The Grenadines are known for having nearly countless small underwater creatures to see under the sea. Arrow crabs, banded shrimp and other small creatures are plentiful to see if you are scuba diving.
A banded shrimp hanging upside down waiting for fish to be cleaned
We had seen a number of small hermit crabs during our trip to the Grenadines. There were quite a few to be seen, but for the most part they were in shells that were not much bigger than a silver dollar. Most species of hermit crab have long, spirally curved abdomens, which are soft, unlike the hard, calcified abdomens seen in related crustaceans. The vulnerable abdomen is protected from predators by a salvaged empty seashell carried by the hermit crab. The shell is ususally large enough so the crabs entire body can retract inside the shell. Hermit crabs often use the shells of sea snails (although the shells of bivalves and scaphopods and even hollow pieces of wood and stone are used by some species). The tip of the hermit crab’s abdomen is adapted to clasp strongly onto the columella of the snail shell. Most hermit crabs are nocturnal.
So I was not expecting to swim around a part of the reef only to come face to face with a hermit crab whose home shell was as big as my head.
The biggest hermit crab I’ve ever seen
Even assuming the crab did not fill the shell entirely, he was enormous, and obviously quite strong because he did not seem to have any problem trying to carry about such a large shell.
I have been diving for quite some time and have done hundreds of dives in blue water. And yet, it was only recently that I came across an electric ray. Not an electric eel, but an electric ray. According to my fish book they are uncommon to rare in the northern part of Caribbean such as in the Bahamas and Florida. They are more common in the southern Caribbean. They tend to be unconcerned and won’t move when approached by divers, but if touched can produce a mild electric shock of between 14 and 37 volts.
From doing a little research it appears there are over 60 species of rays world wide, but far fewer are electric. The electric ray I found was what is known as a lesser electric ray. I looked, but the could not find a “greater electric ray”; who says naming protocols are logical?
The better known electric ray is the Torpedo fish. The really odd part is that the ancient Greeks used electric rays to numb the pain of childbirth and operations. In his dialogue Meno, Plato has the character Meno accuse Socrates of “stunning” people with his puzzling questions, in a manner similar to the way the torpedo fish stuns with electricity. Scribonius Largus, a Roman physician, recorded the use of torpedo fish for treatment of headaches and gout in his Compositiones Medicae of 46 AD.
I think I’m glad I can quite happily stop by the local pharmacy and find my choice of aspirin or other pain relievers. Which brings me to my next rumination? Is there such a thing as finding too many interesting creatures under the sea? That is, is there a point where there is too much of a good thing? I think it is kind of like asking can you take too many vacations? Not a chance….
In the Grenadines, the government has created a marine park in and around Tobago Cayes. Although the park is not particularly large, it is well placed. The marine park is bounded by several small islands and the depth of the water in much of the park is relatively shallow. With shallow water and a white sand bottom, this creates some amazingly pretty turquoises water.
Sailing in to Tobago Cayes with just a hint of the turquoises water that we will see
We had barely had time to anchor and we spotted several green sea turtles surfacing for air, only to return to the bottom to feed on turtle grass. We arrived in the afternoon and after lunch we were picked up by a local dive shot to go diving.
I did two dives with a macro set up. The first dive was horseshoe reef. With alot of newby divers we had some challenges, particularly since the current changed twice in about a half an hour. I did manage to get a few interesting critter shots.
This banded shrimp almost reminded me of an old west gun fighter with her guns drawn; I guess you could call her “Two guns”. I say her, because I think if you look closely you can see eggs.
After the second dive I switched the camera to a wide angle set up for the next morning when we would go to the marine park looking for green sea turtles.
If you have to anchor somewhere, Tobago Cayes is pretty spectacular
Unfortunately, no diving was allowed near the island where the turtles were, but on snorkel we were successful in finding sea turtles with which to swim. Below is a video from our swimming with green sea turtles at Tobago Cayes.
A relatively small percentage of my time is spent underwater shooting macro subjects. Why? In large part it is much harder for me to spot the small critters that are on a dive and most of the time we do not go to the same dive sites more than once. That means that if I am trying to keep up with the rest of the group of divers, I either shoot wide angle close focus and get quite a few shots, or I shoot macro and get very few shots many of which don’t turn out for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is I often rush the shot.
A peppermint gobey resting on star coral. Take a look at this at 100% and see the incredible detain in his pectoral fin and in the star coral polyps
Nevertheless, I found when I was down in the Grenadines that the amount of small critters to shoot was quite substantial and I didn’t have to wait too long to find shots. Chrismas tree worms have fascinated me for years, so I do take quite a few shots of them. Their structure when spread out in the water allows them to gather the plankton on which they feed very efficiently. The extraordinary detail in each little branch is just amazing.
Fire worms also have amazing detail in tuffs which carry their venon which when you look, closely resemble small whiskers.
If you want to get a real sense of what a fire worm looks like, look that this version of the image which is just a 60 percent crop; got to 100 percent crop and in addition to the fire worm you will see a couple legs of an arrow crab. Each little fiber can pack a punch with its venom — look but don’t touch
Of course, the dimensions of the creature can get very small. I found a secretary blenny who was not much wider than 1mm who made a christmas tree worm look large. The christmas tree worm is on the top right and the blenny is on the bottom left of the image.
A secretary blenny hiding out in his hiding hold in star coral
But as I mentioned in an earlier post on the blog, sometimes you see something that just isn’t a macro subject ordinarily, but because I can’t change lens underwater, I shoot it with the macro lens and see what we get. Hence, the next image is LOBZILLA, who deserved wide angle treatment because he was huge, think two dinner plates, but he was relegated to macro lens shooting. At this range, LOBZILLA looks like something from outer space
Thus, there is quite a variety of small creatures to shoot in the Grenadines. But, you should be prepared to shoot the big critters with a macro lens when the opportunity presents itself.
Anyone who has been around animals for long probably realizes that it is just when we think that we can predict what any particular animal will do that they surprise us. Not long ago when I was in the Bahamas, I was watching a large group of grey sharks swimming in amongst our dive group. After watching the sharks circle and swim through our group for about 10 minutes, I had one shark zig towards me rather unexpectedly. I managed to get the camera in position and shoot but also managed to get my fin in the picture. Now the shark was maybe only a foot a way from my fin, but because he had changed course rather suddenly to get to where I saw him, it was unexpected, unsettling and had me thinking: Did I leave bait in my pocket? Well I hadn’t, but it was the thought that ran through my mind.
Most of the time the surprise adds an element of freshness to the encounter. Sometimes the event makes us laugh or at least smile. Sometimes things get a little to close for comfort. And, yet it is in those moments of the unexpected that we see the one thing that we often are looking for — it is the untamed aspect of how animals behave. For me it’s those moments that I realize I may never see that particular behaviour replicated in my lifetime. But, at least for me it is the adventure and the hope that one of these great moments will re-appear that keeps me coming back.
Coming at you
I hope 2016 brings you many moments of spectacular animal behaviour.
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
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?
I was thinking back to a dive I did in Anguilla on a wreck known as the MV Commerce. Wreck dives are typically dives where I want to have my underwater camera set up to shoot wide angle. Close focus wide angle is a great way to try to capture the large expanses of a ship for instance, but it really doesn’t do to much for trying to take pictures of small critters. Shooting pictures of small critters with a wide angle lens makes them look insignificant, if they can be found at all.
Alot of times before dives, I try to find out what are we likely to see on the dive. The reason is if it sounds like we will see big objects than I rig the camera for wide angle which works best. If it sounds like we will see small critters, then a macro setting with a 60mm or 105mm lens works best for me. For the most part, I shot wreck dives with a wide angle lens. Of course, some dive masters incorrectly think that if they tell me what we are likely to see that that will either jinx the dive, or will take away from it in some way. Understand, I don’t need detail, what we will see is often quite different from what has been seen at the same dive site on prior dives; but I just would like to know, big or small features so I can rig the camera accordingly.
The MV Commerce was a over 100 feet in length so I figured, good wide angle shooting. Little did I know but our dive master was very good at finding the small inhabitants who had made themselves at home on the wreck. The MV Commerce at that point had been down over 20 years, so there was quite a bit of coral and sponge life on the ship. Great habbitat for small critters. As it turned out, the dive was the first time I had really looked at an arrow crab. Now arrow crabs remind me of daddy long legs spiders, but have an elongated head which comes to a point. One of the crabs we found that day had been hunting. And, it appeared he had been quite successful. He not only had food in one of his claws, but had jammed some of his prey down on the spike at the end of his head. (Bless his pointed little head). Of course rigged for wide angle I could try as many different shots and angle as I liked with little success. At one point I put my dome right in the crabs face, but the image still looked punny. Nevertheless, I did get bailed out at the end of the dive. A green sea turtle swam down from the surface and started napping on the remains of the deck of the wreck. Sometimes it better to be lucky than good.
A peppermint gobey resting on star coral. Take a look at this at 100% and see the incredible detain in his pectoral fin and in the star coral polyps
Each little fiber can pack a punch with its venom — look but don’t touch
At this range, LOBZILLA looks like something from outer space
