Medary.com

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Forty

(Remember to click "read more" if you're looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

November 8 (Saturday, Day 53, Noumea, New Caledonia - Continued) -

One of the first things we saw was a black sea snake. All of a sudden this "ribbon" that was about 2 inches wide floated up (vertically) to the water surface and took a quick breath of air. Then it floated back down (also vertically) and crawled under some coral. We had never seen a sea snake before and this one certainly took us by surprise. We saw several more during our snorkels and later found out that New Caledonia is famous for its sea snakes since there are so many varieties of them and a lot of them there.

Sea Snake!

Snake on the way down

More after the jump . . . A snorkeling photo sampler:

We saw lots of fish of all shapes and sizes and colors. The colorful fish were anywhere from 2 inches to 3 feet long and we saw some gray, long skinny ones with about 4 inches of teeth. They weren't trumpet fish or gar but were more like barracudas. They were about 4inches in diameter and 3 feet long and then had a snout that was 4 inches long with ½ inch teeth. We saw a starfish on the bottom of the sea, too, and a bunch of sea cucumbers. The coral was gorgeous, too, and was red, green, blue and yellow. The green coral reminded Snookums of evergreens that grown low to the ground (and the kind that we have in our front yard on our berm). There were just huge clumps of it and it was light green.

Blue coral

Next: More great snorkeling photos!