There is a Green Sea Turtle that has been present on the reef at Airport Beach lately and at times it resides in one of the prime caves and at other times it can be seen working itself into a wedged position under a coral over hang. I have taken to calling it Bumper due to its bumping around in apparent attempts at getting situated.

Alice and I came across Bumper and in the shot above, she (he?) can be seen wedged under some coral. Shortly after this shot, Bumper came up for air.




The cowery Alice is holding was out in the open and easily seen from above. I put it in the shadow under some coral with hopes that others wouldn't pick it up and take it away.
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Back to Bumper, this turtle seems to be rather indiferent to swimmers so it may well hang around even though it is often seen and confronted by visitors. I have had it drift into me and make contact with its flippers on my back and shoulder which didn't seem to bother it at all and it would continue taking breaths.
A couple days later I came across Bumper partially wedged under a ledge which is typically Little T's lair?!?! Recently some White Tip Reef sharks have been found resting in some of these turtle caves so there may be some switching around between them and the turtles. Bumper was bumping back and forth and I didn't know if she was getting settled or getting loose for a trip to the surface. The latter turned out to be the case. I had been watching her and I guess another swimmer saw me and came over to investigate. I heard him yell "TURTLE!!" and next thing I knew, Bumper and I were joined by a group of swimmers.







I have a new larger port for use with the fish-eye lens and Bumper on the surface was a good chance to see how the port would work for split views. I tried to shoot when the other swimmers were not in the field of view and in cases where they were, I cropped them out of the image if possible. This last image above is the best of the series but there is no way to exclude the other people short of some significant alterations in PhotoShop. These folks were pretty excited and talking and splashing about a bit but Bumper ignored them completely.