Nice, Don.
is this the same ray that I've seen before in the pics, with a kink in it's tail? .....
Alec,
I wondered the same thing although this latest ray had a seemingly much shorter tail. I compared the markings on the bottom side of the right wing of this one and the one from a month or so back that I photographed feeding and the markings are clearly different.
On a related note, my wife and some friends joined me out on the reef yesterday. They wanted to see the larger frogfish and after some viewing of the reef from above, I spotted it. I had to dive down and get it to move for some of them to see it. There was a pretty strong current sweeping is south and after one dive down and return to the surface, I found I had drifted and while looking down at the reef to get my bearings, I spotted a smaller frogfish!! Upon review of shots I took of it yesterday, it seems pretty certain that it is the same small one I had been visiting but had disappeared a few weeks ago. As it turned out, the little guy was only about 15' - 20' from where I had originally seen it and this larger guy was only another 15' - 20 north of the little guy and perhaps 10' from where I first saw it. I came up with a personal challenge of free diving down and taking pics of both fish on the same dive. I pulled it off but I won't waste more band width here with mediocre and additional shots of these fish.
So I know that there are a pair of these guys out there and not far from each other. I really wonder just how many frogfish are out there on the reef and whether I will ever have a chance of noticing them. Heck there may be a slew of adults completely blended in and laughing at me as I swim overhead, completely oblivious to their presence.