Category Archives: Roatan

Cayman Islands, Grenadines, Roatan, wide angle

So why dive?

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Goliath Grouper silhouette
Goliath Grouper silhouette

For about as long as I can remember I have always liked being in the water. If there was a puddle near where I lived as a kid, I was in it looking to see what might be living in the puddle. I was the swim team kid who was always in the water. I earned some of my early pay checks being a life guard at a local pool. Later I would manage a pool while I was in college.

When I first started diving it was something I hoped I could do with my family.  It took a while and a fair amount of convincing, but to a large extent diving has become an adventure we can do together.  Diving seemed like a great way to turn off the phone, fax, text, and email stream of communications that had invaded my life. Unfortunately, what I have found is that it only delays the delivery for a while, but even that is a help.  To an extent, diving has been a great way to tune out the communication noise that otherwise buries me during the day.

But, diving also allows me to explore parts of the world that I otherwise would not see. Whether it is 12 feet down looking at southern rays at Sting Ray city off the coast of Grand Cayman, or hundred feet down looking at bull sharks off the coast of Playa del Carmen, or some depth in between looking at a hermit crab or other creatures, there is almost always something to see and learn about.

The shell of this fellow was easily a foot across
Channel clinging crab

So for me, what keeps me coming back is not just the opportunity to have some peace and quiet, but also to feed my curiosity about what exists in the other 70% of the world.

A spotted moray eel in the Grenadines
Roatan, wide angle

Do you look up when diving?

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Goliath Grouper silhouette
Goliath Grouper silhouette

Not long ago I read an article that talked about how divers often became mesmorized by looking where the fish are, mostly near the bottom and often under ledges and over hangs. The problem the author said was that sometimes the most interesting things were swimming over the heads of the divers who missed them because they did not look up.

With that thought in mind I recently dove the Odyssey in Roatan Honduras. As briefed the dive was to have a maximum depth of 100 feet. We would not stay there very long and then we would gradually make our way up a wall near the wreck. As we got down to the wreck I shot some video of the wreck which is quite large. Here is my dive buddy Tony checking out part of the wreck. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bcampbell65/20074724821/

Midway through the dive I turend off the video and switched to stills. I looked up and overhead there was an enormous grouper that was swimming. He was easily 5 feet in length. I thouht about leaving the strobes on, but thought a silhouette of the fish might be interesting. During the rest of the dive we saw some black groupers as well and they were also in the 4 to 5 foot in length range.

Glad I looked up to see such incredible animals. Here is some of the video from the wreck dive:

Bahamas, Barbardos, Belize, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominica, Mexico, Roatan, wide angle

Are you the scourge of the Caribbean?

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Are you the scourge of the Caribbean?
Pretty but lethal?

Over the last decade or so we have been making our way around the Caribbean. My first encounter with a Lion fish was about 10 years ago when I heard that this invasive species from the Indo-Pacific region was slowing making its way around the Caribbean. I cannot say that I have been to every island in the region, but I have come close. I have seen them as far south as Tobaggo. I’ve seen them as far north as Florida. I have seen them as far east as Barbados. I have seen them as far west as Roatan, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. Lion fish are eating and reproducing machines. A marine biologist in Belize told me that the female lion fish produces about 40,000 eggs every 3 days. The reproductive ability of rabbits pale by comparison.

One of my friends in Barbados let me know that last week his shop shot 90 lion fish while my friends in Roatan shot over 130 last week. There are lion fish round ups throughout the Caribbean. I have seen roundups in the Caymans, and Curacao and Belize. Ultimately, the lion fish has no natural predators in the Caribbean. Although there have been efforts to train moray eels, groupers and sharks to feed on them, often it still requires the spearing of the fish in the first instance. I don’t know what the answer is, but I certainly hope we find a better answer than we have now because from what I have seen we appear to be losing the battle.

Some might say so what. The problem is that with depleted native species, like parrot fish and others who eat the algae off the reef the reefs could eventually die out. I think about the great limpet that only resides in Monterrey bay and wonder, can we really afford such a loss. There are proteins that are created by the great limpet that make cancer drugs more effective and which at the present have not yet been synthesized. The proteins from the limpid sell for about $34,000 per gram or more than 600 times the price of gold. I wonder can we afford to lose even one species of flora or fauna in the Caribbean? I keep wondering if there is a better solution to removing this invasive species. Yet at the same time i think about instances in which people have introduced one invasive species to remove another and those efforts have gone terribly wrong,consider africanized bees….