Oh, wow! Sea Snake City

We forgot to mention yesterday that the rugged limestone shoreline (ancient raised coral reef) around all of the islands at Gadji had chitons everywhere. OH WOW, CHITON CITY! We have seen maybe a couple total during the last two years and here were hundreds or thousands. One of the interesting things of exploring is the uneven distribution of all types of creatures. That way, there is always something interesting to see and admire. We ended the day by taking photos of the "Green Flash" as the sun disappeared below the horizon.

Our trip from Gadji to Ilot Ndo challenged us with narrow passages through surrounding reefs, coral reefs needing avoidance and current pushing us one way then the other. We were rewarded with an island of our own, no signs of humans and multiple shades of turquoise water. There were lots of ospreys, brown noddies, black noddies, silver gulls and the usual tweety birds. After taking this all in from Sunrise, we were shocked to hear a helicopter approaching and were stunned when it landed and 3 people emerged. Barry says I should not use the Kiwi term "whop whops" to describe our location because then see what happens - Whop! Whop! Whop! Here comes a helicopter! He also is guessing that the term might have come from the fact that you need a helicopter whop, whop, whopping to get to such a remote location.

We walked completely around the island, observing, photographing and oohing and aahing. In the process, we saw innumerable tracks in the sand where snakes had crawled from the sea to the land or back. And then we saw a sea snake on the land. And another. And another. It was "OH WOW, Snake City! Eventually, we counted 14 sea snakes crawling on the land and beach. We don't know why there are so many on land and we haven't seen a one in the water - well, one. Perhaps they are there to lay their eggs. Maybe you could google and let us know. We also found 2 broken Chambered Nautilus shells and some turtles while on Sunrise.

This afternoon we snorkeled one of the best reefs ever. There was a 30' drop off, healthy hard and soft coral and beau coup de fish and other critters. The water temperature is a bit cold even when wearing our spring wet suits. I,Lynne, have the same O'Neill wetsuit I've had for the last 25 years and, despite lots of use, it is still in great shape. Also, my preferred mask is still the 25 year old Sherwood. We saw a shark, a number of giant clams (including a monster, 14 inches wide with a bright purple mantle one, a first), a huge Crown-of-Thorns seastar, and some really big Napoleans and groupers. There were some large violet sea urchins with very long, thin spines and bright turquoise markings on the shell. There were red sea urchins with long fat spines the diameter of your little finger and nobby red shells. There was also a most unusual sea urchin with very long, thin white spines interspersed with shorter brown spines the diameter of a needle. Nearing the end of our snorkel, I commented to Lynne that there were absolutely no mollusks other than the giant clams. Swimming back to the dinghy across the shallow sandy top of the reef, there were the mollusks, both alive and empty shells. There were at least 10 different types. One was a beautiful miter about 2 ½ inches long with a clean, colorful exterior. Since it was alive, we put it back.

The last few days, we have been in the middle of a high pressure zone, so there is very clear air and no or just a few clouds. That means that we have been able to see the "Green Flash" every night. By setting the camera to take pictures two stops under-exposed, the "Green Flash" photographs nicely. But when we have used the same camera to take a video, the exposure setting is normal and the green color washes out and hardly shows.

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