izard

It was not nearly as colorful like tropical seas, but still very lively. Unfortunately my new underwater camera was still broken so I was using old Kodak, which only works above 3 meters and has a very outdated matrix.

Around Cavtat there are plenty of secluded cliffs with somewhat adequate entries. That's where all underwater life happens. However even near public beaches there are some fish and animals.

The biggest fish I seen was a mature mooray eel.

I was very lucky to make this picture because the sunlight only comes inside it's habitat for about 20 minutes per day. It lives in a narrow and deep crack at depth around 5 meters. It was following my dives very eagerly. I had to dive couple of times to make many pictures of it and erase all but one then. I think its interest was of culinary nature. So I was reluctant to dive closer to the crack and its master, and this pic is as close as I could get.

Some of the fish are as colorful as their tropical cousins.

Those are usually territorial and live alone so no chance to find a flock of them like in southern seas.

There is not shortage of flocks of normal black and grey fish.

Any fish bigger than 0.5 meters would run away from me, unless ambushed. It suspects I could be a spear fisher, and there is a good merit for that. I've seen one, but did not make a picture of the guy just in case spear fishing is illegal in Croatia :). Still getting closer to a bigger fish is not very difficult in those waters while free diving. There are many rocks around that could be used as save hideouts.

I made a lot of pictures of Yulia but the only one that passed her censorship and can be shared online is this one: