Joshua is climbing down into the water. He was glad we didn't see any jelly fish in the water. We saw three large red jelly fish on the way there.

Something growing on a steel pole off the coast of Kuriat Island, Tunisia. I assume it is coral.

My favorite fish today. The stuff falling around him is some left over broiled fish from lunch. The workers assured me it was a waste of time to put cooked fish in the water, but it drew over 50 fish to me in minutes.

This is the clearest fish photo I took today.

Octopus and fish

These are some fish I saw feeding near a stone wall.

This is an octopus hiding against the same stone wall.

I saw him reach out and grab one of the fish swimming by him. When he saw me, he pulled his tentacles in tight, and blended in with the wall and all its green algae. He is there on the lower left hand side of the photo. His head is above the white rock. His tentacles are to the right of the white rock and around counter clockwise. I looked for something to poke him, but he was gone a minute later.

Camel Ride in Douz Tunisia

Mike on his camel

Mike and Sue after our camel ride

Mike, Sue and Joshua

Joshua feeding turtles

Our neighbor in our building has several of these turtles in the garden by or back door.

I debated with myself, whether I should rotate this photo correctly, with Joshua above. What do you think?

Turtles and snake

Look at the neck on that turtle!

This looks like the snake we saw today. It was about 36 inches long.
Photo credit: FloridaSnakes.net

Baby Sharks in market

-Found these two sharks at the Hamman-Sousse fish market today.

Saw a jellyfish

Aequorea Victoria jellyfish off the coast of California. See full resolution‎ (1,600 × 1,200 pixels, file size: 450 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Joshua and I were snorkeling north of Sousse this evening. We happened across a small jelly fish that resembled an Aequorea Victoria. Joshua did a quick u-turn for the beach. We were about 50 yards from the shore.

I didn't want anything to happen to him, off alone. What if he saw another jelly fish on his way back without me? So I quickly grabbed his arm with one hand. I studied the transparent jellyfish, less than 3 inches in diameter, with black specks around its bell perimeter. Joshua will say it was much larger! I couldn't see any long tentacles.

Josh enjoyed looking at our jellyfish for a very short time. It started to swim toward our faces. :-0 Joshua shouted through his snorkel tube, "I'm getting out of here!" As I held him tight, I raised my right hand and pushed enough water toward the jellyfish to change its direction. Then it propelled itself gently out to sea, a beautiful sight to see! Wish we had a camera with us.

Some extremely important rules of SCUBA diving or snorkeling we learned in Dakar, Senegal:

• Always dive with a buddy! Never, ever, dive alone! Keep an eye on your buddy. Make sure everything is OK. When something happens to you, your buddy could be the difference between your life and death.
• Relax! Being relaxed in water is vital in an emergency. When something happens, follow these steps: stop, breathe, think and act. Never panic and immediately flee or surface. You can make a minor situation fatal.

Sea cucumber Holothuroidea

A sea cucumber feeding while on gravel

Joshua found one of these today on the beach. He felt sorry for it there where the people were walking. So he carried it over by some rocks and threw it in the sea.

I wasn't too sure about touching it with my bare hands, so I picked it up with some plastic to put it in a plastic cup for Josh.

Baby Geese in Des Moines Iowa

Tadpoles and Guppies

I found a storm drain full of guppies and tadpoles yesterday. So I returned there today with a net and some peanut butter jars. It isn't easy to get a photo of a hyperactive fish!

Three Tadpoles

Male and Female Guppies

Crocodile farm

Crocodiles don't like it when you poke them in the ribs.

We had a lot of fun visiting the crocodile farm at Assini. As you can see in this video, a crocodile is fast. When he snaps at the wood stick, he is just a flash of fearsome muscle. It really gets your adrenalin pumping. See how the crocodile uses his tail to attack. I felt like I jumped a foot when the crocodile fist jumped. I guess I didn't, since my camera stayed stable.

-Mike

Abidjan Zoo elephant

John is feeding Cany the elephant

Abidjan Zoo black Emperor scorpion

This black Emperor scorpion was on the ground at the zoo in one of the separation areas that keeps animals separate from the visitors. Joshua spotted it crawling around. It was larger than my size ten feet.

Abidjan Zoo

This turtle is over 60 years old.

Cany the elephant is 16 years old

Mike, Sue, Josh, John and George Assouf

George arrived to tour the zoo with us. This is a large Silk Cotton tree or Kapok (Ceiba pentrandra). Notice how the trunk branches out into supports. In French it is called a Fromager. Fromager is French for cheese tree, because the ripe seedpod smells like cheese.

John and Sue

The others were all on this bench that was on two piles of dirt a foot above the ground. Erosion had worn away the surrounding dirt.

Josh, John , Sue and Mike

As I joined them, the ground crumbled and it tipped forward. John caught the bench as we jumped from it. Then we took this photo.

Tunisian Camel ride

Aleria beach crab

Mike, Joshua, Nassif

I was able to capture this crab on the beach. He is actually holding on to my stick, so he thinks he captured me. When we set the stick down on the ground, he ran off into the ocean. We are at the Aleria Beach, a less expensive beach not far from Abidjan.

Joshua's 1st SCUBA Dive

Translation:
The Oceanium diving center and the fish of
Dakar had the pleasure of the first dive:
Joshua Farho
March 22, 2006

Joshua dived to 3 meters, about 9 feet, and saw many fish and even some sea urchins. He doesn't like them at all. His dive lasted about 20 minutes. He was too cold to continue on much longer. The water that day was cold, about 17C or 63F. I, Mike, dived at a different location that day. I wore two diving suits to stay warm.

Barracuda N'Gor Island Senegal

Josh is holding a Barracuda head he found on the beach at Dakar that faces Ngor Island, Senegal

Joshua and Rock Python