Hungry Moray Day 9

Today was overall a great day.  It started off with some really good banana nut bread for breakfast.  I definitely ate my fill of this bread.  After breakfast, we shoved off for the same low lionfish density reef that we worked on yesterday.  Once again, my job was exclusively to remove lionfish from the reef.  As I moved around the reef, I found one in the same cave as I found lionfish from the day before.  I tried to catch it with the nets but it was too quick.  I then resolved to spearing it and when I did, it actually swam off the tips of the spear.  Spearing lionfish in the muscle tissue can lead to this result because they are capable of surviving some puncture wounds where it is through muscle tissue.  It scurried off into a hole and I had to leave it be so that it would hopefully come back out later.  As I continued to swim, I found another lionfish and successfully speared it.  Although it was not a kill shot, I speared it well enough so that I could take it off the reef and deal with it as I had before to put it out of its misery.  After taking care of that fish, I continued on to find a ledge that had 3 more lionfish hanging out under.  By this time I was low on air but I attempted to catch one to no avail.  At that point in the dive, I had to ascend to a shallower depth while I waited for Tye to finish her work.

On the second dive, I was on a mission to find the 4 lionfish that we knew were on the reef (1 injured and 3 under the overhang).  I first came upon a lionfish that seemed unaware of my intentions and I was able to catch it and bag it for later use.  As I continued on, I found a couple near the same cave that I speared the first fish unsuccessfully.  I speared each of them separately and took them to a small patch reef slightly off the main reef.  When I brought the second speared lionfish to the patch, I noticed a spotted moray was nibbling on the first dying lionfish that I had set in the sand next to the patch reef.  I left the second fish near the moray and while I was getting it off the hook, I noticed the other fish that was getting nibbled on began to convulse.  I immediately took my spear and finished off both lionfish to make sure they wouldn’t suffer.  I snapped a few photos of the moray nibbling away at the carcass.  I am pretty sure that I became a good friend of the moray since I brought it two lionfish to feast on.  At this point in the dive, I was running low on air since I had been swimming around quite a bit.  I went up to my safety stop while Tye speared the last lionfish that we knew was left on the reef.  From above, I saw this 9+ foot long reef shark cruise near the ledge where Tye was as if it was looking for a freshly killed lionfish.  It circled and circled this particular patch of the continuous reef which I thought was a bit strange.  When Tye and I got onto the boat, she told me that she successfully speared the lionfish and the shark came swimming in almost immediately after she speared it.  On the bottom, Tye said it was actually circling the lionfish that was lying on the reef as I am sure it could sense that the lionfish was still partially alive.  Native predatory fish do not eat the adult lionfish without them being dead.  It is likely that sharks and morays get stung on occasion even when the fish is completely dead.  Tye thinks that the toxin just causes pain for predators temporarily.  Over a short time, the sensation most likely subsides such that sharks will come back to eat lionfish.

After I surfaced, we moved on to the high density reef to release the one caught lionfish (pictured here).  After quickly releasing it under a nice ledge, Tye and I caught fairy basslets for the remainder of the dive.  Once we finished, we came back and put everything away as per usual.  I was really happy to find my mask that was lost from the day before in the fray of the DCS scare.  After cleaning up we had dinner and did our logs.  Strangely, Tye was not feeling too well when we did logs complaining about some joint related soreness and pain.  This is a bit of a red flag but thankfully her symptoms subsided.  We discussed ways to make the rest of the week more conservative for diving and then ended the day.  I watched the Kings game shortly thereafter and was delighted to see them win in overtime.  It was a hard fought battle with the Rangers but the Kings came through.  Now that I am finishing up the blog, I need to go to sleep because it is about 1:30 (the latest I have stayed up).  Until later.