Today, during our dive, we had an interesting encounter with a rather excited horse-eye jack. Although, our Reef Fish Identification book suggests that horse-eye jacks don't get larger than two and half feet, this guy was clearly well over 3 feet. We often see this species in groups ranging up to large schools, but this one was solitary. Its behavior seemed almost crazed: it raced towards me, and circled me closely three times. Then it moved below the reef, and swam past us again, which is when I was able to take this photo of it. A friend noticed that the jack had a hitch-hiking remora attached to its back. She thought perhaps the jack was hoping to scrape the remora off on me. At the time that this happened, a cruise ship was landing in port, within a mile of this site, and it generated a horribly loud, prolonged noise, from the bow thrusters. I kept thinking that having to listen to this noise repeatedly would drive me mad. Then the crazy fish showed up. I wonder if the sound contributed to its weird behavior. Who knows? We also saw 2 turtles, 6 squid, and the largest fish I have ever seen down here -- a Cubera snapper that we estimate was at least 5 feet long, and probably weighed 100 pounds. Just another day on the reef.
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