Underwater

I went snorkeling yesterday off the island off Cannes. Having snorkels a lot in Hawaii, it was a huge let down to see what was below the surface here.
The seaweed is long and brown like cut pieces of the old reel to reel tape.
In mass beds, its  kind of interesting, for a few minutes. All the pieces seem to be the same size about 18" long. When they become detached, they float to the top and glow green. They float vertically in the water. I found some pieces of it in the shower last night.

The fish we saw were of maybe 3 types . One was silver and the largest was only about 12" long. There were small schools. I think this fish was the Durade, or in Italian, the orato . It is on many a menu here and is always served as a whole Fisk. Off the coast there are fish farms. Sometimes the fish escape, so we thought these fish come from the farms. Lucky escapees.
I also saw a fish with a yellow eye and very subtle green stripes. They were in fairly large schools.

There are coal beds and some other sea plants but everything is brown. When you swim close to the reefs you see the smaller fish. I think they were sardines which are also a popular fish to eat here.
The most interesting fish were the ones that you could easily miss. If you keep looking down and don't look up to the surface from under, you would miss the coolest fish of all. Within a half inch of the surface were small silver fish. There were many of them and they were active. They were only about 1 to 2" long at the most.
We must have been swimming amongst them and didn't know it. No one saw them until I pointed them out. They were everywhere.

We did see one reddish purple jelly fish ( the size of a Susan B. Anthony)  that I avoided, but the British guy, that is like an accident waiting to happen, got stung. There was only one. I don't know how he managed it.

I am sure that you might see some large fish out there. The water gets very deep. I like the idea of finding old artifacts from the world wars or from ancient times. I think the diving is better more to the west towards St. Raphael. Perhaps next summer.
The sea is still pretty warm but the temperature is changing.