I spent Thanksgiving and most of the following week in Panama and Colombia, and managed to do some diving and snorkeling in both places. There are some really nice dive sites along Colombia's Caribbean coast. Two days before I flew home I caught a lovely juvenile Spotted Drum, which made it back in perfect condition. It traveled triple bagged in a small cooler, which was inside a larger piece of luggage that I checked through. No oxygen, just a liter of seawater and about double that volume of air. Customs was a breeze: just one fish, and the correct US F&W form. The American and Colombian federales were not interested in a three inch fish, but were definitely interested in other things, and acually drilled a small hole in the cooler to make sure there was nothing in the air spaces. The fish has been eating ravenously, including an occasional Hikari pellet.
back from rain forest/dive trip
- Thread starter ackee
- Start date
WarmWaterWuss
New member
pictures, I want pictures...
Thanks very much. I'll give it a try. Meantime, anyone who wants to see the fish, plus a few others, can go to my personal profile and see the album. All pics were taken this past week. The Spotted Drum is in a heavily overgrown 90 gal. isolation tank that I use mostly in the summer when doing local collecting. In another week he'll go into my 220. The Short Bigeyes were caught this past summer, and the Cowfish was a tiny Gulfstream stray beanfish from Barnegat Bay, NJ, caught about 15 months ago. If you look hard, you can see a small Cowfish from this past summer with the Drum. They seem to get along.
Just when you thought it could not get worse. Yesterday's abortive airplane bombing, even though the harebrained scheme of a lunatic, will result in equally harebrained security measures designed to make flying even more of a nightmare. Better bring your own tube of KY next time you fly, and be prepared to have yor arms and legs secured. Perhaps a Hannibal Lecter restraint outfit, including the leather mask, will become mandatory flight garb. Flying with fish will require a preliminary vivisection, at your expense.
I hope that the airport furor will have abated somewhat, especially since it's become clear that the goverment's system failed. Still, these two digit IQ boys with badges and their slimeball masters will try to shift the problem to the passengers. I know that many of the TSA and Customs people are competent, but it's another case of the 90% bad apples giving the 10% good guys a bad name. It's funny how they put in place measures that exactly replicate the episode that has already taken place!
I also will be flying soon, in March and again in June. You just have to roll with the punches. I will not try to bring any fish back- maybe just a small invert or two that can fit in my BC vest. Anyway, I have too much stuff already, and summer will bring dozens of Lookdowns, Seahorses, Cowfish, Boxfish, etc, right here to my backyard, courtesy of the Gulf Stream. Happily, a local public aquarium likes to adopt my bigger creatures.
I take very few pics when I travel, usually only of people, with my little camera. I did take a bunch of pics two weeks ago of the one fish I caught in Colombia and brought back in early December; the cooler chest the security folks drilled; a few locally (NJ) caught fish; and some other stuff. Just click on my name, go to personal profile, and open the one album there to see all of my amatuerish efforts and my shamefully overgrown isolation tank.
I sincerely hope you have a great trip.
I also will be flying soon, in March and again in June. You just have to roll with the punches. I will not try to bring any fish back- maybe just a small invert or two that can fit in my BC vest. Anyway, I have too much stuff already, and summer will bring dozens of Lookdowns, Seahorses, Cowfish, Boxfish, etc, right here to my backyard, courtesy of the Gulf Stream. Happily, a local public aquarium likes to adopt my bigger creatures.
I take very few pics when I travel, usually only of people, with my little camera. I did take a bunch of pics two weeks ago of the one fish I caught in Colombia and brought back in early December; the cooler chest the security folks drilled; a few locally (NJ) caught fish; and some other stuff. Just click on my name, go to personal profile, and open the one album there to see all of my amatuerish efforts and my shamefully overgrown isolation tank.
I sincerely hope you have a great trip.
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