Many of my dive partners are a bunch of gear heads who use diving as an excuse to get cool rebreather stuff......Now while I like to pimp my dive gear too, it is a means to an end, and that is to see marine life.
I used to be really into salt water tropical reef tanks... I thought watching one of my gobies and commensal pistol shrimp cleaning house was entertaining to no end......I personally just think the more colorful, unusual critters are really fascinating to watch them go about their business.......when diving my friends swim right past the anemones and eels and the other inverts and the odd stuff as I am stopping and going:oh, there's an aboinensis shrimp!, oh, there's a pederson shrimp!, oh, there's a stenopus hispidis, check out the oxymonocanthus longirostrus!....they think I'm weird. I thought when I spied a mated pair of robust ghost pipefish doing their best impression of a dead pieces of palm leaves, I was in heaven.
During a dive briefing in the Philippines, the dive guides were pointing to pictures of what critters we might see, during one briefing they pointed to a photo that said "batfish" I said just barely loud enough for all to hear: "platax pinnatus", then when they pointed to the next batfish, I whispered platax tiera, juvenile.
So instead of being wierd as they thought, instead of just finding colorful beautiful ocean things really cool, in honor of you, Leslie, I will just deadpan to them; "I'm a taxonomist"
Now, I am STILL trying to see a living Gnathophyllum americanus.
