June 12, 2004 - Cousin's Rock (Dive 13)

Cousin's Rock is another dive site that I like a lot. We dropped in down to a 30' ledge where we encountered a couple of sleeping turtles. Continuing along the ridge, we found four Pacific sea horses hiding in the black coral (which looks yellow here in the Galapagos), and two of them were entwined around each other -- a rare sight, according to Antonio. Also in the black coral were lots of coral hawkfish, long-nose hawkfish (neither of which are very skittish here), and the endemic bravo clinid. I didn't see any eagle rays this time around on the slope around the point, but a large school of barracuda was hanging out at around 45'. We ended the dive playing a small colony of sea lions and fur sea lions, who were playing around with rocks and branches of coral, hiding them in a cave below us and periodically bringing them back up to the surface.