Today we went snorkeling in the reef near the boat. There are a lot of areas with coral around here, and yesterday on our dinghy ride yesterday we staked out the spot that we thought looked best. It is huge, has lots of coral, and is shallow so you can see everything snorkeling and don’t need to actually dive. We agree the reef here is better than both the ocean and the lagoon in Manihi.

The coral wasn’t quite as good. It was mostly shades of beige, with some dark yellows and purples here and there. There were a lot of cauliflower looking coral and a lot of long, skinny ones that look like a thorny plant. In the ocean at Manihi there was more color and more shapes of coral, like brain shapes. We also forgot to mention that there was a little bit of black coral in the ocean in Manihi.

The fish here were much better, though. There are thousands of fish floating around, and they are very unique and colorful. There were large parrot fish that seemed to change color. They looked bright green, pale green and purple, or pale blue and purple depending on the angle. They were munching away on the coral, leaving a trail of crumbs behind them. We saw some fish that had olive green, pink and light blue stripes. We saw fish with long snouts. We saw angel fish in an assortment of colors: bright yellow and white, black, and orange. We saw fish that looked almost black with small blue spots. We saw a fish that looked dark red in color. We saw two different varieties of fish that looked almost like tubes with long snouts. One type was small and almost translucent, swimming in big groups. The other type was much bigger, more of a putty color and swam by themselves. We could go on and on because there were so many varieties. We also saw three tiny sharks that were only about a foot long.

Schools of fish are fascinating to watch. They float along close together, and then suddenly, all the fish will change direction in unison, like marching band soldiers turning as part of their routine.

There were a lot of clams around. It turns out that we misreported when we said we saw oysters in Manihi. They were really clams and we were confused. Most had electric blue, green, or purple lips, but we saw a couple with brown lips. There were little bright orange plants on the coral that looked like cone shaped bottle brushes. We both enjoyed our adventure in the water.

Then we headed back to the boat and got ready for another early morning departure on Thursday. There is supposed to be a village on the south side, too, but we decided to skip seeing it and head to our next destination. We were eager to pull up anchor. When the wind first died, we were able to see the bottom very clearly. We saw that we were anchored in coral. Sigh. It looked clear when the water was choppy. With no wind, we were making circles around the anchor, meaning that we were getting our chain wrapped more and more tightly around the coral.