On Fish, Fans, Hairballs, and the Great Indoors

The rains have not let up. Sure, there are breaks in the downpours and drizzlings from time to time, but I haven't seen a fully sunny day in about two weeks now. It certainly makes my bike commute exciting! And for those of you playing along at home, we're at 6 days until the official start of hurricane season! (Yeah, I know, that probably doesn't help.)

Well it's been another quiet week here in Arrecife, what with children gone and the weather on the fritz. Luckily we're just entering Memorial Day weekend, so things are going to start perking up a bit. I had almost four whole days off last week, but this week I'll only have two. That's just how things go around here.


This and the next couple of photos have been dredged up from the vault, as I have not gone out snorkeling or scuba diving lately. I know, I know, it's lame, but there are some very good reasons for that. Anyway, this is a photo of a couple of bristle worms on a sea fan. Bristle worms are so called because they move themselves around using bristles (called setae) sticking out from their sides, rather than having true legs. If you look at the detail on the sea fan, you can also see the tiny polyps sticking out amid the lacy framework.



These are pictures of a tarpon that came by to observe our progress as we swam back to shore. Tarpon are a somewhat common sight around here - probably the most common large predator in these waters. This one was a little on the smallish side at about 3 feet long. They typically eat fairly small fish, but they can definitely go for larger prey as well. They are able to open their jaws to a 180 degree angle, which makes the tarpon feedings so many waterfront restaurants advertise somewhat unnerving.


About an hour after I came home from work this evening, I heard a piercing shriek from downstairs. Apparently my roommate doesn't like spiders. Granted, this guy was pretty big - about 4 inches in diameter including legs - but still. While she insisted the thing was going to leap onto my face and kill me with its venom, I took a few pictures then shooed it outside with a piece of paper. My roommate later called an entomologist friend of hers (this island has all sorts of random people on it) and found out that these spiders, while impressive, are really quite harmless. I still might stick with the death-defying story at work tomorrow, though.


I've been writing this blog post on the couch in the living room downstairs, and as I was about to hit the Publish Post button, a little black dot the size of a nickel came bounding out from underneath the couch. Upon closer inspection, the dot turned out to be a baby frog (the frogs are definitely out in force after the recent rains). I took a picture of it, not realizing it had collected a few things while it was roaming around beneath the couch until I looked at the display on the back of my camera. I chased it around the room a bit, finally caught it, and proceeded to dehair the poor little guy. Looks like I need to have another conversation with my roommates about leaving the door open. And about sweeping under the couch.

On Birds, Bats, and Mud

Things have been going well here. We're entering the rainy season, so my search for a new (used) car is becoming more and more frantic. Biking in the mud and rain, charming though it may be, is rapidly losing its appeal.

As long as we're on the topic of mud, my roommates and I went to the Old Man Bay Caves in April on our own little spelunking expedition. Julia had been to the caves once before, many moons ago, and knew where to go. Which is more of an issue than you might think - the trailhead is slightly beyond the last speed limit sign before a certain dive bar on the way to Tequila Point, hidden in some overgrown bushes. Unless you know precisely where to look, you will easily miss the trail. The trail itself is actually rather poorly maintained, and there were some areas where we just hoped we were following some kind of path.

And now we get to a lesson on Arrecife geography and geology. The island is an ancient volcano that has eroded down so it is virtually flat - so flat, in fact, that the highest point on the island is the landfill, Mount Trashmore (but that's an issue for another post). Underwater, however, the volcanic mountain remains very steep. If you motor a few hundred yards out from shore, you'll see a line of buoys that mark various dive sites in about 100 feet of water. A few hundred yards beyond that, the water reaches depths of 6-7,000 feet. Between our island and Jamaica, you'll find the deepest point in the Caribbean, at 25,216 feet.

Over thousands of years, as sea levels have risen and fallen, corals have been growing in the relatively shallow seas immediately surrounding the island. These limestone deposits, once dead and dried, are called Beach Rock by most, though islanders have taken to calling it Ironshore. One way or the other, the geology of the island affects life here in many ways - graves are above ground, cellars and basements are unheard of, farming is difficult if not impossible, and plants all have shallow root systems, often clinging to bare rock in an effort to gather enough nutrients.


An epiphyte, demonstrating another strategy for dealing with ironshore. These plants grow on top of other plants, either in a parasitic relationship, stealing nutrients right out of their hosts, or in a more passive relationship, riding their hosts as they grow up toward the sunlight.


Leaves of the Maidenplum, a very dangerous plant to be around. If you touch it, you get blisters within the hour that make poison oak look like a mosquito bite.


Red Birch, known locally as the Tourist Tree for its red, peeling skin.



Arrecife Parrots, three of which followed us for much of our trek, offering their very loud opinions on virtually everything we did.


Finally we reached the caves themselves, the largest of which necessitated the use of this rope to lower ourselves into the chasm below.


A couple of bats, the island's only native mammals, and a requisite sighting for any proper spelunking trip.

The largest cave had a network of tunnels running a considerable distance underground. Armed with our trusty flashlights, we followed the thin fishing line as far back as we could go. We spent most of our time pulling ourselves around on our stomachs, crawling army-style. In some areas the clearance was so tight that we had to suck in, "think skinny thoughts", and squeeze between the stalactites and stalagmites blocking our way.


It had rained earlier in the week, so there were quite a few large pools of water. The passages themselves were quite muddy, which made the crawling easier but also meant that we came out of the caves covered head to toe in reddish orange mud.




There were all kinds of beautiful cave formations everywhere - elaborate structures that have been growing and building for thousands of years. I really do want to go back and take more pictures sometime. Very few people on the island know about the caves, and even fewer actually visit them, so we felt like true explorers traveling through uncharted territory. Aside from the fishing line, that is.

On Party Animals

As part of the ongoing effort to prove that I do indeed have a social life on this island, I present to you: pictures taken at last night's Tragically Hip concert. The Tragically Hip is a Canadian band, described to me by my roommate as the "Canadian Rolling Stones". As such, the Canadians were out in force last night; maple leaves and funny accents were everywhere (and for those of us not actually from Canada, a lot of jokes about the Great White North). The music was pretty good too, and it gave me an opportunity to work on my rock concert photography (from a bit of a distance, sadly, as I have an inexplicable fear of large numbers of overexcited Canadians).




All in all, a pretty good night.

And now back to our regularly scheduled educational material.


As a follow-up to last week's post, this is a closeup of brain coral polyps at night. During the day, brain coral looks like a bunch of squiggles - much like a human brain (inviting all sorts of fun, squishy and/or mad scientist sound effects when we tell kids about them at work). And actually, the analogy is closer than one might guess. The human brain has ridges in order to increase surface area, providing more space for the neurons to form synapses (connections), leading to more complex thought. In much the same way, brain coral forms these ridges to increase surface area so that it might expose more of its symbiotic algae to the sun. More sun means more photosynthesis from the algae, which means more food for the coral. Still, that's all daytime activity. At night, just as with the corals I showed last week, the polyps unfurl their tentacles and catch plankton for the remainder of the nutrients they need. Brain corals just look a little different.


Corals and I aren't the only party animals that come out at night. This picture is of a sponge with two brittle stars crawling across its surface. Brittle stars are so named for their habit of dropping arms when they panic, much like a lizard losing its tail. Also like overanxious lizards, the stars can regenerate any limbs they have lost. One of the coolest things to see is a brittle star in action; unlike most sea stars, brittle stars can move rather quickly. They are very responsive to changes in light (so you can bet this one made a break for it as soon as the camera flash went off), and can actually push their central body disc off the ground, then use their arms in a sort of freewheeling motion (think swimmer doing freestyle/crawl) to sprint to the nearest dark crevice - Looney Tunes does Echinodermata.