Live from the Pacific Princess

(Bill Lawrence123) wrote in message ...
Bob, I hate to break this to you, but nobody gives a $hit where you are, or
what you are doing.

Bill

Bill, it's okay to spell "****" correctly. You ****head!


(Reef Fish) wrote in message
.com...

Greatings from Raiatea.

Yesterday, I was on a diveboat with 5 other divers. It turned out all
five of them are workers on THIS Pacific Princess cruise! The diving
was mahvellous as usual -- warm water, 100+ feet visibility, blacktip
and reef sharks, free-swimming 2-ft long ramoras, napoleon wrasse, titan
triggerfish, clown(anemone)fish better known these days as Nemo,
lionfish, schooling jacks, moorish idols, and tons of ARF (assorted
reef fishes).


Moorea diving today was great as usual. In spite of the early start
(or perhaps because of the early start to allow later sightseeing) of
boarding the tender at 7:55 am, there were 10 divers. The ship booked
the dive with Bathy's. There were dozens and dozens of blacktip sharks
throughout the dive, but what I found most interesting was something I
had NEVER seen before -- what I can best describe as "truffles of the
sea".

In the midst of the dive, I saw the DM rummaging through some loose
rocks and dead corals looking for something -- at first I thought he
had seen an octopus and was trying to coax it out, but then he started
picking off little black nuggets off those rocks and rubble. He must
have seen the resident large (2-3 feet moss-covered shell) green turtle
which I had never seen there before, because soon the turtle came over
and he was feeding it those nuggets, sometimes picking up a piece of
dead coral with the fungus on it and let the turtle pick it off, and
another time holding a big piece by his mouth and let the turtle pick
it off his face. :-) The BIGGEST pieces of such fungus were found
by the turtle itself, from the rubble -- three to four inches long.

I had never seen anything like this before in my thousands of dives.
Does anyone know what kind of fungus those black nuggets are, and
whether they are found in other parts of the Pacific or the Caribbean?
Apparently they are delicacies to the green turtle, as truffles are
delicacies to man and animals on land.

The next 6-7 days will be at sea, first making a pass (without stopping)
at Pitcairn island before making a 6-hour stop at Easter Island. I
learned from the scuba coordinator on board, Trixie, that there IS a
scuba shop on Easter Island. I don't mind the mention of treacherous
currents, but the mention of "full wetsuit" needed for the cold-water
diving there definitely put a damper on this Warm Water Wimp who had
not dived anywhere with a thicker-than-1-mil wetsuit since my ice-dive
cert in 1990. :-)

-- Bob.

At sea on way to Pitcairn and Easter Island.

"Greg Mossman" wrote in message ...
"Alan Street" wrote in message
...

So what is this little net session costing you?

He gets it for free because he's a freequent croozer.

Greg got it right. Otherwise it's 3,000 Polynesian francs or $30 USD
an hour.

-- Bob.

"Reef Fish" wrote in message
om...
(Bill Lawrence123) wrote in message
...
Bob, I hate to break this to you, but nobody gives a $hit where you are,
or
what you are doing.

Bill

Bill, it's okay to spell "****" correctly. You ****head!

Ah, Fishie, I see that you are as well-loved on all of the NG's to which you
cyber travel.

(snip interesting scuba story, yet ;^) it did fall within the realm of
humans messing with the animals)

chilly wrote:


(snip interesting scuba story, yet ;^) it did fall within the realm of
humans messing with the animals)



Well, there was no indication he was forcing the animal to do unatural
acts (other than the turtle seemed conditioned to respond that way), nor
was he pretending cheeze whiz was major food group.


--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten'
"All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of
what we know." -- Richard Wilbur

chilly wrote:


(snip interesting scuba story, yet ;^) it did fall within the realm of
humans messing with the animals)



Well, there was no indication he was forcing the animal to do unatural
acts (other than the turtle seemed conditioned to respond that way), nor
was he pretending cheeze whiz was major food group.


--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten'
"All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of
what we know." -- Richard Wilbur

"Jer" wrote in message
...

Well, there was no indication he was forcing the animal to do unatural
acts (other than the turtle seemed conditioned to respond that way), nor
was he pretending cheeze whiz was major food group.

But you assume the turtle was really hungry and wanted to eat. Perhaps he
felt intimidated by the divers and ate even though he was full. He may have
felt captive because of all the bubbles. After all, Navy scientists have
been doing top-secret experiments on turtles and they all told me that
turtles feel captive around bubbles and will therefore eat anything offered
to them to the point where their stomachs burst. I can't believe you assume
this practice to be benign. You should be ashamed of yourself.

"chilly" wrote in message news:B9eZc.291412$gE.178012@pd7tw3no...
"Reef Fish" wrote in message
om...
(Bill Lawrence123) wrote in message
...

Bob, I hate to break this to you, but nobody gives a $hit where you are,
or what you are doing.

Bill

Bill, it's okay to spell "****" correctly. You ****head!

Ah, Fishie, I see that you are as well-loved on all of the NG's to which you
cyber travel.

Of course! You're NOT the ONLY Cyber-bitch y'know?
(Note: chilly wasn't content to be called "bitch", she insisted that
she be properly addressed as "Queen Bitch". Unfortunately
others had already staked that claim before chilly. Sorry,
chilly, you're just an ordinary female dog, in newsgroups.)



(snip interesting scuba story, yet ;^)

it did fall within the realm of humans messing with the animals)

Guilty as charged. I do kick the asses of female dogs when they felt
obliged to bite my ankle; I also kick the asses of male dogs too.
Just ask Green Dog about it!


If did NOT fall within the realm of ****head Bill's complain either:

Bill nobody gives a $hit where you are, or what you are doing.

-- Bob.

"chilly" wrote in message news:B9eZc.291412$gE.178012@pd7tw3no...
"Reef Fish" wrote in message
om...
(Bill Lawrence123) wrote in message
...

Bob, I hate to break this to you, but nobody gives a $hit where you are,
or what you are doing.

Bill

Bill, it's okay to spell "****" correctly. You ****head!

Ah, Fishie, I see that you are as well-loved on all of the NG's to which you
cyber travel.

Of course! You're NOT the ONLY Cyber-bitch y'know?
(Note: chilly wasn't content to be called "bitch", she insisted that
she be properly addressed as "Queen Bitch". Unfortunately
others had already staked that claim before chilly. Sorry,
chilly, you're just an ordinary female dog, in newsgroups.)



(snip interesting scuba story, yet ;^)

it did fall within the realm of humans messing with the animals)

Guilty as charged. I do kick the asses of female dogs when they felt
obliged to bite my ankle; I also kick the asses of male dogs too.
Just ask Green Dog about it!


If did NOT fall within the realm of ****head Bill's complain either:

Bill nobody gives a $hit where you are, or what you are doing.

-- Bob.

Jer wrote in message ...
Reef Fish wrote:

(Reef Fish) wrote in message . com...

Greatings from Raiatea.


French Polynesia has some of the best scuba diving locations and sites
in the world, visited by various Princess cruises.

Just curious, Bob, does the prevailing current carry the bilge contents
into the reef, or downstream just outside the reef zone like in Coz?

[....]

Jer, I wouldn't know because I find better things to do than hugging
trees, and I don't see any evidence of your apparent paranoia and
fetish about beilge contents of cruise ships, in Cozumel, in the
French Polynesia, and the rest of the world in which I have dived
that are visited by cruise ships.

Why don't you give us a special report of this bilge subject of which
you're such expert, and seemed to have been consumed by it, to the
extent of overlooking all the healthy flora and fauna in the undersea
world.

-- Bob.

At sea toward Pitcairn.

"Greg Mossman" wrote in message ...
"Jer" wrote in message
...

Well, there was no indication he was forcing the animal to do unatural
acts (other than the turtle seemed conditioned to respond that way), nor
was he pretending cheeze whiz was major food group.

But you assume the turtle was really hungry and wanted to eat. Perhaps he
felt intimidated by the divers and ate even though he was full.

Perhaps you (Greg) assumed that a turtle doesn't know how to swim away
from divers.

But you missed the MOST important clue that the turtle WANTED to eat:

RF soon the turtle came over
RF and he was feeding it those nuggets, sometimes picking up a piece of
RF dead coral with the fungus on it and let the turtle pick it off,

That indicated a VOLUNTEER act by the turtle.

RF The BIGGEST pieces of such fungus were found
RF by the turtle itself, from the rubble -- three to four inches long.

That's an unmistakable sign that the turtle is a BETTER food-picker
than the DM. The one piece the turtle found itself was bigger than
half a dozen tiny pieces of nuggets the DM found.



He may have
felt captive because of all the bubbles. After all, Navy scientists have
been doing top-secret experiments on turtles and they all told me that
turtles feel captive around bubbles and will therefore eat anything offered
to them to the point where their stomachs burst.

I am sure that was what chilly based her silly remark. I assume your
paragraph was made with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

The "rubble" was the bottom of the "Canyon" which you probably dived. It
was about 60 fsw, completely clear of any obstruction or barrier that
the turtle might mistaken to be a captive cage.

I have seen and swam with HUNDREDS of turtles, big or small. NEVER
have I found one incapable of swimming away from any harrassing diver
if the turtle chooses to.

There're times and places to hug a tree, but this ain't the right one.

-- Bob.