Bob Weins's Dive Log

We dove and snorkeled Buddy reef the last two weeks of August of 2013. I did a couple of 6AM dives with my sister-in-law and those were very nice dives and included a 10 to 15 minute encounter with a hunting octopus being shadowed by hinds. It remained out in the open slowly crossing the sand at the top of the reef and tenting small bits of coral and seaweed. It even approached me but did shy away as I slowly reached out to it. My wife and I were sick for the second week so we did almost no diving but were able to snorkel a few times and found that the action was not on the edge of the reef but along the concrete wall of what use to be Lion's resort (now part of Buddy). We regularly encountered schools of two types of silversides numbering I would estimate at a thousand or more and anywhere from three to eight midsize tarpon (3 to 4.5 ft range) which appeared to be using us to corner the schools of silversides as they would come through the schools directly at us and then turn off at about 3 feet. After one of the snorkel trips I sat down and listed everything I could remember seeing in just that hour of snorkeling. Keep in mind that we probably saw less than half of what was there and I probably did not remember everything either or saw things I was unable to identify. But here is what we did see during that hour of snorkeling. Dusky squirrel fish, 3 different schools of different silversides (possibly dwarf herring, and bonnet mouth), green razor, bluehead wrasse, small school of glassy sweeper, a small black, gray and white lionfish, 7 tarpon, juvenile sharpnose puffers, porcupine fish, sand tilefish, redlip blinnys, peacock flounder, striped blinny, long spine (black) sea urchins, 2 sergeant majors defending nests,4eye butterfly fish, stoplight parrot fish (male and female), blue parrot fish (male), queen parrot fish (male and female), hog fish, Spanish hog fish, corkscrew anomnies, snooke, one small octopus imitating a clump of seaweed (a behavior we had not seen before) shadowed by a wrasse, a larger octopus which appeared to be nuclear hunting in a small coral head with an entourage of spanish hogfish and hinds, harlequin bass, graysbee, red hind, juvenile yellowtail damsel, slippery dick, yellow goatfish, palometa (school of 8), rainbow runners, bicolor damsel, both gray and cubera snappers, trumpet fish (shadowing a parrot fish)needle fish (probably either houndfish or flat needle fish, lettuce sea slogs, flameback basslet, rock beauty (both mature and juvenile) intermediate French Angel transitioning to an adult (had the scale coloration of a mature fish but still had the fading remains of the yellow strips of a juvenile, snook and bonefish.