Glass Bottom Boat

Hi, all. Another lazy day, a nice luxury. This afternoon we took a glass bottom boat out to the reef. We thought about going snorkeling on the reef with a group, but there were two problems: 1) Lee gets seasick easily and 2) I discovered that without eyeglasses, I don't see as well as I used to!! And I can't use eyeglasses with a snorkeling mask. I mean, I can see shapes and colors, but no details. ~sigh~ So we decided to try the glass bottom boat. The boat is a catamaran, with the glass windows at the bottom of each of the two platoons. The coral reef is a few miles off shore, on the edge of the continental shelf. Photographs of the ocean through glass bottom boat windows are never any good, but I took a few to prompt talking points. So here goes:

In the bottom right corner of this photo is a tarpon.  I have seen them a few times now, and they are always very large.  There were two of them following the boat - one was about 4 feet long, and the other was 6 feet long, really large fish!  Apparently these are good game fish because they are big and able to fight hard and long, with spectacular leaps above the water.  But in Florida, tarpon must be release after caught.

 

Do you see the fish in the center of this photo?  It is black and white checkered, and is a type of grouper.  We saw three types of groupers on the reef, including a goliath grouper.  We were told that groupers have become rare because they have been so over-fished, and that we were very lucky to see not just one, but three different species.

This is the edge of a brain coral, that was four or five feet across.  We were told that brain coral takes about 600 years to reach this size, so it is quite old.  Unfortunately, a boat dropped an anchor on it a few years back, and badly damaged it - the top is missing.  So today, anchors are not allowed on the reef.  Moorings have been installed, and boats must tie to an existing mooring in order to stay in one spot.

In this photo are several different types of coral.  When my family lived on Saipan and Tinian many, many years ago, my dad took my sister and I snorkeling several times.  The reefs in the Marianas were magical, filled with an array of bright colors that were stunningly beautiful.  This isn't quite the same (I am spoiled), but is an important ecosystem nonetheless, that supports many different fish and other species.  It is an important link in the ocean and world food chains.

There are at least two fish visible in this photograph.  The black one with a yellow tail (bottom right) is a rock beauty, if I remember correctly, and the small black and white striped fish above it is a "sergeant major".  We also saw snappers, parrot fish, angelfish, damsel fish, wrasses, barracuda, permits (large silver-black fish with white lips), jacks, and more.

It amazed me how shallow it was 6 miles out from the shore, only 10 to 30 feet deep.  It was shallow from the shore to the reef, with a very gradual slope, but this is the nature of the continental shelf.

Here's returning to the dock, passing by the first of the several mangrove islands: