Raja Ampat Underwater

The sea life in Raja Ampat was absolutely overwhelming.  The color and variety and sheer number of fish and coral was more than we could even take in in most places.  It was unreal! And yet we kept discovering new creatures every time we went out.  

There is no possible way that we could have captured the magic we found every time we dipped our heads into the water.  That was the biggest disadvantage we found in snorkeling versus diving because it's tough to get the good pictures, although we were making memories at every turn.  Sadly, my underwater camera sprung a leak about 10 minutes into our first snorkel, so we had to borrow a resort camera for a few days to capture some memories.  I'm sharing a lot of them, in no particular order and nowhere near as glorious as they were in person.

The poisonous stonefish.  Alex had heard of these and he took off screaming.  I'm pretty sure they're only a problem if you step on them, not just swimming overhead.

The titan triggerfish

We saw thousands of drifting jellyfish that didn't sting (although the plankton that they feed on did give us little stings here and there) but thankfully only saw a few moon jellys.

Indiana Jones wore his hat most of the week because it was impossible to keep enough sunscreen on his head.  The kids sang the theme song for him each time he jumped in!

The redtoothed triggerfish became one of my favorite new discoveries.  They were really common there but new to me.

Sometimes the fields of coral went as far as we could see.  Boats are generally really careful not to drop anchors so we saw little damage in most places. In other places, the coral was completely destroyed because fisherman used to use dynamite.

The little colorful creatures on the color would disappear and hide if we waved our hands nearby.

Ben's favorite - the parrotfish in every size and color.

Alex was a huge fan of the anemones and clownfish.

The giant clams were amazing.

This little pipefish was very cool

Beautiful little nudibranch

We saw lots of black tip reef sharks but weren't able to get many photos while we were snorkeling.

The amazing bumphead parrotfish - they were each at least 2 feet long.

 We saw lots of sea turtles and always had to get closer and say hello!

A Napoleon wrasse in the background

Sweet-lips

Matt getting a better look at the barracuda

We saw several moray eel as well

From our own porch, we saw sting rays constantly throughout the day

We also spotted octopus below our porch several times, but they were so difficult to find!

If we happened to be lucky enough to see one swim, we could watch him for a while.  They were fascinating!

We watched this eel go in and out with the tides

 There was a lovely school of parrotfish that hung out near the dock every day.

 The walking shark, only found in Papua.

Baby black tip reef shark.  I had to yell "shark!" every time I saw one and the kids got pretty tired of hearing it!

And the cute little beach cat...