Bruce is a NAUI dive instructor and an avid underwater photographer who began diving 10 years ago. He has been fortunate enough to travel throughout most of the Caribbean where he has photographed sea creatures ranging from nudibranchs to whale sharks. He hopes to begin doing more diving in Southeast Asia in the coming years. Bruce's photos have graced the covers of several magazines and can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/bcampbell65/ or bcampbell65 on the photo stock agency shutterstock and on adobe stock.
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Sponges come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes. Generally, they can be classified as by shape as: tubes, vases, barrels, balls, ropes, encrusting, and boring sponges among others. They are multicellular animals whose design usually allows the sponge to draw water into the sponge, which provides the sponge food and oxygen, and then filters out the water. The water exits out of the sponge’s interior through excurrent openings or oscula.
Sponges can provide habitat for a variety of sea creatures. For instance, it is not uncommon for seahorses to hide among rope sponges.
Other animals, like lobsters, may hide under ball sponges.
As someone who takes a lot of pictures underwater, it is not unusual for me to look inside as many sponges as I see, just to try to find the various creatures that are often hiding, in, around or just near sponges.
So next time you are out diving, be sure to look in and around the sponges you see. You never know what you might find.
[Note: It’s Thanksgiving, and I almost did not run this piece today because it is pretty dark, but then it occurred to me that it does fit Thanksgiving; see if you agree…
One of the downsides of advanced scuba certification is that you become aware, and sometimes its painful awareness, of how many people struggle with scuba diving. You also tend to become more sensitive to watching and listening to other divers to find out if they are likely to have problems with the dive. Typically I am watching to see how divers put their gear together to see whether they know how it should be assembled and to see how confident they are in their topside skills. If they don’t know how their gear goes together, that is usually a pretty good sign someone on the dive needs to keep an eye on them underwater because chances are pretty good if something goes sideways they could easily panic and hurt themselves. Sometimes I hear divers say things that just don’t make any sense to me; like an average sized diver asking for about twice as much weight as I would expect he would need. I’m learning that when I hear things like that I really need to watch those divers.
One of the really bad sounds to hear when you are underwater is the captain of the boat pounding a weight on the hull of the boat as a recall signal. A repeated Bang bang bang sound usually means that something has gone very wrong for someone on the dive.
Not long ago I was diving in the Bahamas. We had quite a few dive professionals on the boat; and we had one rookie blue water diver and an older diver among others. The rookie was buddied up with a dive master and the older diver was buddied up with another dive master. My buddy and I were near the other dive leader and were following him into the current to get to some swim throughs. I noticed that the older diver seemed to have some problems with buoyancy, and he was way too involved in looking at his go pro. The rookie diver looked like he would huff through his air pretty fast. I figured he would be on the surface inside of 20 minutes on what otherwise would have been at least a 45 minute dive. Once I saw Harry, the older diver in the water, it was pretty obvious he would be all over the place, would have bouyancy problems and I figures he might be down 25 minutes.
At about the 20 minute mark my buddy and I had entered a swim through and were quite a ways into the swim through when I heard the dreaded bang bang bang of the recall signal. We came out of the swim through and headed to the boat with the current at our backs. We were going relatively quickly, in part because the current was at our backs. Not long after I heard the recall signal, I shut down the camera and started kicking towards the boat. We rose in the water column and did most of our safety stop on the way back to the boat. When we got on board, the rookie was sitting on the floor of the boat, but otherwise appeared to be alright. I looked around for Harry and he was no where in sight. I hadn’t seen Harry on the way back to the boat so I assumed something was wrong. Actually, after I looked around the boat and realized Harry wasn’t there, the first thought that came to mind was “oh boy” Harry’s dead.
The captain looked a little nervous, but did not seem to be completely upset. I kept looking in the vicinity of the boat expecting to see other divers. Finally, when my gaze shifted out to about 200 meters away from the boat I could see someone holding on to another mooring line. As the boat made its way over to the other mooring line I could see Harry holding on to the mooring bouy and one of the dive staff was with him. Harry had blown thorough his air and had not been able to swim back to the boat because of the current. Fortunately, the dive leader assigned to him had helped him drop weights after he surfaced and had manually inflated his BC. Harry was ok, but needed help getting back on the boat. Had Harry not been with a professional, Harry could have gotten himself into some real trouble. Harry by his own admission was overweighted, underinflated and unable to do anything except hold on to the mooring bouy. And, until his weights were dropped by the diver professional, Harry was “drinking” a lot of sea water. Harry’s situation could have gotten really bad if he had not had immediate help.
The dive staff earned their pay that day. And just in case you are curious what it sounds like to hear a weight banging on the hull of a boat, here is the last bit of the dive with the banging at the end.
In reflection, the dives for 2015 for me, are pretty much done for the year. Everyone came back more or less in one piece. No one got bent. No one suffered a serious injury. So I do have a lot to be thankful for; I just wish the Harry’s of the diving world would be a little more careful, and maybe take a refresher course so they wouldn’t take such big risks.
A short video clip from a swim through known as the “caves” in the Bahamas:
Swim throughs can occur several different ways. The Caves in Bahamas is an example of coral growing so high that it creates walls that sometimes meet and cover the corridor that otherwise winds through the reef. The swim throughs I have been through have ranged from wide enough for 3 divers to go through side by site down to swim throughs where I have to fold in close to the camera housing the arms holding my camera strobes out to the side of the housing.
The Caves in Freeport Bahamas’ dive site starts out easily wide enough to accommodate a diver so it is a dive in which we follow the leader. If you are not the leader of the dive, you have to hope that the divers in front of you do not kick up the sand too much otherwise the visibility gets real spotty really quickly. Fortunately my dive buddy who went in front of me did not kick up the bottom much at all. The Caves does get pretty narrow at points. There were a couple of places in the canyon where I had to turn sideways just to get the camera in its underwater housing through the narrows. The narrows did feel pretty narrow. It is not too uncommon for swim throughs to have narrow points. If you are not the first through, you have to hope that who ever is in front of you doesn’t balk and then try to turn around, or that someone from behind doesn’t bolt and try to swim over you.
(If you look closely you can see the diver closest to the camera is actually swimming over the diver in front; not a good idea, even if it is close to the exit).
As a dive site, the caves also has a good amount of fish life on the reef. I saw a school of goatfish which was quite large both on an individual basis and based on the number of individuals in the school . Of course the fish life is what keeps me going back to see more creatures underwater. You never know when a plate sized angel fish or a turtle might meet you in a swim through. For me, the potential of a meeting of an interesting creature never gets old.
We have just finished swimming through a swim through
Not far off shore from Grand Bahama lie the remnants of an old transport vessel that some would be militia thought they would sail over to Haiti to lend support to the rebels in the Hatian revolution of 1968. Well to say they did not get very far would be an understatement. Now they left port in a storm, but they only made it less than a few miles before the ship foundered and sank. For a while the Papa Doc wreck was a site that divers could easily visit since it sat in about 50 feet of water. Years underwater were not kind to the Papa Doc which dissintegrated over time. All that remains today of the Papa Doc are a couple of engines and other small remnants that are largely buried under the sand. Occassionally the sea gives back a rare find such as a bayonnet, but that is infrequent. The engines, however, remain and are worth inspecting. On our dives we found small pederson shrimp and even a flamingos tongue on the engines. Both the shrimp and the flamigos tongue were relatively well hidden in the engines so it took some time to spot them.
Eventually a local dive shop Unexso, sank a tug boat on the site where the Papa Doc had previously sunk. (A word about Unexso, they are an awesome shop. They have an experienced and knowledgeable staff that is very concerned that the divers who dive with them, have a safe and enjoyable trip. As an older diver, I always want to dive nitrox, oxygen enriched air, because on repetitive dive days over the course of a week I always feel better on nitrox than I do on just good old air. No there is no scientific proof that nitrox will make you feel better on repetitive dives, but my antidotal experience is that it is a huge help for me. Regardless, when I asked for nitrox at Unexso, it was available and we tested it and the volume of gas in the tanks to make sure each tank was exactly what I wanted.)
Eventually in the place of the Papa Doc, Unexso sank the Badger tugboat on the site of the Papa Doc. The Badger tugboat is largely still intact. The wheelhouse is in relatively good shape and has become a haven for snappers and black margot. Coral and some sea fans are starting to grow on the wreck. Fish such as squirrel fish hide in the recesses in the wreck. I played “peak a boo” with couple of squirrel fish for bettter part of 3 minutes just trying to coax them out to take their picture.
It took a while to get both squirrel fish to venture into the image
Around the tugboat there are some patch reefs and some large expanses of sand and broken coral. Spend sometime looking at the sponges on the patch reef because there often are spinny sea stars and a few golden crinoids are present. Often times near the sponges there are arrow crabs which are also interesting to watch. Underneath some of the coral heads are fairey bassetts which are a beautiful purple and gold fish.
In the sand you may find a significant number of blennies and some jaw fish who have dug holds in the sand and quickly retreat into the sand.
This blenny was one of several hundred that make their home near the Papa Doc
I looked for quite some time for a jawfish with eggs in its mouth, but did not find a single one. I guess I will have to go back again and re-explore the site.
Some dives are just awesome. The captain had just handed down my camera and I was continuing to clip the camera to my BC when I looked down. Fifty feet below I could see gray reef sharks swimming over the reef. Waiting the couple of minutes for my buddy to roll into the water and be ready to drop down to the reef seemed like an eternity. Since my buddy had had some issues equalizing her ears on the first dive I paused before dropping down, just to make sure I didn’t pass her on the way down.
On the way down, I was turning on the strobes, the camera and the focus light and my video light. I was still 25 feet from the bottom when I turned on the video light and started the video running. For the next 11 minutes all I did was breath, refocus the camera and try to keep up with the action. I lost count of the number of sharks that swam through the site. We weren’t feeding the sharks so I didn’t have to huddle up and kneel in the sand, yeh. Instead I was free to swim slowly and try to keep up with the action.
There were some small male sharks who swam through at various times. the big females were amazing, easily 6 to 8 feet in length. They were such graceful swimmers words do not do them justice.
One of the many sharks at Shark Junction
Mid way through filming, there was a large black grouper who was easily 200 pounds who swam through. He was quite a contrast to the sharks. Large bodied sharks could turn on a dime and still give you 9 cents back. The black grouper turned more like an old Cadillac– slow and steady.
A 200 plus pound Black Grouper at Shark Junction
We also saw a school of horse-eyed jacks. They are so graceful and their silver bodies glimmer in the water. Here is a short video with the sharks and the horse-eyed jacks.
So would I go back to Shark Junction in the Bahamas, absolutely.
The Hol Chan Marine reserve in Belize is relatively well known among divers. It is near San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. The dive is not deep. Much of the reserve is less than 20 feet deep. The deepest spot I found during our dives was just over 30 feet.
On Abergris Caye the barrier reef is relatively close to the shoreline, in many places it is less than 800 yards from shore. While the reef forms a substantial barrier that protects Ambergris Caye there are “cuts” or divides in the reef where the Caribbean can wash through and boats can get out beyond the reef by sailing through the “cut”. In the Hol Chan marine reserve there is a “cut” which allows the Caribbean to flow through the reef. One of the things that the flow of water does is allow food to move through the cut. As a result of the movement of the water through the cut the amount and variety of marine life in the reserve is substantial. It is common to see large numbers of nurse sharks. It is common to see turtles and large schools of fish.
There is a wide variety of corals including one of my favorite corals, elk horn coral.
Grunts under elk horn coral in the Hol Chan Marine reserve
And, if you are lucky, you will find turtles both hawks bill and green sea turtles hanging out and eating turtle grass in the reserve.
It was not long ago that I was diving in Ambergris Caye in Belize. What struck me was the variety of soft and hard corals.
Nevertheless, on many dives, what got the attention of the divers in my group were the nurse sharks. Now don’t get me wrong, I find large animals, including nurse sharks, to be fascinating to see in the wild. Nurse sharks in the world of sharks are pretty docile and can be approached relatively easily. Keep your fingers to yourself and don’t harrass a nurse shark and you can watch them gracefully swim along the reef. I don’t think I have ever seen as many nurse sharks any where else as I have seen in Ambergris Caye.
Even though the nurse sharks got top billing, the corals were quite intersting. There were many healthy soft and hard corals which were also worthy of comment.
(Polyps of a sea whip unfurled and gathering plankton).
What is interesting to me is that coral are created by large colonies of very small animals. The texture and shape of corals has substantial variety. And, the means and types of food that they feed on can vary fairly dramatically. Some of the corals unfold their polyps and feed on plankton that drifts within reach. The most interesting feeding I have seen corals engage in I observed on a night dive on Grand Cayman. Blood worms were swarming my dive light during the night dive. The dive leader pointed his light at a coral and the blood worms followed the light down to the coral only to be devoured by the coral. It was not what I was expecting, but it was interesting. After a while I started to feel a little bit bad for the blood worms because they were being eaten at a rather rapid rate. But then I got to thinking about how annoying they had been a the beginning of the dive and it occurred to me that it was just part of the circle of life in the ocean.
Star coral was also quite common in Ambergris caye. For me star coral is interesting because it can become enormous. I also find the individual shapes to be quite interesting. Of course, the fact that star coral glows green under blue light also makes it interesting.
So next time you are diving in the deep blue sea and are templed to swim past the coral in search of other more interesting subjects, take a minute or two and look more closely at the coral, you may be glad you did.
Ever notice when you are diving that certain songs go through your head? Sometimes when I’m diving certain songs go through my head depending on the type of dive. For instance on wreck dives:
I like big wrecks and I can not lie
You other divers can’t deny
That when ship sails in with an itty bitty hold
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
’cause you notice that wreck was stuffed
Deep in the sand she wearing
I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring
Oh, baby I wanna get with ya
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that wreck you got
Make Me so happy
Ooh, hull of smooth skin
You say you wanna get in my benz
Well use me use me ’cause you aint that average groupy
In 2014 we traveled to Dominica for the first time. We flew to Guadeloupe, got on board a power cat and motored the 20+ miles to Dominica the following morning. A power cat is like a catermoran, but instead of a sail, it just uses a motor to cruise. That way a power cat is not wind dependent and generallys is quite a bit faster in the water.
For the next week, we would dive than cruise to a new dive site pick up a local dive master and then dive some more. We set foot on the island of Dominica once that week, to have dinner and to return some dive gear to a local dive shop. The rest of the time we were either cruising down the coast, diving, sleeping or eating.
One of the songs that kept playing in my head during the trip was a song about Dominica that I had heard when I was a child. Here is a link to a video clip from the Ed Sullivan show in the early 60’s about the nun who wrote and sang the song “Dominica”.
Dominica has an abundance of underwater wildlife. If you like to find small sea creatures there are plenty of them to see. I don’t think I have ever seen so many banded shrimp and small crabs as I saw on this trip. I am relatively certain I have never see so many golden crinoid, a type of feather star as we saw in Dominica.
Sponges corals and crionoids with fish in the background
And, if you have lots of small animals, you often have a variety of predators. We saw quite a few trumpet fish.
And, we saw large animals. For more than a half an hour as we were motoring along the coast of the island, we were escorted by a dolphin.
Dominica is a volcanic island. On one dive we took a couple of eggs from the galley and took them down to the sand 80 feet below the boat and buried them in the sand. We then went on our dive and by the time we came back the eggs were cooked and were hard-boiled. Dominica as the top of a volcano rises up out of the ocean. As a result, if you go about a mile off shore the depth of the water drops to over 1,000 feet in-depth. That deep trench near the Atlantic ocean makes for excellent habitat for whales. In Dominica, if you go with a local operator who has a permit, you can swim with whales.
Swimming with whales is done on snorkel gear but it is with sperm whales, a relatively rare animal. Unfortunately, we did not have time to go snorkeling with the whales. One of my friends visited Dominica a few weeks before we were there, and spent quite a bit of time in the water with several sperm whales, and of course had a great time. I am going to hopefully time my next trip to Dominica to try to swim with the sperm whales.
In the Caribbean, there are 15 or so kinds of moray eel. Based on my antidotal observation, the green moray is the most common. Green moral eels tend to grow larger than their cousins so perhaps their ability to grow larger gives them an advantage in the wild. Based on my personal observation around the Caribbean, the spotted moray is the second most common moray eel to see.
Here is an example of a spotted moray eel.
Ordinarily, moray eels are relatively unaffected by the presence of divers. Quite often divers can get relatively close to moray eels before the eel will withdraw into the reef to avoid contact with a diver, but not always. As I approached the eel withdrew into the reef leaving the banded shrimp who had previously been cleaning the eel.
Sometimes during the daytime, eels will only peer out of their hiding holes in the reef and you have to be fairly alert to spot them.
Sometimes if you are very fortunate you will see a moray eel freely swimming about the reef. Generally speaking, you are more likely to see a free swimming moray eel during a night dive when they are hunting for food than you are during the day.
The relationship between divers and eels does change if there is food that is present or the eel believes that there may be food available. When food is present, the moray can become much more interested in the food than anything else. We were diving in Belize on the Turneffe reef when I saw a moray become much more interested in food than anything else. Our dive leader had speared a lion fish and were swimming along a wall when a moray caught the sent of the dead lion fish which was still on the spear. Here is how that interaction played out. Nevertheless some moray eel have no interest in lion fish as food even when dead.
Sometimes even if the feeding by has not occurred by humans for quite a long time, a moray eel will continue to look for a free meal. occasionally, the interaction between divers and an eel can be almost comical. Unfortunately, feeding wild animals can change their behavior. That applies not just to moray eels but to other animals as well.
Nevertheless, getting to see a free swimming moray eel, particularly in the day time, is quite a treat. And, while they are technically fish, moray eels are quite different from most fish that you see in the ocean.
Here is a short clip of some moray eels I have seen recently.
From the title, my philosopher friends are probably thinking I am going to write about the connection between present time and future time; but they would be wrong. My diver friends know that I’m thinking more about will there be a strong current underwater on my next dive? Underwater currents are like the wind. You really can’t see them except in relationship to other things. So for instance we can drop a few blades of grass on the water and assuming we are still,if there is a current, the blades of grass will move one direction or another. If the current is too quick we may decide to go to another site where there is either less current or possibly none at all. Of course, we may elect to do a drift dive and just go with the flow.
When there is a modest current we usually want to swim into the current on the way out and have the current push us back to the boat on the way back. By doing this we have an added measure of safety because, all other things being equal swimming back to the boat with a current to our backs should help push us back to the boat so we do not exert ourselves as much and therefore use less air.
Currents are not inherently bad for diving. if they were there would be no dive industry in Cozumel Mexico. Cozumel is famous for its drift dives. The basic concept is you drop in at point “A” and you let the current take you along the reef for a distance until you get to a certain point “B”in your air supply and then you ascend. Hopefully, the boat captain has followed your bubbles well enough to at least be in the same zip code and can bring the boat close to the divers for an easy exit.
So the question remains will there be a current on your future dives?
There are a lot of dives that I have done where the boat ride to the dive site can be quite long. Have long boat rides guaranteed a great dive experience, unfortunately no. Curiously, sometimes the shortest boat rides have yielded some great dives, particularly if there if there is some man-made structure in the area. Curiously, sometimes the local pier, jetty or bridge provide opportunities for divers to explore the underwater world and find some interesting sea creatures.
Not long ago we did a dive near a pier in Dominica. It started out late in the afternoon so the light was very low. When I reached the bottom at about 35 feet the first thing I found was an old paint bucket with sponges growing out of it. It was a little surreal, but it is not the first time I have seen what might seem like trash being re-purposed. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for trash in the oceans. Nevertheless, I am less surprised now than in the past that sometimes sea creatures are able to re-purpose what someone intended to throw away. Similarly, the posts that were set into the sea floor also create structure in which sea creatures may make a home.
Even larger animals seem to find hiding holes for themselves.
cataloguing the creature we saw in a one hour dive was hard. In part because I kept switching back and forth between still shots and video, but in part because the sheer number of creatures and their variety. We saw a variety of shrimp and crabs. We saw several species of puffer fish. We saw a slipper lobster. And we saw several seahorses.
So the next time you are driving by a pier, jetty or bridge, maybe you should ask yourself: “I wonder if I ought to go explore it and see if there are any interesting sea creatures?”
