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Sex on the Reef

All romantic evenings start with a beautiful sunset. No wine since we would become snorkelers after the first drink. It did not seem to stop the other sealife. Romance was in the air.

The night started with an innocent encounter with a photogenic lionfish. He did not seem to care that I was taking pictures of him. I noticed a cleaning shrimp on his back . I guess this is why he was friendly, he was having a massage.

Innocently, I kept manuvering around him to get a good shot of the shrimp on his back.

About this time Cap'n Brian (who was helping with our new flashes ) tapped me on the back. He pointed to the spot where my .. uhm ... backside had been maneuvering. There was the other half of the Lionfish pair and he did not look as happy. I guess it was a case of jealousy. Sitting on him would have shortened my dive trememdously ( and painfully ). The rest of the dive was one miracle after another. It looks like the shrimp massage was just the beginning. Sex was in the air. Here is a spawning anemone.

The X-rated crabs should not be seen by children.

A pair of banded coral shrimp watching the show.

Some more crab love ( I guess they could be shrimp of some sort, I just know there are too many legs for a single creature! ).

While I was innocently ( again ) taking pictures of this crab and trying to get my fellow divers over to take a look,

I saw some motion below me. Now the fact that I see the motion means there is light being focused in the area of motion ( for those that have never been on a night dive it can be really dark where your lights are not pointing ). I see why my fellow divers would not investigate what I was enjoying. It seems a sea cucumber had just risen up and spawned underneath me. I caught the motion when it was falling back down. i was not sure until then that they even moved.

The dive ended with a large crab that was disguising itself with a piece of soft coral. I guess he had been steppin' out on his lady and didn't want anyone to see him coming back from the assignation. Usually these crabs will hold a hard piece of coral over themselves for a disguise. Maybe he liked pink, or maybe he was a she.