Utila Town, Honduras
Another day, another reef… life can’t get much better! After a quiet night secured to the dock at Utila Town in Honduras’ Bay Islands, we rose to find a sunny and glassy calm morning, beckoning us out to snorkeling, diving, birdwatching and rambling around in the friendly, laid back community. Just a short way from the dock, the large fringing reef off Utila’s southern coast was an interesting contrast to the smaller one we had explored at Southwest Caye the previous day. Plunging to greater depths quite close to the shoreline, it offered both snorkelers and divers a chance to experience the outer wall, a unique portion of the reef, which is home to a rather different group of corals, fish and invertebrates, which are not usually found on the reef top.
Coral reefs, whose physical structure is primarily built up from the accumulated skeletons of the small colonial animals we call corals, are the largest things ever constructed on Earth by any living creatures, far larger that the greatest engineering works of human beings. The multi-layered, crenellated and folded nature of the reef creates a myriad of micro environments, homes and hiding places which shelter and support a bewildering variety of wonderful fish and other organisms. This fantastic wealth of wildlife can lead to a kind of sensory overload; there is often a feeling of not knowing which wonder to look at next.
As a Divemaster, my response to this is to take a very slow pace, allowing plenty of time to observe and think about each scene as it passes. One of my greatest pleasures while diving is to discover and share with other divers some of the tiny and exquisite creatures hidden in the nooks and crannies of the enormous world of the reef. Divers call this macro life (due to the use of macro lenses to photograph these scenes), though perhaps a better term would be micro life, since some of these lovely animals are nearly microscopic. Today I had the good luck to find this sponge sheltering a small group of Cryptic Teardrop Crabs, each only about a quarter of an inch across. These crabs not only live in large sponges, they further conceal themselves by attaching small pieces of red encrusting sponge to their shells.
Delicately beautiful crabs, hidden in a tremendous submarine world of swirling kaleidoscopic color… life can’t get much better!
Another day, another reef… life can’t get much better! After a quiet night secured to the dock at Utila Town in Honduras’ Bay Islands, we rose to find a sunny and glassy calm morning, beckoning us out to snorkeling, diving, birdwatching and rambling around in the friendly, laid back community. Just a short way from the dock, the large fringing reef off Utila’s southern coast was an interesting contrast to the smaller one we had explored at Southwest Caye the previous day. Plunging to greater depths quite close to the shoreline, it offered both snorkelers and divers a chance to experience the outer wall, a unique portion of the reef, which is home to a rather different group of corals, fish and invertebrates, which are not usually found on the reef top.
Coral reefs, whose physical structure is primarily built up from the accumulated skeletons of the small colonial animals we call corals, are the largest things ever constructed on Earth by any living creatures, far larger that the greatest engineering works of human beings. The multi-layered, crenellated and folded nature of the reef creates a myriad of micro environments, homes and hiding places which shelter and support a bewildering variety of wonderful fish and other organisms. This fantastic wealth of wildlife can lead to a kind of sensory overload; there is often a feeling of not knowing which wonder to look at next.
As a Divemaster, my response to this is to take a very slow pace, allowing plenty of time to observe and think about each scene as it passes. One of my greatest pleasures while diving is to discover and share with other divers some of the tiny and exquisite creatures hidden in the nooks and crannies of the enormous world of the reef. Divers call this macro life (due to the use of macro lenses to photograph these scenes), though perhaps a better term would be micro life, since some of these lovely animals are nearly microscopic. Today I had the good luck to find this sponge sheltering a small group of Cryptic Teardrop Crabs, each only about a quarter of an inch across. These crabs not only live in large sponges, they further conceal themselves by attaching small pieces of red encrusting sponge to their shells.
Delicately beautiful crabs, hidden in a tremendous submarine world of swirling kaleidoscopic color… life can’t get much better!
