Coolest Animal Encounter?

[caburrid]

I myself haven't had many cool animal encounters underwater, but I am wondering what the coolest animal you have encountered underwater is. As always, pics are encouraged...can anyone beat that Whale Shark encounter?

[mrmccoy]

I don't have a lot but on my last 2 check out dives we saw about 5 octopus's and the biggest was a little smaller then my head. nothing super impressive but not bad for Destin......

[Case]

A cuttlefish pretenting to be stag coral was cool, he was floating a few feet above the coral and made is tentacles the same colour and shape.

But night diving is the best, big parrot fish just lying on coral sleeping, and turtles meandering around. Love the night dives.

[Smashee]

Yay, fish stories.

It's a tie between seeing a couple of rooting manta-rays or having a big Queensland Groper park itself next to me. Probably the Groper.

I was inside a wreck waiting for my buddy to clear a hatch and this fish the size of a compact car pulled up next to me. There was a mutual "OMGWTF?!!" moment as it spotted me about the same time I spotted it.

Other cool encounters were watching hunting sea-snakes and a shovel-nose ray doing it's best to convince me it's a proper shark.
Whale-sharks are top of my wannasee list. :-)

[diversteve]

I've got several.

Had a Whale Shark go right by me, stop, turn on his side and eye me then blow a bubble last spring off Utila. He thought I might've been the researcher who'd just unsuccessfully tried to get a tissue sample. He was pretty mad...
One of 6 we saw over two days that week. One was estimated at 25' or so. It's like diving with a bus.

We dove Big Hole off Cay Sal several years ago. It's where Nekton does their shark feed. At the end of our first dive, I was circled by 10-15 totally passive Cariibbean Reef sharks in about 20' of water - they would veer off as they got within about 10'. Funniest part was seeing the expression on some of the other divers hanging nearby on the safety stop bar. The next dive we went and sat on the bottom and they swam between us - could've touched them as they went by.

Off Seal Dog Rock in the BVI's about 4 years ago I swam into a school of baitfish. Thousands of them. As I'd move, the school would move around me. I noticed a barracuda about 40' away, the next time I turned around he was 3' away - and eyeing my shiny video housing. As I watched he hit several of the baitfish and was joined by a 3-4' Smook (sp) a couple minutes later. Just lots of flashing scales everywhere.

I've done two dolphin dives, in Curacao and at AKR in Roatan. Both were memorable for the encounter.

During the Roatan dive, I went up early, my friends still on the bottom waiting for the dolphins to return. As I was doing my safety stop, I noticed them about 100 yds. away from my friends so I waved to point them out. One of the dolphins saw me and swam up to within about 5' of me, stopped and stared me in the eye. I carefully reached my hand out, showed it to him and touched him under the chin - they told us not to go near the blowhole - as I did that, he moved closer, "kissed" me on the chin and took off to rejoin his buddy.

A dive buddy probably has the best one though. He was diving off Catalina about 10 years ago and noticed a big black dot through the kelp. As he swam up to it, it winked, then the whole wall of kelp sort of shuddered and came at him in a wave. As he backpedaled away from it, a huge whale swam past him. He thinks it was a Blue Whale - could've been 60'+ by his estimation. He said it looked bigger than the diveboat.

[navyhmc]

I had a whale encounter off the NW side of Isla de Tiburon once-was within feet of it-really cool encounter-frightening and humbling at the same time. The same trip, I got to see a manta idly swimming in a cove on the SE side of Tiburon.

[snagel]

Not seen a lot, but the Eagle Rays and an Octopus on last Bonaire Trip.

Snagel

[DivingCRNA]

Snorkeling within feet of humpback whales in the silver banks. Priceless.

[caburrid]

Originally Posted by DivingCRNA

Snorkeling within feet of humpback whales in the silver banks. Priceless.

Wow, that really does sound like an awesome experience! How many whales were there?

[DivingCRNA]

Originally Posted by caburrid

Wow, that really does sound like an awesome experience! How many whales were there?

We were there for 4 days on the Turks and Ciacos Aggressor. Saw dozens of humpbacks. Snorkeled with them a few times when we could slip out of the boat quiet enough.