Tag Archives: nudibranch

Do you have a favorite undersea animal?

I will admit that I have been a fan of shark week for as long as it has been on the Discovery channel. Sharks are smart. They have an incredible array of tools for finding prey. They have been on the planet for hundreds of millions of years and they have evolved to fit into many different sub-environments. For many years when I was asked what my favorite animal in the sea was, I typically would respond sharks.

This is why you wear the steel suit
This is why you wear the steel suit

Of course when I was growing up, sharks didn’t always have the best reputation. Flipper, who I watched a lot as a kid, always prevailed over any sharks that strayed into the story line of the show. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Flipper and have always been fascinated by dolphins who also seem to have awesome skills as predators. I have always found big undersea creatures to be interesting. They are necessary to ensure the health of a reef. They typically go very fast through the water.

But, sharks and dolphins share at least one trait, their relative amount of color is pretty limited. Grey and white and tan are excellent colors if you want to blend into the reef. But there are so many other colors that exist on coral reefs that I may have to change my thinking about what my favorite undersea animal is.

Eye of a peacock flounder
Eye of a peacock flounder
Nudibranchs
Never enough time

Have you been diving in the Exumas Cayes in the Bahamas?

Farmers Caye in the morning
Farmers Caye in the morning

The Exhumas are a group of islands that are part of the Bahamas that begin about 30 miles of the southeaster tip of New Providence island where Nassau is located.  The Exhumas are a beautiful chain of coral islands.  On one side is the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side is the Gulf.  On the Gulf side it is easy to sail in 20+knot winds and the water is still relatively calm.  On the Atlantic side, with the same winds whip up the seas and it is easy to have 5-6 foot swells.  

By staying on the gulf side of the islands, we managed to move relatively effortlessly without getting beat to a pulp by the seas.  The diving on the gulf side, well it was relatively shallow,  but the sea life was relatively diverse.  

red tipped sea goddess nudibranch

Red tipped sea goddess nudibranch, of course shows up while I have a wide angle set up on the camera. 

The creatures also included a rather large slipper lobster, who I thought was as large as I had ever seen. 

slipper lobster
slipper lobster

For diving, it was important to be at the dive site ready to dive either on slack high or slack low tide.  Most sites are near the channels between the islands.  if you try to dive the sites without being on slack tide you are going to be doing a serious drift dive with currents ranging from 2-5 knots. Given that we were not particularly well set up for drift dives it meant that we had to time our dives well to be on slack water.  Of course in between we were able snorkel and saw eagle rays, green sea turtles and even swimming pigs and native iguanas. 

Most days early morning and sunsets were spectacular. 

sun rise Farmers Caye
sun rise Farmers Caye