April/May 2024
Turneffe and Lighthouse Reef atolls, Belize
In my last Bucket I shared a variety of reef fish and their busy intricate lifestyles. Most of those fish are small and as divers drift around on the reef they’ll see whatever fish they personally come across, usually not the same ones as other divers in the group are seeing. Each person is exploring individually in that wild ecosystem, though sometimes your dive buddy is near enough to show you something special.
However some creatures are so big everyone sees them.
It’s usually a very peaceful meditative time, wandering around the reef, looking in on that world. Just floating and drifting. Visitors to the reef. But on rare occasions reef creatures choose to interact with us in their world underwater. For this Bucket I’ll share a few unusual encounters from this recent trip.
Videos show the action.
(Re the color in the following videos: As a commenter in my last Bucket noted, the colors in wild reef photos/video are not as bright as you’ll see in an aquarium, with full light and close up. Water absorbs light, especially the red end of the spectrum, and in the wild there are also particulates in the water. This is what coral reefs look like in the wild below the surface.)
Playful dolphin
It’s not uncommon to see dolphins from a dive boat, or even sometimes to hear them talking underwater. But this was the first time I’ve ever been underwater with one, and I’ve been diving for almost 30 years.
On this dive, our group of six and the divemaster were hanging out at fifteen feet for our required three-minute safety stop (precautionary decompression, to allow the body to gradually expel dissolved nitrogen from the blood and tissues without forming bubbles, which can cause “the bends”, a serious condition). All of a sudden a Bottlenose dolphin zoomed into our group, streaking past us all, circling round and round, occasionally swerving up to catch a quick breath at the surface. It had absolutely no practical reason to visit us so I have to assume we were just play toys for it. In general marine creatures are not fond of air bubbles but the small streams of them we were exhaling I guess were not too offensive.
My own camera had a dead battery by the end of that dive but another diver in our group got some footage, which was an impressive feat considering how fast the dolphin was swimming by. Also, when we look upward it’s into the light, much as on land there’s glare. But the videographer did a nice job following the path of the dolphin.
I’m in the blue fins near the start of the video with Mr O in the black fins and double tank strap, nearby me.
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Cranky Loggerhead
We saw quite a few turtles on this trip, mostly Loggerheads, with a few Hawksbills and Greens. On one occasion we were at about 70-80 feet at the edge of a wall when a big Loggerhead turtle came around a corner, swimming quite purposefully into our group.
I made a 5½ minute video of this whole encounter using my footage and that of Joe, another diver. There are three clips of mine and one of his edited together. You can read the play-by-play either before or after the video.
Clip 1 (mine): Turtle approaches, passing right by me and Mr O (brushing his 2nd stage hose) and other divers. It then makes a beeline for Joe, who is filming it, using his GoPro and twin underwater lights. I stopped filming at this point because in general I prefer the nature I see rather than other divers.
Clip 2 (Joe’s): He films the turtle passing by me (in blue fins), Mr O (black fins, double tank strap) and others, and then approaching him. The turtle at first veers away but then turns and attacks his camera gear! Biting off one light! Simon the dive guide (in blue patterned wetsuit) intercedes. Joe keeps filming while Simon fends off the turtle.
Clip 3 (mine): The altercation from my vantage.
Clip 4 (mine): A few minutes later the turtle returns, heading toward Joe again. Simon blows some huge bubbles at it, and the turtle ascends to swim over us, avoiding them. But then it circles back around. When it approached yet another diver, Simon interceded again and decided to end the dive, sending up the DSMB (delayed surface marker buoy) to show the boat captain where we were. We’d been on a drift dive so the captain was following our bubbles but the DSMB tells him we’re surfacing in a few minutes. The dive was a little short but Joe had clearly burned up his air by then, breathing heavily during the encounter, and the rule is we all go up when someone is low on air.
Here’s the video:
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Some thoughts about this encounter. First, the turtle appears to blink and squint as it gets close to the lights. Maybe the turtle didn’t like strong light underwater, though I’ve seen plenty of occasions when other people were filming them with lights. My second thought is that maybe this was just a cranky turtle, it was having a bad day. Wildlife creatures are individual unique beings each with their own personalities and moods. One turtle (or fish or dolphin etc) is not interchangeable with another, and like us each has their own motivations, feelings and behavior. Who knows what goes on in another being’s mind?
I’m also filled with admiration for Simon, and all the dive guides we had during our trip and dive guides in general, for his skill and professionalism. These guys deserve much thanks (and generous tips, in this poor country).
Pushy sharks
Sharks are opportunistic carnivores and an important part of the coral reef ecosystem. They are generally standoffish, solitary, and not numerous, hence a real treat for divers to see. Like other wild animals (think birds, coyotes, snakes etc) they prefer to keep their distance from people and are not a threat to us unless we threaten them or look like food, as surfers and swimmers sometimes do (getting mistaken for seals at the surface). That’s why it was surprising to see so many sharks hanging around us on our dives both at Turneffe atoll and Lighthouse Reef atoll. It was especially surprising to see Nurse sharks so active — they are nocturnal and tend to sleep on the bottom during the daytime.
In this 1 min 15 sec video, the first few clips are of Nurse sharks, the last two are Caribbean Reef sharks. Notice how the Nurse sharks swim underneath divers, including Elroy the dive guide who was showing us a Box crab molt. Practically whacked him in the face with its tail!
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The reason all these sharks are lurking around divers is because some tourist operations have been feeding them to provide a thrill for their clients. Chumming is illegal in the marine reserves of Turneffe atoll and national monument areas of Lighthouse Reef atoll, the places with the best diving, but some ops do it anyway, in spite of rangers doing their best to prevent it. I saw a ranger boat staffed by Belize Audubon, who manage the national monuments at Lighthouse Reef atoll, stationed at the Blue Hole literally watching every tourist boat who came by for any chumming. But enough ops get away with it so now to the local sharks a boat engine is a dinner bell.
Lionfish. Native to Pacific Ocean, devastating to Caribbean reef fish
Another reason sharks loiter around divers is because well-meaning divers have been spearing invasive lionfish to feed to the sharks (and moray eels). The hope has been to teach sharks and eels that lionfish are good to eat. Problems arose when eels became aggressive, attacking divers (that happened to me in Honduras 15 years ago). I don’t know how much spearing goes on these days in Belize. Blackbird Caye Resort, where we stayed, doesn’t do it anymore (ten years ago they speared, cleaned and made a yummy ceviche from them). We did see fewer lionfish on this trip than in past years, about ten in 34 dives. One of our dive guides said he has personally seen Nurse sharks catching and swallowing lionfish on their own, so hopefully the extremely destructive effect of these Pacific fish may be lessening, at least in this area. Coral reefs need all the breaks they can get.
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Back here at home in the Pacific Northwest islands, temps are in the 60s with light breeze today.
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