Sea life around the ship
A Bluespotted Ribbontail Ray some hours before it became our dinner. All along the trip the crew kept fishing and trading with local fishermen. Then, it was turned into the most tasty Thai food one can think of.
At night, when we had the lights on, we seemed to attact any fish around. It was quite fascinating to watch thousands of small fish circling the ship in high speed over and over again. The formations kept changing each time avoiding obstacles and predators, which of course went for the race, too.
Most welcome the squid came for hunting, too. Clever as they are, they didn't chase their prey - they found themselves a nice place waiting for the fish coming around. Every now and then, they attacked one and quite often, they went off with a nice dinner. Still, we had our fishing line out, too. Maybe we only caught the tired or stupid ones and did our share of natural selection. Anyway, they were enough to become a part of our food for 3 meals per day. Cooked or fried each time a different way, we did not get tired of them.
Sometimes, even sea snakes came for the fish - or maybe for the light. They are not easy to photograph in the darkness, so these pictures - like all the night pics here - needed some editing. And only after this editing, I found the snake below looking somewhat strange. As I suppose, it's a Laticauda-species, but it would be a bit brave to say which one it was...
One of the last days, our crew met by chance some friends of them. And as they learned in the meantime we do enjoy this kind of encounters, they invited one of them to us for a visit. This young guy had found a young White-Bellied Sea-Eagle in the fishing net. He rescued the bird and was now on the way to train it for hawking. Chances are, this will work.
