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Wrapping up the magical ocean photos. Here we go!

A sweet spotted eel. Not scary like the moray demons with their extra set of throat-teeth.

And some moray eels. Creepy finger-biting-off creepers from Creepytown.

Mouthful of eggs. As someone who swallows regularly I would find this concerning as hell, but I guess you do what you have to do.

Puffer fish!

Another puffer fish!

Puffers and friends!

Get ready for a very pretty creature with an equally awesome name straight out of Harry Potter. Meet the Bristled Fire Worm.

Please enjoy… Lil Critter. We could not figure out what this little fella was. He has claws and eyes and antennae and that’s about all we could figure out.

Flounders! Did you know when they are born their eyes are on either side of their head but when the flounder picks a permanent side to lay on the eye underneath migrates to the top? NATURE! It’s real weird!

Glowing Fish. Cricket said he looked like he was lit from within.

Lobsters that are notoriously protective of their hidey-holes. They get very grumples when you get close. They will charge you.

Very important: Cricket went for a night dive (because I guess diving 80 feet below the surface during the day wasn’t terrifying enough) and saw a lobster out of its burrow trekking across the ocean floor which is a rare thing to see.

Dead piece of lobster face.

Okay. Now we begin with the shots that made me smack Cricket in the arm and say, “YOU SAW THAT??? FOR REALSIES??? My envy consumes me.” First, the nudibranch (pronounced “noo dih brank”). I’ve had strong feelings about nudibranches for many years, but I assumed I’d never see one in real life. They are sea slugs that come in a ton of varieties. Sometimes they have tufty protuberances on their backs, they’re the best. Here’s a collection of random shots I found on the internet. Type “nudibranch” into Google, click on images and fall deeply into the exquisite world of color and texture.

I know, right? Amazing. So when Cricket showed me a few different pictures and said, “I dunno what that is” I screamed, “YOU SAW A NUDIBRANCH IN REAL LIFE IN FRONT OF YOU.”

Shortly after the magic of the nudibranch, Cricket showed me a picture of, as he called it, “A shrimp in his hole.” Uhhhhh, that’s not a regular shrimp. That’s a MANTIS SHRIMP, THE KING OF SHRIMPS. They can see all the colors. They punch their prey at the speed of lightning, boiling the water around them. The Oatmeal did a whole long strip on the glory of the Mantis Shrimp. And Cricket saw one. I don’t know how to process this.

Finally, the group of squids. These were teens and they were travelling in a group that looked exactly like a group of battleships in a scifi movie. I christened them “The Squidron.” I would love someday to see a squidron in person. So marvelous. I would mess up all the squids trying to hug them.

A close-up of one squid’s chromatophores.

And that’s it. Pretty amazing stuff. Hope you screamed with glee as much as I did.

Cricket loves to go scuba diving and he bought a special camera to his last few diving trips. I do love a good deep-sea friend and every time Cricket goes diving I ask him to wave and say hello to the fishies, which he says he does (there’s no way for me to really check up on that, I have to take his word). When he returns he asks me to remove some of the blue from his photos. There’s only so much I can do but on many of his photos I clean out a lot of the blue tint. Here is an example.

This photo collection is from several trips so I’m going to break it up into several entries, because many things to share. Let’s dive in, shall we? (I’m so sorry.)

Here is a random assortment of some of the stunners Cricket has come across. The ocean has some truly magnificent treasures.

Look how many fish!

I know animals do not have the same emotions as us and it is ridiculous for us to force our human qualities on them but I do it anyway. Shoot me, I like to anthropomorphize. Anyway, I call these “concerned fish.”

A ray. Look at his pretty pretty pattern. He has dots and then his dots have dots.

I do not know the name of this guy, so I christened him The Toadfish. I like his angry expression and stripery.

Skinny crab! It’s real skinny and it has glowy-glowy claws.

Here is another skinny crab but the reason I included this is because of the pignose anemone/coral/whatever in the background.

I call this The Ooog. I have no idea what this is. I’m not positive I want to know.

Cricket sees turtles fairly frequently and what’s cool is he gets to watch them eating coral. You know that’s how sand is made, right? Part of it is crushed seashells and part of it is munched-on coral that turtles have eaten.

I feel like the fish off to the side is like, “Sooo, eating coral again? Going well? Good talk, good talk.”

Here’s a super teeny tiny crab.

And here’s a super teeny tiny seahorse.

Here’s a closeup of the seahorse because it is so teeny tiny it’s hard to see.

Stonefish! A decomposing heap of ocean debris masquerading as a fish and if you step on it it can kill you!

A barracuda.

A blenny in its home-hole.

A blenny with great eyebrows. I have named him Martin Scorsese and if you don’t know why look Mr. Scorsese up on Google and take in those glorious furry forehead caterpillars.

No idea what this is. Any information would be most appreciated.

Cricket sees many hermit crabs on his journeys. Here is a sweet little guy on a pile of some kind of beautiful organic netting, possibly seaweed.

Here’s an extremely small guy. Cricket said it was the size of the pad on your pinkie finger.

This crab had eyelids!

This crab has eyelashes!

Shrimps bein’ shrimps. Some with glowy-glowy claws like the skinny crabs.

A grouper at a cleaning station. The big fish pull into the station and little fish go into their mouths and pick the goonk and bacteria out.

And I leave you at this time with a large grab in a lovely multicolored setting. Super photogenic.