We checked out of our hotel and thanked our hostess as sincerely as we could with our limited Japanese. Ryan said we could bird before going in the water, and I'm so glad he works with me when we hunt organisms of different habitats. This morning, I saw a Black-winged Stilt...
...another Brown Shrike...
...and a female Japanese Paradise Flycatcher! This one was another new species for me, but unfortunately the photo is far from perfect. I had to share it despite the lack of focus, because I snapped it while foraging AND because of the promise of seeing a male with his brilliant tail. I didn't see the male today, but my search image is fixed.
The waters on the south side of the western-most point of Aguni were very calm today, so we decided to see just how deep the deep blue could get. Turns out, VERY deep. I can only swim down to ~30-ft on a good day, while Ryan makes twice that depth look easy. Other than the swim out from shore, no amount of swimming down got me any closer to the fish that were there. The water was great: somewhat clear visibility and easy swimming. We hit the deep water within 50-ft of shore. It may have been further than that, but it seemed like I was only able to see the rocks/corals easily for a brief amount of time, and then it was all blue.
Other than a few shots of fish and corals, the rest of my photos were of Ryan swimming down to look for fish.
The fish here are not accustomed to spear-fishermen. Ryan gnabbed this beauty within 15 minutes of reaching the deeper water:
We had a great time swimming around. Most of my time was spent on the surface and watching Ryan from there. I would look around on occasion to see what else was with me. My mind would not let go of the idea that I might look up at some point and see something REALLY big swimming just beyond the point where visibility ended. The silhouette of a prehistoric fish was etched on my brain, but the rational side of me would counter those thoughts before they made me truly fearful. My mental state was in the throes of this ping pong match when I saw this:
I know this is blurry, even with some serious editing. But let me give you some perspective: this humphead wrasse was at least four feet in length and kind of hovered in front of us a good distance before it noticed us. Ryan and I were swimming together at this point, and although it was right in front of us at a good distance away, it was difficult to see because it's blue color was similar to the blue of the water. We tried to get closer, but this thing moved with amazing speed and grace despite it's lumbering size. I thought back to the info panel near this side of the island when we first arrived, and wondered if it was the same fish:
We continued to swim and hunt right up until we had to be thinking about exiting the water if we wanted to clean up before boarding the ferry. Ryan snagged one more beauty before his arm absolutely fatigued:
We could not leave this beach without a few prize shots of Ryan's take for the day. We had plenty of ice from the blue fin trevally of yesterday, and thought today's fish would make for nice fish diversity for the week's menu.
We dried off quickly, drove over to hit the showers at Nagahama beach one more time, and then stopped by the one store on Aguni for some snacks before arriving at the port. We'd had a great weekend, and pondered our ranking lists for the islands we've visited thus far. Aguni doesn't quite beat out Zamami for the top spot, but it's pretty darn close. Possible dates for a future visit were tossed around as we enjoyed a peaceful cruise home aboard the Aguni Ferry, and we celebrated a successful weekend with a cigar and a smoke.
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