Coral Sea

morgand@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> In article <1124813161.755909.168110@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>,
> Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com (Reef Fish) wrote:
>
> >
> > Do YOU have any pix of any grouper or Queensland Cod that you think
> > was bigger than 200 lbs? And can tell us HOW you arrived at that
> > 200 lb figure.
>
> I have several pictures of my wife and BIG Cod that i took while at the
> Cod Hole on the Northern GBR (ribbon reefs) on a Christmas day 2 or 3
> years ago, i can send a pic if you like ?

Please do. I want to see if it's any bigger than the one I straddled.
I estimated it to be 100 lbs at best.

-- Bob.

Reef Fish wrote:
> morgand@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> > In article <1124813161.755909.168110@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups .com>,
> > Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com (Reef Fish) wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Do YOU have any pix of any grouper or Queensland Cod that you think
> > > was bigger than 200 lbs? And can tell us HOW you arrived at that
> > > 200 lb figure.

In the quote above, I was talking to Jason. And I thought it was
Jason who replied (instead of you, Dave Morgan):
> >
> > I have several pictures of my wife and BIG Cod that i took while at the
> > Cod Hole on the Northern GBR (ribbon reefs) on a Christmas day 2 or 3
> > years ago, i can send a pic if you like ?
>
> Please do. I want to see if it's any bigger than the one I straddled.
> I estimated it to be 100 lbs at best.

Thanks Dave for the shots of the Potato Cods you sent! I wish you
could
show them in a newsgroup post.

Those are about the same size as the ones *I* saw, with the similar
background of diver(s) closely behind.

That's exactly the photo-magnification and optical illusion I was
talking
about. The Gropers you took the pix are about the same size as that
Little Cayman Nassau Grouper Freddie. I would say your Cods were
definitely less than 100 lbs.

It was when I found an email from Jason (before yours) that I realize
it was YOU who was going to send me pix of the Cod Hole Cods.

That Jason rascal send me SPAM in his Yoga business. He probably
never saw a Queensland grouper as big as the ones you and I saw!

Thanks, Dave.

When I saw thumbnail view of one of the four pix showing the tape,
I thought it was something showing the length of the Cod, until I
viewed it in its magnified form and saw the tiny nudibrach on it.

It's about the size of the Mandarin fish in Palau, but the Mardarin
fish is much more colorful and darts about so quickly that it's
almost impossible to take a good pic. Besides, I am a Clueless
Newbie when it comes to taking UW pics, so I leave it to others
while I file my in my computer between the ears.

-- Bob.

In article <1124943686.523280.46280@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com (Reef Fish) wrote:

> Thanks Dave for the shots of the Potato Cods you sent! I wish you
> could
> show them in a newsgroup post.

You probably dont.........i would be posting them so often you would
probably get bored with it all.

> Those are about the same size as the ones *I* saw, with the similar
> background of diver(s) closely behind.

Yea, well.......we all know about men and their measurements dont
we.....ask a man what 9" looks like and then ask a female.....two
completely different sizes eh.......

> That's exactly the photo-magnification and optical illusion I was
> talking
> about. The Gropers you took the pix are about the same size as that
> Little Cayman Nassau Grouper Freddie. I would say your Cods were
> definitely less than 100 lbs.

I have no idea what they would weigh, but thats only 50kilo, i know what
my dive bag weighs and i would say or estimate those buggers to be more
than 50kilo.....not that it matters.


> It was when I found an email from Jason (before yours) that I realize
> it was YOU who was going to send me pix of the Cod Hole Cods.

Sorry, i thought it was an open question......
Did'nt mean to rain on anyone's parade......

> That Jason rascal send me SPAM in his Yoga business. He probably
> never saw a Queensland grouper as big as the ones you and I saw!

While we were out in Borneo in June/July, on the front page of a local
newspaper was a photo of a grouper that some local fishermen had caught
around Semporna (where we get our boat), believe me when i say it was
"massive"......hundreds of pounds......

> Thanks, Dave.

Your welcome...

> When I saw thumbnail view of one of the four pix showing the tape,
> I thought it was something showing the length of the Cod, until I
> viewed it in its magnified form and saw the tiny nudibrach on it.

That Nudi is less than 1/4" a quater of an inch across, it was miniscule,
my wife is an expert now at spotting, she spots and i shoot.....

> It's about the size of the Mandarin fish in Palau, but the Mardarin
> fish is much more colorful and darts about so quickly that it's
> almost impossible to take a good pic.

Those Mandarins must be the smallest Mandarins in the world, i have never
seen them that small.......usually they are about 2" two inches, but i
agree they are the absolute devil to photograph, besides having only a
very small time frame in which to see them you generaly have to put up
with large groups wanting to see them, causing mahem for a guy and his
camera, but......i have some Mandarin shots if you would like to see one
or two.

> Besides, I am a Clueless
> Newbie when it comes to taking UW pics, so I leave it to others
> while I file my in my computer between the ears.

I also am a newbie as you say......used to use the camcorder to take shots
for our logbook, then i used a little point and shoot digital, but the
June/July trip out to Borneo was the first time i had used my new Nikon
and strobe.........

My website shows some pics but i have absolutely no idea about how to put
websites together, the shots on my site were cobbled together over a few
hours one evening with a friend who recomended a simple program for
uploading photo's........personly i think its a really crappy site but it
shows the photos so ......i hope to do it better in the near future.
Have a good day.

Dave Morgan @ Work in the UK
Take out the "goes diving" bit....
Trip photos on line at www.morg.co.uk

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:21:26 -0700, Reef Fish wrote:

> It was when I found an email from Jason (before yours) that I realize it
> was YOU who was going to send me pix of the Cod Hole Cods.
>
> That Jason rascal send me SPAM in his Yoga business. He probably never
> saw a Queensland grouper as big as the ones you and I saw!

I did what? Haven't sent you any email, let alone about bloody yoga.

I've got no pictures of the Queensland grouper that I saw in
Exmouth because I didn't have an UW camera back in 2001. And it's a fair
while ago. It was an adult and was pretty big. There are some estimates
of size on various websites but they were all over the place.

Also saw a "baby" one on my first ever dive trip out of Airlie Beach.
Think it was probably bigger than your average potato cod, but that was in
1991, so my memory is a bit hazy.

Jason

--
See http://www.scuba-addict.co.uk/ for UK diving reports and the UK
Underwater Visibility Database. View the database or add your own report

Jason wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:21:26 -0700, Reef Fish wrote:
>
> > It was when I found an email from Jason (before yours) that I realize it
> > was YOU who was going to send me pix of the Cod Hole Cods.
> >
> > That Jason rascal send me SPAM in his Yoga business. He probably never
> > saw a Queensland grouper as big as the ones you and I saw!
>
> I did what? Haven't sent you any email, let alone about bloody yoga.

You mean it wasn't you, but other Jason that read this thread and
used your name to spam me? That was quite a coincidence! I couldn't
make up something like that. I wish I hadn't deleted that post.
Must have been some clever spammer/forger.

See, in my Large Nassau Grouper mailbox, which I use only to
collect spams (about 80-100 a day, by Yahoo) and very few get through
to the mail box, which I don't use for reading or posting. This
Jason got through the Yahoo SPAM filter, and the subject and
everything looked just like something you sent.

But I'll take your word that some bloddy forger here did it. It
wouldn't be the first time, or the last. But it was YOGA spam, in
the event anyone else got it too.

>
> I've got no pictures of the Queensland grouper that I saw in
> Exmouth because I didn't have an UW camera back in 2001. And it's a fair
> while ago. It was an adult and was pretty big. There are some estimates
> of size on various websites but they were all over the place.

The size estimates are typical because most folks have not seen many
"large" fish, and when they did, they didn't have any experience to
size it accurately.

>
> Also saw a "baby" one on my first ever dive trip out of Airlie Beach.
> Think it was probably bigger than your average potato cod, but that was in
> 1991, so my memory is a bit hazy.

The first real experience I had with the size and weight of fish was
in Cozumel when the DM caught a sizeable mahi mahi while the slow boat
was head back. When I held it by its tail fin and stood it upside
down, it came to somewhere between my waist and chest. It was 20 lbs.
TWENTY. Since then, I notice picture of BIG catfish people
caught and got their pix in the newspaper. Just one two days ago --
the lady had it across her chest, held up by the elbows of both
hands. About 3 feet long. 35 lbs. You get the idea.

That's why I said it would be a RARE event indeed if you see a large
fish that actually weigh as much as 100 lbs. Dave Morgan's Cods
looked almost that big.

The ONLY reliable estimate of the size of any fish is one that's
measured by tape or actually weighed by a scale. But then, those
are usually dead one. :)

-- Bob,

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 06:08:11 -0700, Reef Fish wrote:

> You mean it wasn't you, but other Jason that read this thread and used
> your name to spam me? That was quite a coincidence! I couldn't make up
> something like that. I wish I hadn't deleted that post. Must have been
> some clever spammer/forger.

Probably a virus on some infected windows box. It's not hard to write
something that scans through Outlook files, picks the from address and the
subject and then uses it to send an email.

The amount I know about yoga could be written on the back of a postage
stamp.

> The size estimates are typical because most folks have not seen many
> "large" fish, and when they did, they didn't have any experience to size
> it accurately.

The estimates for the one in Exmouth I found on the net varied by about
50%. There is another huge one resident on the Yongala. It's 6 foot long
and of course grouper are quite wide too. Apparently it was there when I
dived it, but I missed it. Not something I was that bothered about given
that it had decided to swallow a diver's head about 6 months before.

Jason

--
See http://www.scuba-addict.co.uk/ for Caribbean trip reports
to Aruba, Cuba, Grand Bahama, Barbados, St Lucia and Mexico

Jason wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 06:08:11 -0700, Reef Fish wrote:
>
> > You mean it wasn't you, but other Jason that read this thread and used
> > your name to spam me? That was quite a coincidence! I couldn't make up
> > something like that. I wish I hadn't deleted that post. Must have been
> > some clever spammer/forger.
>
> Probably a virus on some infected windows box. It's not hard to write
> something that scans through Outlook files, picks the from address and the
> subject and then uses it to send an email.

Almost a certainty.

I was getting a mini lesson (from my geek guru diving friend Jeff
who owns Scuba-SE and other lists as well as a full-time geek pro).

He told me about all the rat-ware, ad-ware, and was sure that one
of my laptops has been hijacked. I am on the other laptop now,
but ...

I don't mind spams in my Yahoo box, which is why I use that address
for my newsgroup posts.


> The amount I know about yoga could be written on the back of a postage
> stamp.

I printed out a 67-page documented recommended by Jeff about all the
spy-ware and rat-ware. It turned out AOL tipped me off 6 spies and
none of them was on that 67-page list.

It's a jungle out there. The rat-ware folks write rat-ware to sell
their own rat-wear killers -- just like Symantec and Norton put out
viruses just to sell their virus protection software.

>
> > The size estimates are typical because most folks have not seen many
> > "large" fish, and when they did, they didn't have any experience to size
> > it accurately.
>
> The estimates for the one in Exmouth I found on the net varied by about
> 50%.

That's easy to do.

>There is another huge one resident on the Yongala. It's 6 foot long

Ok. 5 feet with 20% UW magnification would do it. :)

The other factoid I discovered MYSELF was that sometimes the size
of the big fish (various sharks, e.g.) I estimated are larger than
the max size of those species, as given in fishbooks.


> and of course grouper are quite wide too. Apparently it was there when I
> dived it, but I missed it. Not something I was that bothered about given
> that it had decided to swallow a diver's head about 6 months before.

Kinsey was write about fish sizes. Is that why Brits call willies
and we have Willy the whale?

-- Bob.

On 22 Aug 2005 19:25:29 -0700, "Reef Fish"
<Large_Nassau_Grouper@Yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>Jason wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 09:50:10 -0700, Reef Fish wrote:
>>
>> > When I dived the Taca from Cairns, we went to the Cod Hole and part of the
>> > GBR. Granted 2002 was an exceptionally bad year because of the coral
>> > bleaching by nature, but the vis of the GBR is never very "good" using my
>> > yardstick of 100 feet vis as "good".
>>
>> I had about 100 feet viz on the northern reefs when I did that trip. The
>> reefs nearer to Port Douglas and further south had crap viz on them. But
>> the section down by Airlie Beach was alright too. Tempting to blame the
>> cane field run off. Doing the southern most bit later this year. See how
>> that is.
>>
>> There used to be a company that gave you your money back in you got less
>> than 100 feet viz on Holmes Reef in the Coral Sea. Of course, if the
>> weather was bad, then they couldn't get out there, but I remember being at
>> 50m (was diving with an Italian) and being able to see the ripples on the
>> surface at the top of a sheer wall.
>>
>> > Those Gropers are no bigger than their cousins (and mine) the Jew fish
>> > found in the Caribbean.
>>
>> The Queensland grouper, however, can get huge. Never seen anything bigger
>> than them. They can get a lot bigger than the potato cod.
>
>>From the Taka webpage:
>
>http://www.diversden.com.au/taka.htm
>
>*> The potato Cods grow to a massive 600 pounds
>
>The ones you see in the Cod Hole seldom weigh half that size. They
>are members of Genus: Epinephelus.
>
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_grouper
>
>#> The Goliath Grouper (Jewfish) <name change in 2001>
>
>#> The goliath grouper or itajara (Epinephelus itajara) is a
>#> large saltwater fish of the grouper family.
>
>#> they may reach extremely large size (record 680 lbs (309 kg),
>
>But that's like Gibby Gilligan, a 9 feet 1 inch tall woman.
>You don't see one like that everyday, or ever. <G>
>
>The Jewfish divers see are usually MUCH smaller than that too.
>
>In short, once they are bigger than 100 lbs, they are HUGE to
>any diver.
>
>-- Bob.


Well I just got back from some Wreck Diving in the Florida Keys and I
can tell you that there is a Family of Jewfish living on the
thunderbolt wreck that are absolutly huge. The largest one, they say
is approx 800 lbs, the Middle Sized one is supposed to be 600 lbs and
the small one is 300lbs. I have to belive the reported weights
because I saw all three of them and the largest one was the size of a
Volkswagon easily. When he came out of the deck hatch that was 6 ft x
10 ft he filled the entire hatch. Scared the shit outta me because I
was just decending into that hatch when he decided to come out. All I
saw untill I backed up was a pair of eyes about 3 feet apart.


CyBrSuFr

CyBrSuFr wrote:
>
> Well I just got back from some Wreck Diving in the Florida Keys and I
> can tell you that there is a Family of Jewfish living on the
> thunderbolt wreck that are absolutly huge. The largest one, they say
> is approx 800 lbs, the Middle Sized one is supposed to be 600 lbs and
> the small one is 300lbs. I have to belive the reported weights
> because I saw all three of them and the largest one was the size of a
> Volkswagon easily. When he came out of the deck hatch that was 6 ft x
> 10 ft he filled the entire hatch. Scared the shit outta me because I
> was just decending into that hatch when he decided to come out. All I
> saw untill I backed up was a pair of eyes about 3 feet apart.

Nice "fish story".

You had imagined at least several world records (pity nobody recorded
them), and based on your account, the largest one was probably
pushing 300 lbs, not an oz more.

Furthermore, you nark easily don't you?

-- Bob.

Who can tell me about the Coral Sea as a dive spot? Any info would be appreciated.