Super Scuba

 Safine Mahoe is an Opensim goddess, but you knew that already, this week for our second destination we visited her tour de force, an underwater build on Friends Grid,  called Aquamica.

We were delighted that Zazu Bahro and Tonykasjohny Resident were also present to welcome us to their fabulous grid, and join us on a walk through the water and help out with information, and when some of us got lost and needed a tp. 

Tony and Zuzu 

Safine outlined the plan for the day, and also reminded us of an important teleport requirement.

Safine Mahoe: I am going to take you to my underwater worlds which is two parts...first is  realistic because I am a rl diver, second part will be  fantasy. Please note,  this is IMPORTANT:  let's pretend that your friend asks for a tp cause they got  distracted.....rise up off ocean floor to tp them - you cannot tp to negative  number.

James Atlloud: oh!

On the landing spot, there's a beach hut with one or two outfits in it, for your convenience, as well as a tp board to use to find all the other excellent destinations on this grid.

Safine Mahoe dressed for the sea.

Safine, realizing we might not all be dressed for the occasion, set up a sort of hiking trail which was a genius stroke - if you lost sight of her, you could just follow the path and find her again - an important advantage, because at these depths, as she said, point to point or cam-and-tp teleports are ineffective.

Safine Mahoe: ok...to make things easier.....   I have pink shells for you all to follow.     The reef started because I wanted to show people what I have seen rl.    then my friends wanted mermaids...so I added them... feel free to  use the mermaid ao or dances

That said, it comes so instinctively to the Safari group to use radar or cam to teleport to people that we had a few upsets at the start. But we soon got the hang of it. Walk, swim, or fly through the water, don't teleport. But when upsets happened, Safine, Zuzu and Tony quickly got us back on track.

Thirza Ember: HAHAHAHA it tried to mess with us but we beat the system!

Safine Mahoe: yaaaay   thirza made it

Luna Lunaria: beats it we did

Safine Mahoe: i have tried to show many different  shapes of coral...very similar to what you will see in rl

Tonykasjohny Resident: All this is like a natural palace

James Atlloud: Did you tend to find things from all over the hypergrid, build yourself or a combination of that.

Safine Mahoe: ty Star.....originally i made this to share with opensim...and one day I woke up and realized that is selfish... it took me 6 months to make this.... I decided a better gift would be to make a huge store for opensim where people can find all this....and that is now at my textures trees and scripts store.   I still hope you visit...but now you have the tools

Lavia Lavine: You have done an amazing job here Safine.  I think David Attenborough would be impressed.

Luna Lunaria: I feel that 6 months :-)

Star Ravenhurst: That is indeed a wonderful gift. That is amazing. I have never been able to build anything in 66 months! :)

Thirza Ember: Safine, what is the best place you have ever gone scuba diving?

Safine Mahoe: many times on my rl dives....coral would be growing on walls....not on the floor of the ocean. As for the best place hmm...  clearest - Hawaii, best big animal....Belize.

Safine Mahoe: we are now entering the second reef here...I wanted to show caves and wreck the big difference is this cave is easy to get through

Thirza Ember:  I love the wrecks... I feel an affinity with any wreck...

Safine Mahoe: I have been in some very small caves....and stuck once

Star Ravenhurst: You are braver than I

Safine Mahoe: cave diving is fun....exciting and scarier than hell...  this cave opening was 3' by 3'

Lavia Lavine: So what was the most frightening thing that has happened underwater for you?

James Atlloud: snorkeling in barracuda waters got to me

Safine Mahoe: well....most scary thing...until I realized it I have only swam with a manta once this manta was bigger than my bedroom...  insane huge...but peaceful

Ankh Senaton: yes it is big, and so graceful

Star Ravenhurst: Frightening!!

Lavia Lavine: There are a lot of risks in scuba diving.

Luna Lunaria: ooohhh nice wreck

Taarna.Welles: Nice!

Safine Mahoe: wreck diving is very popular......and here I have an old ship you can swim through the ship is huge, but very small on this reef

Lavia Lavine: I will have to come here just to swim around and enjoy the beauty of nature in the Oceans.

Ankh Senaton: I will too

Safine Mahoe: this is a coral garden...located on top of the cave......very similar to what I have been on

Tonykasjohny Resident: The variety of colors here is a paradise for the eyes.

Safine Mahoe: in rl, we could not walk like this or even touch the coral...but here....we get to enjoy... any questions before we go to fantasy area?

Star Ravenhurst: I am too big of a coward to do this in RL, so this is perfect!

Nara Nook: Me too Star

Thirza Ember: it must be hard to put all this together, searching for authentic looking assets, I wondered if that was difficult

Safine Mahoe: was extremely hard to find things, which is why I built the store.   my store is a 256 meter dome...all underwater stuff

Ankh Senaton: such a huge collection

Francisco Koolhoven: is your store on this grid?

Zuzu Bahro: Yes it is Francisco

Tonykasjohny Resident: I have a question, are corals very hard structures?

Safine Mahoe: there are hard corals., and soft corals

Tonykasjohny Resident: Thanks Safine

Thirza Ember: OK last question... what is your favorite fish to 1. look at and 2/ eat ... anyone can answer

James Atlloud: lol look at - lion fish

Star Ravenhurst: All of them to look at and none of them to eat. I have that gene that makes fish taste awful to me.

Safine Mahoe: ahi tuna fav to eat, Hawaiian trigger fish fav to look at

Luna Lunaria: to eat its Walleye - Walleye from lake Superior are wonderful

James Atlloud: +1 tuna

Lavia Lavine: Hmm  to look at?  all of them but I guess dolphin though it's not really a fish and the humpback whale. To eat?   Orange Roughy.

Thirza Ember: aww nobody said fish sticks or as they say in England, fish fingers

Neo Cortex: Fish finger to eat... do they even contain real fish?

Thirza Ember: mostly contains fingers

On the other side of the mermaid silhouette we entered a thriving fantasy paradise, beginning with these fabulous rideable seahorses - a perfect way to mark the change in theme. The style of this part of the build is just as lovely as the more reality-based environment. Many of the so-called 'sailor's myths' of sea creatures that were dismissed for centuries as exaggerations have, in the past few decades, thanks to advances in video technology, been revealed to be closer to true observations than anyone knew - giant and weird looking fish really do exist, though sadly, probably not motorbike-style seahorses... yet who knows what else that science hasn't yet documented. It led to an inevitable question.

Thirza Ember: Safine, have you ever seen anything underwater that you couldn't quite explain? Not a mermaid, exactly, but...

Safine Mahoe: I have seen some strange  creatures... jelly fish... moray eels

James Atlloud: when I was a kid I think I saw a nudibranch on a beach and thought it was an alien lifeform!

Lavia Lavine: When you're down by the sea and an eel bites your knee it's a moray.

Zuzu Bahro: hahaha!

James Atlloud: amore - lol

Safine Mahoe: for the fantasy area, I use different lighting... I wanted it to look beautiful, but eerie, sooo...the ocean is dark....but the objects are lit. One thing I try to do is hide a lot of details... look close...you will see seahorses, and they are amazing in rl

James Atlloud: I see them!

Ankh Senaton: haa yes

Star Ravenhurst: Are all of the animals available in your shop?

Safine Mahoe: most....not all.   a couple are from kitely...but 95% is in my shop, the mermaids were custom made for us by Misty Falls, and they are in the shop

Star Ravenhurst: Misty is good at stuff like that.

Lavia Lavine: Is there any place you have not gone diving that you would like to?

Safine Mahoe: rl....Fernando de Noronha.....not exactly great diving...but huge dolphin place. Moving on, this is the ruins here......and I made some modifications to make it better for pictures... underwater ruins are  sooo fun to swim through. if you look, you will see about 40 different species of animals right here, beyond the wall is more ruins...they go on and on

Safine Mahoe: Jelly fish are soooo beautiful...but sooo dangerous

Ankh Senaton: no brain and hundreds of million years ;)

Zuzu Bahro: lol!

Safine Mahoe: we are now heading to one of my favorite areas....the ray colony i have been in the middle of a school, just like this. 

Safine Mahoe: Probably one of my special times diving, was when a huge sea turtle started swimming to me, kept coming closer and closer - I was getting nervous, this turtle was about 1,000 pounds. He got he a couple inches from my mask......looked at me....then slowly swam off...it was magical

Ankh Senaton: woww he came to say hello  ;)

Safine Mahoe: sea turtles are like big dogs...very gentle.

 Safine Mahoe: I wanted to show a ship wreck here...but this is fantasy... I decided I wanted to have  pirate ghosts

James Atlloud: aww, so much treasure and they can't spend an ounce of it!

Taarna Welles: Twins!

Safine Mahoe: i cool technique I taught myself...but take your animesh...and play with transparency

James Atlloud: it works well

Star Ravenhurst: This has been such a lovely tour Safine. Thank you for such a treat.

Thirza Ember: thank you so much Safine, Tony, and Zuzu  for the tour and for all the interesting details

James Atlloud: Yes thank you Safine!  So awesome.

Mal Burns: wonderful experience Safine

HG Address:   login.friends-grid.com:8002:Aquamica