This afternoon, we moored at Diamond Reef. This is a reef we really liked when we were here last year, so we were excited to come back. However, as you’ll see, it was a bit of a disaster for us this time!

First, I want to share a new video with you. This is a short 30 second “highlights” video of our trip so far. I posted it on Instagram, and figured I would share it here, too.

Let me know what you think!

Now, back to our stop at Diamond Reef. Here is the map showing where we are next to the island. The reef is right against the shore of Great Camanoe Island. The blue dot is our boat’s location.

On our way here, we saw this pretty sail boat going by. It was really sailing fast!

We were hungry, so had lunch before jumping in the water. Julia made some delicious beer battered cod soft tacos with a homemade apple coleslaw. Yum!

Now that we were rested up from lunch, it was time to jump on in! After lunch, we noticed that there was a lot of sargassum seaweed lining the shore. But we didn’t see much of it out over the reef area. Whew! Or so we thought! Bwahahaha!

Into the water we went!

Here is a cool looking fish. The colored lines and dots look iridescent or glowing under the water. The fish is called a Pudding Wife Wrasse. I have no idea why it is called that! I even Googled the name, but there is no info on where the name came from. Huh.

This is a really pretty picture of all purple sea fans and a butterfly fish in front of them. We don’t see these fish very often, and usually they are in pairs. Not sure if there was a second one here that isn’t in the picture. This photo is so colorful it looks fake! 😊 But nope, we were there and saw if with our own eyes. LOL!

There were a lot of large purple sea fans scattered around here. Very nice! Here is another nice shot of a Schoolmaster Snapper in front of some sea fans.

And, there was even this stunning Elkhorn Coral formation. I love how the sun lights it up. Really pretty!

Of course, we need a picture of the ubiquitous Blue Tang. It’s like this guy was posing!

We also see this Bar Jack pretty often. It’s go that glowing blue stripe, which makes it easy to recognize. They usually hang out around the boat, too.

Oh, and a Blueheaded Wrasse – another fish we see a lot.

For a completely NEW thing to see – Jeff got this amazing photo of a Flamingo Toungue Snail on a sea fan. I edited the photo to enlarge the right side so we can actually see the snail on the sea fan. The sun made those great rainbows on the sea fan – I did not add them.

Amazingly, these snails are actually more colorful than you see in this above photo. Here is a picture of what they typically look like…

Cool, huh? Even more interesting is that the colorful spots are NOT part of the shell. The snail extends a “mantle” out to cover the shell. It does that as a warning that it’s poisonous. But, if it gets attacked, it will pull in that mantle so that you see mostly just the plain shell, like the one Jeff got in his picture.

What I want to know is – why are they called “Flamingo Tongue”? LOL! 🤪 I couldn’t find an answer to that question.

Back to our fish… here is the beautifully colorful Stoplight Parrotfish. This one is an adult. Interestingly, they can change their gender as they mature.

Meanwhile, as we’d been floating around looking at fish and coral, unbeknown to us, the nasty sargassum seaweed had been floating off the shore to cover almost the entire area we were in. Yuck! Even worse, there were LARGE jellyfish all around us! Yikes!

At first, we just saw a few scattered around. But we started to get nervous. And, at the same time, we couldn’t see a clear path through the sargassum back to our boat, and we were a bit of a swim away. We decided to make our way back as best we could – both through and around the sargassum.

As usual, jellyfish are hard to catch in photos. But, Jeff got this upside-down jellyfish with the sun shining right on it. Yikes! You can see his tentacles streaming away. Who knows how long they really are! The body of this is about 3-4″ across.

I wish there was a good photo which showed the number of jellyfish surrounding us. There was this one picture where you can kind of see them. There’s one right in the middle of the picture. Then, you can see the translucent bodies of others scattered nearby. You gotta realize their tentacles are floating everywhere – and you can’t see them at all! We were so glad that 99% of our skin was covered with our rash guards, etc. Whew!

The other thing about the above picture is that the sargassum seaweed was all over the place. It’s not in the photo, but the photo is darker because sunlight wasn’t getting through the seaweed. It’s really spooky when sargassum makes everything so dark.

As you can guess, by now we were jetting back to that boat as quickly as possible. We had our sea scooters with us and set them on high speed. Vroom! 🚀 I was never so happy to get out of the water as I was that day!

Back on the boat, we looked out and saw that the sargassum seaweed had floated out from the shore and was everywhere. Eventually, it completely surrounded our boat.

Needless to say, we weren’t going back in the water here! What a shame, this was such a nice snorkel spot.

This area was a very popular place to moor overnight. This picture is just before sunset. It’s hard to see the masts against the clouds, but there are many, many boats here.

After an exciting day, we were ready for dinner. Tonight, we had Moroccan Lamb. OMG! That was delicious!

And cheesecake with berries for dessert! Remember, none of this is store-bought, Julia makes everything herself.

With full tummies, we were ready to relax and enjoy the evening. Good night!