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 went snorkeling twice today at what the locals call “The Aquarium”. After hearing the stories that Orin, Eli and Dailin shared, Kirsten and Jaeden were also anxious to go. It is on the edge of a coral reef that is just inside the lagoon at Tiputa Pass. The reason it has the name of aquarium is because the water is filled with hundreds of fish that are protected and swarm around you in schools as you snorkel or dive around. We tied up our dingy to one of the mooring buoys that are on the western shore just as another dive boat with its dozen scuba divers were exiting the water. Kirsten threw some hard cookies in the water and the fish seemed to swarm by the thousands for a bite to eat. She seemed to get a kick out of throwing the cookie pieces right on top of us as we were snorkeling around. I don’t think she would have enjoyed it quite as much however if she were the one in the water. The fish would thrash and splash around to be the first to get some of the food we were throwing into the water. At feeding time they don’t care how close they get to humans. I could touch the fish as they swam by. There were so many fish that I couldn’t even see Alyssa who was only about four feet away from me.

When we were not feeding the fish there were still tons of fish but they kept their distance a little bit more. Alyssa and I would dive down through the water and into one of the schools of fish and they would just part enough to keep about one foot of distance between us and them. It was incredible to see the crystal clear water and the thousands of fish of all types and sizes.

When Orin got in the water, he splashed around the coral reef to check out the fish. He swam around the boat a little bit and then pulled the mask off of his face as water had penetrated into his mask. As he did this the snorkel attached to his mask came loose and Dailin who was also in the water saw his snorkel sink down to the bottom of the reef. He tried to retrieve it but it sank much too quickly for him to be able to do this. It was one of the nice splash proof snorkels and so I was determined to find a way to retrieve it. For the next 30 minutes I swam around looking for it and trying numerous times to retrieve it. It had fortunately fallen onto a sandy bottom which made it easier to  spot but it fell in a small gap between some coral that formed a horseshoe shape. I was nervous to reach down into the coral because eels frequently will lodge themselves into the cavity of the coral. Not to mention that if I needed to ascend to the top quickly for air, I didn’t want to hit or scratch myself on the little bit of coral that kind of overhung the space where the snorkel was. I went down a few times and stopped about 8 feet short of coral reef. Finally I mustered up the courage, spotted where I was headed from above and dove down with the determination that I was not going to stop until I had the snorkel in hand. I swam as fast as I could straight toward the snorkel braced myself against the coral as I reached down and retrieved what we had lost. With snorkel successfully in hand I made a beeline up to the surface just in time to gasp for some fresh air.