Dive #3 of the day (the final) was off of the northern tip of Tokashiki-jima (due east of our previous dive site off the eastern coast of Zamami-jima). We did a "drift" dive (that means we convinced the captain to not make us have to return to the boat when we were ready to get out & go home, but to instead come find our inflated orange safety sausage wherever we might end up in the current-that-we-thought-was-a-lot-stronger-than-it-actually-was). So we set up 2 groups of 5 divers each. Our five-some included the 2 of us, dive organizer Brad, Dean & Jason.
It turned out that all 10 of us mostly stayed together for at least 2/3 of the dive. And even the other group on the boat (4 young Japanese divers) ended up at the fist highlight scene with us - a group of at LEAST 5 beautiful sea turtles! Yes, we all went nuts taking photos & videos, as you might expect.
We ended up seeing at least 6 different turtles on this dive, including one that was missing a front paw (fin? flipper? leg? forearm? appendage?). He answered to the name of "Lucky." About 10 min after playing with the other turtles, Betsy & I even came across another one just hanging out (we probably woke him) under a rocky ledge. He never even budged, though he was fully aware of my proximity & photo snapping all around him. What a polite breed these Japanese turtles are!
Towards the end of the dive, our 5-some dropped down in size to a trio, when Dean & Jason unanticipatedly joined the crew ahead of us as we explored some cool crevasses. About that time, the inside of the dive camera case (directly in front of the lens) began to cloud/fog, so I didn't take as many hundreds of photos in the end as I normally would. Count yourselves lucky! ;-)
Slideshow of the full set of photos:
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