Tag Archives: Dominica

Belize, Macro

Do you see the details in the mundane?

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Closed polyps on a sea whip.

 

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.

coral pollups feeding

(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.

peppermint gobey
perpermint gobey resting on star coral

 

wreaks

Do you: Like big Wrecks?

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The Berwyn wreck Barbados
The Berwyn wreck Barbados

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
Goat fish on the York

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
Willaurie stairs

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

tugboat

With apologies to Sir Mixalot

Dominica, wide angle

Oh when can I go back to Dominica?

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Not a bad place to have to moor and go diving.

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 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. Dominica trumpet-1

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. 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

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.

Dominica, Macro

Have you ever explored underneath a pier, jetty or bridge?

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Photographer under the pier
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. Arrow crab

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. Upside down shrimp
Even larger animals seem to find hiding holes for themselves. dominica blog-1
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.
dominica blog 3-1

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?”

Here is a short video from the dive.

Antigua

Diving in Antigua, what is it like?

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Picturesque Deep Bay is actually very shallow
Picturesque Deep Bay is actually very shallow

Antigua is a very beautiful island. It is a volcanic island. There are mountains and there are many awesome places to hike and look out over the surrounding Caribbean water. As a pure diving trip Antigua is not in the same league as the Cayman islands or Cozumel. However, as an island to sail around and explore both land and sea it has may endearing features.

As a volcanic island the sand is very heavy and when it is stirred up it is like concrete. When the sand is stirred up, it is slow to settle and visibility can be quite challenging. Goatfish hiding under an overhang

We traveled around the island on a live aboard for a week and dove at various spots along the way. We saw a variety of animals including an octopus feeding on a conch. Octopus feeding on Conch We also saw a variety of land features such as the “Devil”s Bridge” and the Pillars of Hercules.

Some of the dive sites are quite shallow. For less experienced divers there are quite a few shallow water sites to explore.
Exploring the Pillars of Hercules

Antigua is a beautiful island and one worth exploring, particularly from a live aboard.

Bioflourescence, Macro

What does blue light tell us?

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Brain coral bio-flourescence
Brain coral bio-flourescence

A couple of years ago while we were diving in the Caymans I was introduced to bio-flourescence. Prior to that trip, I had been on a number of night dives over the years so I was accustomed to the thought of turning off all of the dive lights and moving your hands about to stir the water to see plankton luminesce or glow in the dark. Okay it was interesting but that was about as far as I got.

Bio-luminesce seemed to be different. Instead of turning off all of the lights we added a blue light, not black light as we all saw in our youths. We added some yellow filters and blue light filters for my strobes. Voila certain critters changed colors and glowed in the dark.

Bahamas anenome under blue light
Giant anemone under blue light

So I was no longer looking at pint sized critters who glowed for a moment or two; now I was looking at much larger corals and creatures that glowed green or other colors, as long as I turned the blue light on them. Cool. What appeared to be the difference between bioluminesce and bio-flourescene was the use of blue lights which which would cause a glowing for more than a few seconds.

After thinking about it for a while, I began to wonder if there was any practical applications for being able to see bio-flourescense. Turns out there is. From my readings it appears that the proteins that glow under blue light can be useful in helping to identify cancerous cells. Hmmm that is kind of interesting. It also turns out that when blue light hits juvenile corals it also glows. Now I am not a scientist, but it would seem to me that that type of information would be useful in identifying whether new corals are growing on a reef or not. Turns out there is some research being done along the lines of using blue light to identify new growth coral. Now that seems to me would be useful in helping to identify whether a reef was growing with new corals, was stagnat or dying. I could see if studied under controlled conditions it would be very useful to identify the health of at least the portion of the reef which would bio-flouresce. I suspect there are still more practical appications for blue light underwater than have yet been considered. So maybe blue light will unlock even more secrets of the oceans and nature and is more than just a cool sight.

Bahamas, Uncategorized, wide angle

Where does diving take us?

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So peaceful, yet at the surface a storm had gone through and sunk over 20 % of the fishing fleet

Over the years I have asked alot of divers the simple question: “Where does diving take us?” and gotten a wide variety of answers. Sometimes I get a response that is a destination: Bahamas, Belize, Barbados….Sometimes I get a response that says more about an emotion: tranquility, peacefulness, relaxing, awe inspiring…. Sometimes the response is more about avoidance: “Away from the phone, fax, texts, emails….” And, sometimes the response is more about self awareness: “To a new interest; to a recognition of a different environment….”

Whatever the reason for diving, it does surprise me how dropping down a relatively few feet into the water can have such a profound affect on diver’s perceptions. That perception was particularly true when we were in Tobago.

A few years ago we were on a catamaran sailing around Tobago. A storm came in and the captain took us to deep water to anchor overnight. We dropped two anchors to hold us in place. It was a bit rough that night but I didn’t think too much about it until the next morning when I noticed quite a few of the boats that had anchored or tied down near us were gone. A few moments later I saw a 50 foot sailboat break its mooring and drift past us. We pulled up anchor and motored back to a lagoon where we stayed for a couple of days. Twenty percent of the fishing fleet of Tobago was sunk during the storm. I guess it was rougher than I thought. Of course I am a sound sleeper on boats.

Yet, a couple of days later when we sailed over to Spayside, which was on the opposite side of the Tobago, there were some pretty large waves, but nothing too rough. We took a smaller boat out to Little Tobago, which is an even smaller island off the coast of Tobago, and dropped down on a dive site known as Black Jack. We dropped down in the water and the first 15 feet were a bit stirred up, but once we got down below 15 feet the visibility got much better. The water was clear and visibility was good. Usually when storms go through the visibility is so poor I am often tempted to leave the camera at home. But, on this dive I was glad I had dragged it along — all 35 pounds of it. In the better visibility it was easy to see that the sponges were huge and colorful. The fish life varied and active. The thought occurred to me: Isn’t it amazing that while the surface was rough only a few feet below the surface sealife continued on virtually unaffected….

Belize, Sharks, wide angle

Did I miss shark week?

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One of the great things about diving is you never know what you might see in blue water
Nurse shark surprise

Ever have one of those moments where you can anticipate what may happen next? One of the things that I try to do to increase the odds of getting close to wild life in order to take close up pictures is to watch the animals move about and then try to anticipate their next move. We had been diving in Ambergris Caye for about a week and had seen quite a few nurse sharks. Nurse sharks are bottom feeders and are pretty docile creatures. I was hoping that on this dive we would get pretty close to a nurse shark so I could get an image of how they swim.

Our dive master had speared a lion fish earlier in the dive, but otherwise the dive had been pretty uneventful. We swam over a coral finger and I saw a nurse shark swimming some lazy circles around a large coral head. It occurred to me that if my estimate of when and where our dive group would crest the the next coral finger, that we might just get pretty close to the nurse shark. In my mind I figured out the angle I would need to swim to put the rest of the dive group between me and where thought the nurse shark would next finish a circle — at the top of the next coral finger.

The sun was behind some clouds that day so I knew I would have to be pretty close to where the shark would come over the ridge of the coral finger otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a shot. My strobes only have an effective range of about 4-6 feet depending on visibility and other factors. I was shooting close focus wide angle which means that if I am more than a few feet away from my subject I would get tenie tiny images that wouldn’t be well lit.

My dive buddy saw me take off on a right angle away from the group and then turn around. I then just coasted over the the side of the coral finger and waited for the rest of the group to reach of the crest of the ridge. The shark came over the ridge pretty close to where I thought he would and one of the divers reached the crest at about the same time. I would have liked to have been a little closer, but at 100% you can read the dials on the surprised diver’s guages.

Here is a link to video of nurse sharks in Ambergris Caye Belize:

British Virgin Islands, wide angle, wreaks

Do you like to dive wrecks?

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Airplane wreck in BVI
Although no longer aerodynamic, the airplane wreck is still a hit with divers in the BVI
Although no longer aerodynamic, the airplane wreck is still a hit with divers in the BVI

In the British Virgin Islands there are a number of wreck dives that are available. So why do a wreck dive? One of my reasons is that the wreck often serves as an artificial reef which attracts fish. The wreck also provides good structure for corals and sponges to take hold and grow. At the airplane wreck the fish life is fine, but the sponges that have started to grow on the plane are pretty colorful.

On our most recent trip to the BVI we dove the airplane wreck. It is in relatively shallow water, about 35 feet. When we were there the visibility was pretty poor because a storm had just gone through and stirred up all of the sediment. Nevertheless, for close focus wide angle photo’s the visibility was within acceptable limits as long as you were careful to keep the focus of the shot very tight and close.

In a prior trip to BVI, I was fortunate to dive the RMS Rhone. The Rhone was a packet ship that sank during a late season hurricane. She was thought to be unsinkable just like her sister ship the Titanic. You can read more of what I found on the Rhone in my journal which can be found here:

http://campbelljournal.com/rhone.html

Here is a link to video from the Kittiwake 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….