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.

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.