Roatan, Honduras
April 2008

1. My kids, Anne and Leon, and I flew from Atlanta via Houston to the island of Roatan, got picked up by the Fantasy Island Resort bus driver, and soon found ourselves looking out onto the Caribbean from our room's ground-floor balcony, breathing in vacation air deeply and contentedly. Beach, sun, shade, and the ocean to walk in - what more can one ask for?

2. Plenty, it turns out. And scuba diving in particular. Nothing like the deep blue ocean to soothe my soul! Roatan is known for wall-diving. Jump off the dive boat on top of the reef, swim up to the edge, and then literally drop down the reef wall until your dive computer screams STOP! Hereunder, a view back toward the top.

3. Did I say something about vacation? Somehow you feel so relaxed and light and easy, why you can sleep on your elbow, as I demo in the picture below.

4. Alright, apart from some banana-gorging monkey business going on topside ...

5. ... what's there to see? This crab - the carapace is about the size of two adult hands - we found INSIDE a vase sponge.

6. But THIS crab - below - was by far the biggest any of us had ever seen. Leon found it hiding in a crevice on the wall, perhaps 80 feet down or so. The picture can't show its size for there is nothing next to it to compare it to - and it might have been dangerous to put a human near it! Kid you not, the carapace looked the size of my chest, the two front legs and pincers EACH the length of my arms from the elbow to the fingertips.

7. From the massive to the tiny. Below, our first-ever sighting of a Pipefish. Just two fingers long and slender, my camera had difficulty focusing on it.

8. Pipefish are related to seahorses. Here is a closeup. If you let your eye travel from the snout on the right to the first bulge, that's about where the pipefish's eyes are. (I guess, it's time to get a REAL close-up lens, and the camera gear that goes with it.)

9. Speaking of seahorses, our dive guide Darren (who is seen below recording dive time, depth, and remaining air pressure for each diver for each dive) ...

10. ... found a number of Yellow Seahorses for us. (They tend to be territorial, so once you find one, you often can find them again at the same spot.) Always difficult to photograph, here is a reasonably good shot. Note the tail cutely wrapped around some piece of coral; the eye on the right is sharply in focus, the snout pointing away from me. Also note how well the critter blends into the diverse colors of the coral.

11. We were very happy with the Fantasy Island Resort and their dive operation. The shop (below) was open 8am to 5pm, with a dive locker to store gear on site. Shore-diving was possible around the clock.

12. Five main boats (all covered, thus providing shade) give the impression of crowdedness, but it wasn't crowded at all. Divers are assigned to a boat for the week. You get to know each other, and each others' skill level. Each boat has 9am, 11am, and 2:30pm departure times; the dive sites are coordinated among the boats, so that you always have a site to yourself and get to see all the sites, too. Few other operators come out to the sites off Fantasy island. The number of divers per boat was small, staff plenty, friendly, and competent.

13. Here is a picture of the Little Tavito with just a handful of divers on it. Trip time out to the sites was between 7 to 20 minutes. A one-tank dive goes out at 9am. Dive. Then its back to shore, switch tanks, head back out again by 11am for another one-tank dive, back to land, lunch and nap on the hammocks, and back out by 2:30pm for dive #3. Dinner as from 6:30pm.

14. The only mishap we had was that one day our boat's battery died out at sea. So, the crew called in, and within a few minutes we were towed back in to recharge the battery. Seas were generally very calm, current was mild, under-water visibility great (50'-80') at the beginning of the week; later it dropped a bit as current flow switched and brought in particulate matter (fish food, basically).

15. But back to the water. Always a delight when we find them are Nudibranchs (shell-less snails, essentially). The ones below where remarkable for their almost black-and-white markings (so I removed the color from the photograph to highlight this).

16. Deep diving has a special attraction to us. Somehow the deeper you go, the more the world seems to slow down. Here's a QuickTime video clip of me dropping through the hundred-foot mark. (It's 13MB long, so it may take a while to load.) We eventually leveled out at 130 feet.

The rings in the photograph below are air bubbles rising from the depth to the surface. It's sort of like blowing a smoke-ring: inhale, blow out the air through your mouth in a practiced way, and the rings form. As the air rises, the rings expand and become bigger and bigger until they burst.

17. Here, Leon is moving through the water in a nice, composed, relaxed way ...

18. ... and here Leon and Anne explore the top of the reef, streams of sunlight pouring through the 30 feet or so of water.

19. We ran into a small group of Squid (there were 4 of them, although only 3 made it onto this picture). Always a delightful sight, these intelligent creatures here moved in unison - like a troupe of ballet dancers - and kept vigil, watching us as much as we watched them.

20. Virtually all Caribbean dives come with the "obligatory" eels. Hereunder, two shots of two different Spotted Eels. Take 1.

21. And Take 2. The open mouth is not threat behavior. The poor thing is just opening and closing its mouth to move water across its gills to breathe. (But this does make for impressive pictures.)

22. And one of a number of Green Moray Eels holds still for a portrait shot as well. Eels usually hide below some coral head. Consequently, most folks photograph eels from above or perhaps straight on (see 2 pics above), but here I managed to change the angle of view to create a perhaps more dramatic scene.

23. Back on land, an American fellow was earning himself a LOT of pocket money taking tourists on a spin with his 3-seater seaplane (pilot and max of 2 passengers): $90 for 15 minutes; $300 for the hour or so. Plenty of folks availed themselves of the temptation, but I just didn't feel safe risking rapid release of residual nitrogen I had absorbed under water.

24. Speaking of flying. Many dive resorts, including this one, sport their own underwater airplane wreck. So, here is a badly broken-up DC3 wreck in about say 30 or 40 feet of water. Note the big, dark, circular "patches" on the fuselage. Wonder why?

25. Answer: picture below. A bunch of fish - Sargent Majors (below) and others - each established a territory, and we observed them "scratching" themselves against the airplane hull. Apparently, they were ridding themselves of parasites or undertaking some other cleaning action, in the process scrubbing the hull free of sand and coral debris.

26. To get to the DC3 wreck, you ask the dive staff to take you and your equipment by skiff to a gazebo, located a couple of bays east of the dive shop (but still part of the Resort). So, you suit up, as Anne does in the picture below, hop in the water, and follow a rope paid out along the bottom into the bay and down to the wreck.

27. Of course, you can carry your tank any which way you want (below). Even Anne (above) already has her dive equipment and tank in the water.

28. On the way to the airplane, you can discover all kinds of critters in the muck. Always good to look out for Peacock Flounders (below). To see how a flounder moves about, click here to see a QuickTime video clip (22MB, so be patient).

29. Beyond the airplane lies the wreck of the Prince Albert, a cargo ship. Sitting upright in about 65 feet of water, it makes for an impressive sight.

30. The Prince Albert has been cut wide open to allow some divers access to to the interior. Below, a look from the inside out.

31. Anne emerges from the wreck. If you are curious to see more of the inside of the Prince Albert, click here to view a 2:12 min. QuickTime clip (110MB).

32. On the outside and topside, the Prince Albert is massively covered with coral growth. On this short video clip, which follows a good-size grouper, you can see the wreck's encrustation.

But back to deeper waters. Yellowhead Jawfish are vexingly difficult to photograph. Very cautious, they disappear into their shelters (holes in the ocean floor) long before one can get close enough for a sharply focused picture. But this time we came upon a small group that, while wary, seemed content enough to let us get close enough for a shot.

33. Seacucumbers are a staple sight (head on the right; you can guess as to the function of the other end).

34. No idea just who Julio Gomez was, but we gather he died just about here.

35. The Indigo Hamlet is always a splendid sight.

36. The reefs of Roatan were very healthy. We saw many barrel sponges easily bigger than an adult man; the sponge in the picture below is about six feet across!

37. The Sand Diver (below) tends to be skittish. This is probably the best shot I have yet taken of one, with the row of teeth showing nicely.

38. The Royal Gamma, or Fairy Basslet, is a favorite of mine. Only about 2 inches long, they are very active and very hard to focus a camera on (my best shot of one, yet). Most of the time, they orient their belly toward the coral, so that when they swim underneath a ledge, they actually seem to swim upside down.

39. A Blue-eye Fairy, also called Big-eye Fairy.

40. A Harlequin Bass, about 3 inches long. Usually, one photographs fish either side-on or at an angle alongside the body from head toward the tail fin, but I love the good fin detail that may be seen in this photograph.

41. Another unusual sight. A clutch of Red-banded Shrimp were inside this vase sponge but one of them (below) had no bands at all. I wonder if this is a juvenile? And I had never before seen the striking blue markings on the underside either. (One red-banded leg of another shrimp is visible on the right-hand side.)

42. I find Red Hinds (below) and Rock Hinds and similar critters surprisingly difficult to spot, as it were, as they lie motionless inside or alongside corals and tend to move only when approached.

43. I have to guess, but I'd say this is a Diamond Blenny. Not even 2 inches long, I saw it sitting way, way down on the craggy reef wall.

44. A Spotted Drum Juvenile. We saw a good number of those. Very mobile, flitting back and forth, it's a good thing that with today's digital cameras you can just click away for a dozen or two dozen frames, hoping that at least one will be spot-on. This fellow here is perhaps one inch in size.

45. I logged dive #400, Leon lending a hand to show the second zero.

46. Throughout the whole week, the waters were calm. That it can be otherwise, I suppose, is shown by this sailboat that took on water.

47. Back topside, a monkey and her baby have a look to see which tourist they can beg a treat from.

48. A view from Fantasy Island Resort over to Coco Beach Resort. The dark-blue area is a deep-water channel, off to the right of which are the DC3 and Prince Albert wrecks.

49. And so another week of enjoying the natural wonders of the world ends. There was one natural wonder topside as well. Actually, heaven-side. The picture below shows a ring of ice-crystals high up in the air, refracting the sun's light into a rainbow around the sun.

50. A very happy me. Being a professor is great; being a scuba diver is better! [And if you are 18 or older and would like to see some very unusual fish swimming and kissing behavior, watch this (57MB).]

[The end.]