Videos of manta ray encounter and counting coral recruits

Now that I have better a better bandwidth connection to the network, I thought I would try sharing some short videos. Both of these were filmed by Francesco Ferretti using a borrowed GoPro camera attached to his chest.

This first clip is of a manta ray that swam by as we were starting our dive the FR3 site. At the start of the clip if you look toward the top of the screen you will see the red "Hoff" float on the water surface. At the end of the clip, Doug, who handled the Hoff as we descended, is handing it off to Francesco who will clip it to his BC for the remainder of the dive.

Here is a second video clip showing Doug counting newly settled corals on the terra cotta tiles we installed. You can see Doug on the left using the underwater light that was custom modified to project blue light. When he finishes counting Doug looks up for me and puts up one finger and then makes a motion back and forth with his hand held flat. I am recording the counts, and this means he counted one coral recruit on the flat surface. I had previously recorded the number of coral recruits in the large divots and the number in the small divots. Also note when Doug looks up that he has amber "sunglasses" on top of his dive mask.

What you don't see is the signal Doug used for the count of coral recruits in the large divots which was to hold up the appropriate number of fingers and then raise his elbow. This made Doug look like he was doing the "funky chicken".