Scuba diving in the Kerama Islands

I got scuba certified in Arizona. Seriously. So trust me when I say that I have been very eager to go diving since we arrived here last summer. But of course, we had a newborn; we didn't have a house or a babysitter; and then Paul deployed.

Fast forward to now: we have a happy toddler who loves her amazing babysitter, a home, and Paul is back from Afghanistan! So recently we hired the amazing babysitter for the entire day and took a dive trip out to the Kerama Islands. The Keramas are a group of 22 islands, mostly uninhabited,  which are surrounded by breathtaking reefs, unimaginably pristine beaches, and water the color of coolaid. I still can't get over the color of the water -- even being there, it didn't look real.

As if that weren't incredible enough, the visibility underwater was around 100 feet. 

The reefs are simply amazing -- the quantity and variety of fish, coral, and invertebrates we saw was unreal. These few pictures sadly don't do it any justice at all.

(Fun-and-not-at-all-nerdy fact of the day: water acts as a light filter. The deeper you go, the more colors get filtered out, starting with red, then orange, then yellow, etc. By ten feet, most of the red is gone. So down at 60 feet, everything starts to look pretty washed out and blue, especially to a camera with no flash.)

We saw thousands of fish: butterfly fish, parrot fish, picasso triggerfish, anemonefish, sergeant majors, moorish idols, and hundred more that I can't identify by sight. We also found a small octopus and three turtles, but sadly missed the (friendly) shark that the other group with us happened upon.

Now that I have been in the water, it's going to be hard to keep me out of it. Our babysitter is going to make a killing this summer!