Utila, Honduras
After a fascinating morning taking Zodiac and kayak cruises up the rivers running through the Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge in Honduras, we set sail towards the island of Utila, located in Honduras’ Bay Islands: a place known for its magnificent diving opportunities. On the leeward side of Utila lies a tiny cay named Southwest Cay, otherwise known as Fleming Cay. This is a paradisiacal islet, owned by an American family, the Flemings, for the past 16 years. These magnificent people have allowed us to come and partake of the sublime peace and beauty of their own islet, from which both snorkeling and scuba diving are absolutely spectacular. Bonnie and Nancy Fleming were there today to welcome us to their island, and chat with us as we rested between various water activities.
Snorkelers could observe beautiful, otherworldly gardens of corals among which parrot fish grazed, damsel fish and butterfly fish flitted, and barracuda lurked. The luckier of our snorkelers even got to observe an immense nurse shark lazily glide amongst both stony and soft corals!
Today was also the perfect place for our scuba divers to undertake their check out dive, as although the diving is simple, it is also incredibly beautiful. What looks like a garden that needs a little weeding turns out to be an incredible little reef with abundant life in every nook and cranny, and an incredible place to look for arrowhead and cryptic crabs living within the protective osculae of the sponges. One of my personal favorites of this great little reef are an organism that I have so far found only here on our trip, the blue bell tunicates – do these little animals maybe remind me of lovely walks through bluebell forest in England as a small child?
Though this particular species is especially lovely, they look more like sponges or various jellyfish-like organisms, they are actually the most primitive of the chordates, in other words, much more closely related to us than they are to the sponges! The world is a funny place!
After a fascinating morning taking Zodiac and kayak cruises up the rivers running through the Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge in Honduras, we set sail towards the island of Utila, located in Honduras’ Bay Islands: a place known for its magnificent diving opportunities. On the leeward side of Utila lies a tiny cay named Southwest Cay, otherwise known as Fleming Cay. This is a paradisiacal islet, owned by an American family, the Flemings, for the past 16 years. These magnificent people have allowed us to come and partake of the sublime peace and beauty of their own islet, from which both snorkeling and scuba diving are absolutely spectacular. Bonnie and Nancy Fleming were there today to welcome us to their island, and chat with us as we rested between various water activities.
Snorkelers could observe beautiful, otherworldly gardens of corals among which parrot fish grazed, damsel fish and butterfly fish flitted, and barracuda lurked. The luckier of our snorkelers even got to observe an immense nurse shark lazily glide amongst both stony and soft corals!
Today was also the perfect place for our scuba divers to undertake their check out dive, as although the diving is simple, it is also incredibly beautiful. What looks like a garden that needs a little weeding turns out to be an incredible little reef with abundant life in every nook and cranny, and an incredible place to look for arrowhead and cryptic crabs living within the protective osculae of the sponges. One of my personal favorites of this great little reef are an organism that I have so far found only here on our trip, the blue bell tunicates – do these little animals maybe remind me of lovely walks through bluebell forest in England as a small child?
Though this particular species is especially lovely, they look more like sponges or various jellyfish-like organisms, they are actually the most primitive of the chordates, in other words, much more closely related to us than they are to the sponges! The world is a funny place!
