Closed polyps on a sea whip.

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.