Wall reefs surround the island of Roatan. The depths offshore drop off to over a mile to circulate cool, clear water in with the tides and over the healthy coral. These reefs are protected by a marine park and are considered some of the best dive sites in the Caribbean.
The visibility was good enough to check-out a shipwreck lying in 60' of water in a channel.
Swimming through a cut to the outer wall you can snorkel over a 10' ledge to overlook the 60' drop-off.
The sun shown brightly on the colorful coral making for brilliant landscape vistas.
Mark and I were free-diving and encountered scuba divers on the wall below us.
Some were taking lessons and others taking pictures... so of course, we took pictures of each other to add some perspective to the views.
I saw my first tarpon swim by in the distance, bigger than expected, and protected lobsters walking about. Mark pointed out a stone crab to me and it looked like he had quite a headache!
Besides the azure water, I don't know which was bluer:
...the frequently sighted indigo hamlets shining in the sunlight?
...the irridescent blue highlights of the scrawled filefish?
... or the stripes on the neon gobies who swam out to try to clean my glove when I took their picture?!
An interesting new fish (for me) had bright red spots on its face and a striped body with a black band on its tail. It was shy and I figured it was a juvenile fish of some sort. I wish I'd gotten a better picture before he shot away, since it turned out to be a redspotted hawkfish, the only of this species in the Atlantic. It has feathery "tassles" on its dorsal fins, which didn't get captured in the picture.
And what dive would be complete without some blenny friends?!
We were only able to visit the outer reefs a few times, during any rare lull in the high winds that whipped Reach at anchor for the entire month. On one solo snorkel, Michele spotted a huge barracuda on the park feeding reef who looked hungry enough for her to leave him to his territory and find another spot, at which point a large cargo ship started navigating right towards her and the dinghy. Not the sort of up-close view you want while floating about in a narrow cut!
