Things have been busy here at the resort on the video front. We have Jim and Patricia testing out brand new Sony HD video cameras with Amphibco housings out on the reef. There’s some new Manta Ray Bay promo material in the works, some of it I’ll leak here before it flies back to Michigan for final production.

Last week we had a crackling thunderstorm roll through and spend most of a night sending our resident Manta Rays into the deep – today is our first blue sky since last week. We hit a couple of dive sites down south and bumped into some big animals, no Mantas, but a giant ray indeed.

I spotted this ray in a sandbox and before I scared it off, I hit the brakes, flipped a 180 and went back waving for Jim. A couple days ago in Goofnuw channel I spooked a massive feather tailed ray off the bottom and neither of us got a picture of it. This time, I let Jim disturb this monster after making sure it appears on the new 2012 promo DVD.

Turtles are like anemone fish, everyone likes to see one. Camoflauged with the reef and some soft corral was this guy, as I drifted over, he took off from just underneath my bc.

Floating along the vertigo wall we had about 6 divers drift right by a turtle resting under a corral overhang, finally I spotted it and it wound up getting onto Patricia’s SD card before we passed it while riding the current.

We have some fun clips of Yap turtles getting cleaned on the reef and swimming out into the blue from this week’s filming.

Yesterday while dropping down, Alex pointed out this scorpion fish. This has to be the best ghillie suit on the reef, the camouflage expert of the day. After I got a picture, I pointed it out to Jim who took almost a minute to see it himself, no wonder we don’t spot many of these guys.

On the same reef float Jim and Pat split a school of Barracuda with their cameras and the curious group stuck around for a few photo ops while regrouping.

Spending a morning on Yap’s Pacific Ocean reef offers an assortment of dive environments, some of my favorites are the huge corral pillars, swim throughs and depth varying wall swims.

Outside of one of the channel dive sites is a miniature corral city, this is a fun tour of a Yap reef wall.

Fun diving in interesting landscapes with the option of squeezing through some tight swim throughs and short-cutting the open water routes.

I enjoy shooting a corral tunnel with some light on the other side and spooking big grouper and snapper out of their hiding spots. Here you can take a high line and float the tops of the reef structure, or get all the way into it and pull your way through small dark overhangs and swim throughs.

After the pillar tour, this dive wound up in open water with some encrusted channel marker wreck laying on it’s side.

Boats are rolling solid all week and now that we have nicer weather, we’re hoping to see the Yap Mantas return from the deep and clean up on the reef.