Welcome to Total Bottom Time!

Total Bottom Time is my online personal dive log. A place where I can share my dives with friends, family, other divers, and the world. You can find out a bit more about me and see my full log of dives by clicking on my profile on the right. Feel free to subscribe to my dives via email or RSS.

Below are just some of my latest dives.

In Tahiti, under a strict set of rules, you are permitted to go humpback whale watching. That is, you're able to go into the water and snorkel while whales are in the area. 

We wound up having an absolutely wild experience. 

A baby whale decided to swim up to us. We were told they like to play and this one was definitely curious to give us a look.

Not to anthropomorphise too much but, in the pictures below, it's apparent the whale is looking directly at me and there is an intelligence behind those eyes.

Then it put on one hell of an acrobatic show in the water.

The massive dark shadow in the background in the later pictures is the mother. The baby was probably 6-8 metres long and weighs 1-2 tons while the mother could be 14-17 metres long and weighs up to 40 tons. We could even hear them calling to each other.

I never thought I’d personally have an experience quite like this. We’re very fortunate that baby whale decided to check us out.

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We were in an overwater bungalow at our resort in Mo'orea. It's the first time our hotel room has come with life preservers!

Overwater Bungalow

Normally I'm not that excited about snorkelling but in circumstances like this it's too good to pass up. It's just a short walk down the stairs from our bungalow and into the water. There was a lot to see right at our feet.

Reef

This pair of butterflyfish kept dancing around each other.

Butterflyfish

Being overwater meant it was especially easy to go snorkelling at night. I had brought my dive light with me without realising the most use I'd get out of it was snorkelling.

Lots of the usual critters were about, I particularly liked the hermit crabs.

Moray Eel

Hermit Crab

With a number of crustaceans in the area, what I was hoping for was finding an octopus but no luck. However, there were some stranger creatures. Some sort of sea slug and some sort of sea worm with a many tentacled mouth. To be honest, it was just a bit distrubing to watch at night.

 

Sea Slug?

Sea Worm?

I hadn't really considered it beforehand ...

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For the last dive of the trip, it was back to where we started at Mamaru, which is Tahitian for whitetip reef shark. The site definitely lives up to its name.

Whitetip Reef Shark

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