Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D78 - Good times!

Definitely a much more cheerful weekend than last week! YAY for "Fase 1" and restaurants / bars / cafés having opened up their terraces and being able to get together with friends (up to 10) for a drink / snack / meal! 🥳

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D75 - Dipping my toes

AT LAST! Finally dipped my toes in the Mediterranean... summer is inching closer and the sea has been looking more and more enticing each time I go out for my evening walk. 

I just hope by the time the days heat up and we're begging to get in the water, that we'll be allowed to get in the water. Supposedly Phase 2 is when full beach access will be allowed around here (and not just for walking or water sports athletes), and if all goes well in Alicante that would start next Monday. They just have to figure out the social distancing recommendations, and how to monitor their implementation.

I'll have to admit though... Once the crowds start, I'm going to miss walking along almost empty beaches.

Playa de San Juan

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D69 - Thankful for Nature

Went for a lovely walk along the Cape this evening... was hoping there would be fewer people out than usual what with the possibility to meet up with friends at cafés or homes (there weren't).

Calm waters. Lovely sunset. Has been wonderful being able to come out for a walk in the evenings since the desconfinamiento started and they've been slowly letting up on the lockdown restrictions.

My happy place!

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D65 - Farewell sunset, Fase 0 adiós!

We did it! Whatever it is we were supposed to do... but the entirety of the province of Alicante will be in "Fase 1" of the lockdown de-escalation tomorrow.  🥳 

To celebrate, I decided to head out for a walk to the Cape and enjoy the sunset...

So privileged to live near such a beautiful spot! 🥰

Corona-Lockdown Spanish Edition - D62 - By the sea

Depending on wether you support the government or are in the opposition, the take on this whole 4-step "desconfinamiento" (de-escalation of the lockdown) process has been something between "they're making it up as they go" to "they set out their instructions, then listen to the criticism, and amend it where they think the criticism made sense".

Some of that shifting among the restrictions has been lifted by the national government, but others by regional or local governments. And the changes that have caught the most attention in Alicante are those related to use of the coastline. Namely the beaches. Which makes sense considering we're a beach city and all!

Playa de la Albufereta (our small beach)

Coronavirus Lockdown Spanish Edition - D56 - Confusion

There's a lot of that going around. People are confused about what they can and can't do as they move from one phase of the de-escalation to another, regional and local governments are confused as to the criteria the national government is using to decide which areas get to pass from one phase to another... some of us are just permanently confused! 😉

For a while there yesterday and today I thought I'd be heading into the office to work Friday next week, and Thur/Fri the following week, as we assured a "minimum presence" (1 person) during Phase 1. There was a bit of confusion as those of us designated for the office babysitting job switched days with each other. Then there was confusion because it wasn't clear if we actually needed to be there, and a couple of hours ago it was finally confirmed that we don't. And then a few hours after that the announcement came in of which provinces moved from Phase o into Phase 1 (allowing bars and restaurants to open up terraces at 50% occupation, social gatherings of max. 10 people - including in private homes, etc), and the Valencia Community was highly confused when half of us didn't make the cut! Including Alicante city and neighboring areas dependent on our two public hospitals...

Confusion all around! Oh well... hopefully clarity will come with more info from the government on Monday. Or not.

At least I got to head out and stretch my legs for a few hours and smell the sea. I'm good! 🥰

#stayhome, #quedateencasa, #restecheztoi

Coronavirus Lockdown Spanish Edition - Day 50 - A taste of freedom!

50 days locked in. 50 days at home, only going out to take the trash to the bin up the street, or to do the grocery shopping (usually both the same day).

Today we were finally allowed OUT! 🥳

Life is good

Isn't it? ;)

Day 13 - Challenge on Nature Photography

DAY 13 in the #challengeonnaturephotography on Facebook.

For my penultimate Nature Challenge post, I figured it would be nice to head home: Alicante! And where do I feel most at home? Under the water!!! So here are a couple of photos taken while snorkeling or scuba diving: medusa Cothylorhiza tuberculata, photo from September 2009 while snorkeling at the base of the Peñón d'Ifach in Calpe; and mussles growing on an rope (they'll grow on any hard surface!), photo taken during a deco stop in Cabo de Palos, Murcia. (click them bigger)

So my sister​ challenged me to participate in the #challengeonnaturephotography on Facebook. The idea is to occupy FB with nature photographs. Each nominated person will post a different nature photo for 7 days. With each photo they will nominate another person and give the name of the person who nominated them... 

It seemed to be that this would be a very nice way to start off 2016, and I wanted to share it with you as well! :o)

Unfortunately I'm terrible at following instructions, and after going through my photos I can't choose any more! So I'm going for DOUBLE! Two photos a day for 14 days... :p

I don't know about challenging anyone on the Blog... But if you feel like joining in please do! Don't worry, you can stick to the original challenge of 1 photo a day for 7 days! ;) (just leave me a comment with the link so I can be sure to go see yours)

Dive 100 at Benidorm Island

HAPPY WORLD OCEANS DAY!!!

I wish I could have gone "all out" for World Oceans Day this year, written several posts and launched the 6th Oceanic Blog-A-Thon... but sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging. In this case an interesting but intense new job, final English classes before my students' finals, and the beginning of the end of an MBA. Busy doesn't begin to cover my life at the moment! But I did manage to squeeze in a bit of time to put this together...

 

For World Oceans Day this year I'm going to share my 100th dive with I did about 6 weeks ago on the north face of Benidorm Island (one of my frequent dive spots). I've seen the seabeds around this island (and around other parts of the coast) change in the past 15 years since I've been diving, and not always for the better. The impact of human activities can be seen almost everywhere, resulting sometimes in a change of dominant species in an ecosystem. 

A Nocturnal Underwater Escapade (with Octopi!)

Is that a collective sigh of relief I hear? "She's finally showing us the night dive!" Well, yes in fact, I am! Sorry it took me so long... busy, busy, busy! And yes, part of the excuse is more diving! Plus there's the fact that although editing video clips with iMovie is fairly straightforward, it takes an awful lot of time! :p

Enough bla-bla-bla! You guys are here to see the Mediterranean come to life AT NIGHT!!! Today's dive program: a visit to "Las Piedras", a dive spot just outside the marine reserve of Tabarca (island in front of Alicante). It's a sweet spot because it's basically just like inside the reserve, but you don't need to ask for permits to dive there! Plus it's not deep (max 15m so ~49ft) so you can enjoy a nice long dive without having to worry about running out of air or entering deco. The name pretty much says it all: "Las Piedras" = "The Rocks". There are several huge rocks just sitting in the middle of a lush Posidonia oceanica prairie, and they serve as a home to a denizen of aquatic critters and plant-life. Some you'll spot easy enough during the day... but others only come out to play at night! ;o)

Ok, first off a reminder of what Posidonia oceanica looks like:

You guys do remember that P.oceanica is a seagrass and not algae, right? If not click here for a marine biology refresher. ASAP! We'll wait for you...

Mardinian: Come dive a wreck with me!

Once upon a time, a 3222 ton steamer named SS Mardinian - built in 1913 in Middlesbrough by Harkess & Son Ltd - departed from Calcutta with a cargo of hemp, bound for her home port of Liverpool. She was 313 feet long (95.4m), with a 42 foot beam (12.8m wide) and 21 feet deep (6.4m). She had a triple expansion steam engine which could propel her to a speed of up to 10.5 knots. Little did Captain G. Port know that on the 19th of May 1917 a German U-34 submarine would intercept them off the coast of Santa Pola in the Province of Alicante, Spain, and order the crew to abandon ship before sending the Mardinian to the bottom of the Mediterranean, 4 miles SW of the island of Tabarca, by means of a well-aimed torpedo. And there she remains to this day, to the delight of scuba divers who come from near and far to admire this steel skeleton, now home to a myriad of marine critters.

Last month I was looking for a somewhat "different" from my usual dives to celebrate my birthday, so I contacted one of the dive clubs I sometimes go out with and Carlos, the owner, advanced his scheduled wreck by one day so I could join in! I was a bit worried about going down so deep, the deck is at 44m depth (144ft) which is deeper than recreational divers "usually" go. Plus that was the minimum depth as the ship's hull was resting at 57m (187ft) on a bed of sand. My dive log tells me my max was 47.7m (the deepest I've ever been). Because of this depth, those of us going down with regular tanks (as opposed to the two technical divers going down with "trimix"), would have to do a series of decompression stops (to eliminate residual nitrogen in the body). Between that and the fact that at greater depth you use up more air, we had to each take along an extra tank for safety!

Yeah, I know. Looks awkward, doesn't it? Even more so rolling back over the side of the boat and holding it steady so it wouldn't hit me in the face! :p

Once in the water it was simply a mater of following the buoy line down, down, down. With the unpleasant surprise of discovering a piece of fishing line with a hook had twisted itself around the rope and was still actively fishing! :o(

DON'T abandon your fishing gear people!!! >:(

A fishy taste of things to come...

I don't know how long it will take me to prepare the post (takes a while to edit the photos and video footage)... but I wanted to give you guys an aperçu of something special I'm putting together for you! ;o)

Thing is... I have another dive post I wanted to do first (and should have already done! the photos are finally all edited), so I don't know whether to have this skip ahead or do things in order! One of them is about a WWI wreck off the coast of Alicante... I'll let you guys decide! 

Wreck first?

 or night-time first? ;o)

In the Inky Darkness

I wish I had the words, a talent for poetry, then perhaps I could find a way to convey the exquisite delight of this evening's outing...

It involved me being out on a moonless night.
Under about 15m (50ft) of nice warm water (27ºC ~ 80ºF).
The only light, that which shone from our torches.
8 beams of light illuminating a swath of seagrasses, then darkness.
Shining under a rock, looking for life, and finding it!
An octopus halfway out of its den, can't quite decide whether to venture forward to hunt, or retreat from the intrusive lights.
The filament arms of a Bonellia inch across a rockface, searching for food.
The vast armies of sea cucumbers slowly make their way across the seabed, or a rockface, filtering their supper.
A brittlestar lets itself fall to the ground from a rock, then starts climbing up another.
A few fish can be spotted here and there under the overhanging rocks, trying to sleep.
Others do so by resting on top of the rocks.
Squeal of delight upon seeing a squishy, blotchy purple Aplysia, a sea hare! Rhinophores aimed forward, moving around as if searching. And next to it two others! More cross the paths of our lights over the next 40 minutes, about a dozen in total. 2-3 the size of my hand, the others up to 30cm (1ft)! Two caught in a compromising position (they're lucky I don't have the equipment for nighttime photography!). One elegantly swimming in the water column. A couple more moving slowly along over the rocks, grazing on the seaweed.
And then finally another little octopus, but this one out wandering on the top of a huge boulder. Tentacles spreading forward, then contracting to bring the body closer in. Shying away from the light, but there's no place to hide.
And then it's time to head back up to the surface, slowly yet surely.
A safety stop at 5m, holding on the anchor line, with the itty-bitty zooplankton flicking by in the water column, so dense it's as if your hand were in a mini-shrimpy soup!
We clear the water's calm surface, and the stars fill the heavens above.
Divine!

And now it's time for bed.

Hiking the cliffs of insanity in the Serra Gelada

Ok, well maybe not quite the Cliffs of Insanity, but it sure felt like that when I was pulling myself up them a few weeks ago! :p

So this was my second hike of the season. I got invited by a friend to join in with the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia's hiking group as they made an incursion into the province of Alicante (their other hikes are a bit too far for me to go). They planned on hiking through a park that I've been meaning to visit for years, the mountain/cliffs that separate the bays of Benidorm and Altea: the Serra Gelada / Sierra Helada Natural Park. 4900 of the 5600 acres of this parc are marine environment, so some day I've got to find a dive club that will take me exploring beneath the surface.

Benidorm, the Island and the cliffs of the Serra Gelada seen from the sky

I waited for the rest of the group at the Toll booths just outside of Benidorm, then we made our way into the town and up to the cliffs looking over the Playa de Levante. We parked the cars in a dirt lot and then hit the trail... starting straight away with a pretty steep climb that had me out of breath pretty fast! I fact I was so worried about being able to keep up with the others that I didn't actually take any pictures until we made it to our first rest point at a lookout overlooking the bay!

Seagrasses, much more than "ugly weeds" stinking up your beach

still from Océans

 I couldn't let World Ocean's Day go by without trying to put out a more "scientific" post about the Oceans... and while I was writing up my review of the movie Océans I remembered joking a bit with my friends about a certain scene where a dugong in the Red Sea is eating seagrass. What tickled us was the idea of the poor fellow nuzzling around the sand for these very small leaves which didn't seem to be all that abundant, when he could just hang out (if such a thing were possible) off-shore from Alicante and enjoy a diet of proper Posidonia oceanica, a much larger species of seagrass which forms meadows in the shallow sandy waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Wishful thinking... I'd love to run into one of these guys while diving off the Cabo de las Huertas, but I'm afraid even the Med isn't warm enough for them. :o(

For World Oceans Day the Ocean Project suggests we pick a favourite animal and protect it. Well those of you who've been reading me for a while know I'm not great at following instructions so I'm breaking out and choosing a PLANT!!! Ha! Anyone familiar with it will have guessed from the previous paragraph that I'm about to talk about a species of seagrass known as Posidonia oceanica. Why a seagrass? Well for one thing hopefully to change the minds of anyone who might harbour negative feelings towards this plant. I know I did as a child. It clutters the beach, makes it "icky" to swim in certain areas... and it stinks! At least that's how I felt as a child, now the smell just reminds me of the Mediterranean...

Alicante Crazy Weather

We had a really freaky weather front roll in through Alicante yesterday morning... and I mean literally rolled in from somewhere inland out to sea. I was sitting at my table in the middle of the day when I suddenly noticed how dark it was and looked up to see this huge black cloud over the Castle. The really cool skies made me reach for my camera to take a couple of shots....

I ended up mesmerized by the advancing storm, watching the opposite coast around the Bay of Alicante gradually disappear into the cloud...

I was shocked by the amount of water running through the storm drain built after a major flood in 1997 (my dad couldn't even get the car out of the garage to come pick me up at the University it was so bad)... but even more surprising was how quickly it all came -in a matter of minutes- and went! 

Less than an hour later the skies were pretty much cleared up and most of the water was gone...

Those are strange storms, but it's the way it usually rains here in Alicante, sudden and strong but short bursts. But when the hard rain goes on for over an hour, then we get floods... (usually in the Fall). People have been complaining about the really wet winter we had this year, but at least it was soft, gentle rain most of the time... good for the soil and the reservoirs. Not this torrential rains that drag everything along with them. It wrecks havoc on some of the beaches as well...

Playa de la Albufereta May 3rd 2010 (from Facebook group)

As I said I was mesmerized by the storm (which turned out to be hail!) and kept fluctuating between my camera and my cell phone for some video. I've put it together in the video below, adding time stamps so you can get an idea how quickly things progressed. I trust you'll recognise the music... seemed an appropriate choice! ;o)
.

The rest of Spain got hit pretty badly too... some mountain towns got snowed in again and a few mountain passes required the use of chains.

Beach and satellite photos from the blog Alicante Vivo.

Happy May Day!

...with some flowers I spotted walking along the coast last Sunday (on a Geology outing I'll tell you about later). The first is Asteriscus maritimum, the second I have no idea and is the first time I've ever seen it (was next to a house so could be an escaped garden plant) and the third is one I've seen many times in Spring but can't remember the name! Don't touch it, it's sticky! :p

Spring is definitely here and summer is coming along shortly! At least it feels that way here in Alicante. :o)

Back home in spite of volcano!

So my parents and I went to Mallorca this weekend for a First Communion:

my crazy 8-year-old cousins

and a Baptism:

first of the "next generation" on this side of the pond!

in which we actively participated:

(thankfully we sound much better live than recorded, even with as little practice as we got recently!)

Fishy Fridays ep. 7

Time to peek into our last "temperate" seawater tank at the Liège Aquarium and see who's there... ready for a swim? ;o)

These guys are all pretty much Mediterranean inhabitants, and I've run into all of them on more than one occasion when I've gone through the effort of squeezing myself into a wetsuit and jumping into the water. How about I introduce you to them one by one?