Peter and I took our weekly adventure underwater this Sunday with a delightful trip to Laulau Beach. It gets it’s name from the rough dirt road you have to bounce down to get to it, laolao being the Chamorro word meaning to shake.
The dive was beautiful. Every time I get in the water I’m surprised how warm it is. The water at Laulau is 90° F, and knee-deep for the first 25 feet or so straight out from shore. This shelf drops off into about 10 or 15 feet of water, where we splashed in and followed a well secured rope line out through some reef structures and into a great dive.
I’d love to know the name of the quarter sized matte black swimmers studded with neon sapphires or the posh red-spined coral eater whose tail looks like a brush dipped in bright yellow paint, but we saw a whole school of Naso lituratus, one of maybe three fish species I can identify and my favorite to spot. Peter spotted a large Green sea turtle (the endangered Chelonia mydas) and we got to swim along side it for a few inspiring minutes. These animals have an extraordinarily graceful attitude and style, they seem to fly effortlessly over the sea floor. Very beautiful.
This video is fairly representative of our dive, though we didn’t see a huge school of fish. Also we’re not a Japanese woman.