Here's the final batch of diving photos from the last four days of our 12 days of diving around Loreto, Baja, Mexico with Dolphin Dive Baja. Highly recommended!
I recently read a book about octopus and squid so when we got to Loreto I asked Rafael if there were many around. He said "no" so I wasn't expecting to see any. But we ended up seeing three different ones. Often they are just a well camouflaged blob in the back of a dark hole. One did come out briefly but I wasn't in position to get a photo. This one was at least recognizable with its eye looking out.
Another good sighting was this giant Elegant hermit crab. This shell was the size of a football. When Rafael waved us over all we saw was a seemingly empty shell. But as we watched the hermit crab emerged. Quite a bizarre looking critter!
This just looks like bubbles - it's hard to tell what it is. But it's actually an anemone all closed up. It opens at night to feed.
These coral hawkfish are fairly common but they're a bit skittish so I was happy to get this closeup. Love that top fin!
As always, I love the hidden details. Here's the underside of a starfish.
Although the Sea of Cortez doesn't have a lot of hard coral it makes up for it with lots of sea fans and soft corals.
This next one is a basket star, a kind of starfish where the arms branch many times so it appears they have a lot of legs, although when they're all wrapped up it's another one where it's hard to tell what it is.
One time Rafael waved me over to look at a scorpionfish. That seemed a little odd since they are quite common. But then he indicated that it was something small on the back of the scorpionfish. Sure enough there were tiny shrimp on it. I could barely see them unless they moved. I'm going to have to start carrying a magnifying glass like he does! Later, when I was looking at one of my photos of a scorpionfish I noticed what I think is one of the shrimp (look on the right side of the "forehead")
There aren't a lot of obvious anemones here. I spotted this one in the back of a crack in the rock. I'm not sure what kind it is.
We ran into a few Agassiz nudibranchs and I managed a little more interesting angle on this one:
We saw a few of these Mobula rays (related to manta rays, but smaller) but mostly in the distance. This was the best shot I managed:
Usually what we saw was more like this distant shot of a spotted eagle ray:
People that are only diving for a day or two here often like to go to see the sea lions, so we ended up diving at this site a few times. We didn't mind since it's always fun to see the sea lions and it's a great dive site regardless.
On our last day of diving we were lucky enough to see another group of dolphins. Previously we saw bottlenose dolphins, these ones were common dolphins. (check out Shelley's video)
If you want more, see all 77 photos in this album
See also: Loreto Diving part 2 and Diving in Loreto
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