A crab encounter...Coco View Wall...

Capt Paul is in Atlanta now...surgery is Friday. I thought I would catch up on sharing some pictures from another days dive with Stan and his friend off of White Rose last week. With the trade winds continuing to be very strong...the swells were too much to consider going to one of my favorite dive sites...so we went to the Coco View Wall. Stan was taking pictures and I took the little camera as it was not a dive site I was familiar with. We had a 59 minute dive...deepest to eighty five feet...the wall overhang above us was huge at times...and then other times the overhang had slipped down the wall to be below us due to earthquakes. Both Stan and I took lots of pictures...this HUGE crab...I noticed he was in the fighting stance...took his picture...rattled my noisemaker for Stan to see, take pictures and continued on. Spotted Scorpionfish...Banded Coral Shrimp...Social Feather Duster...Black Grouper... We got to 1500 psi in my tank and did a slow turn around. On the way back, passing the above crab, I noticed another one armed crab on a shelf just below him...took his picture...moseyed on. It seems there are these darned Lionfish everywhere now...four visable on this dive. Beautiful Orange Deep Water Fan...book says rare within diving limits...think I need to go back and get some pictures with the big camera! When we surfaced, Stan told of his encounter with the one armed crab...apparently the one armed crab was on the ledge above us (remember I mentioned the large overhangs?)...which of course is why the one below was in the fighting stance...it had NOTHING to do with us...AND the one armed crab dropped off of the upper ledge and landed on Stan's shoulder! For a moment he did not know what it was...and I had moved on to taking pictures of the Banded Coral Shrimp (above)...so darn...another missed picture opportunity!! A reason (if there needs to be one) for next time!