There is plenty of occasion to spend time underwater during the calmer days as we get to know the reefs of the Jumentos again. The Bahamas have plenty of rocky outcroppings, which is why lobstering is so good here and makes for good fishing grounds. I find that areas of higher current-flow house the reef creatures interesting for photography.
A lot of shallow reefs consist of soft coral and sea fans.
Now that I understand reefs better, I’ve noticed some areas of soft corals overgrown around dying reefs, such as old skeletons of elkhorn coral.
It is rare to see hard corals doing well in the Caribbean these days, but I did find at least one healthy staghorn coral and a little life left in a vast field of elkhorn coral.
The corals themselves are bleaching this year. 2015 is the third year on record where abnormal warmer waters cause corals to expel their symbiotic algae that gives them color. Other affected years were 1998 and 2010, the latter is where we first saw the bleaching phenomenon in Venezuela although we didn’t know exactly what it was at the time.
Despite stresses on the reefs, we are finding are plenty of healthy areas where reef friends await a visit. Hogfish, Nassau grouper, barracuda, triggerfish and angelfish are omnipresent in all locations. Lionfish are lurking around as well.
Looking around unexciting rubble in indistinct holes, I find spotted moray eels with their peppermint shrimp groomers, or an octopus next to her garden.
Some of the rubble is moving as sea biscuits decorate themselves with shells.
Next door, a beautiful stareye hermit crab walks among the eel grass.
In an old, crusty conch shell sat a puffcheek blenny doing a good job at camouflage. They are a relatively large blenny at 2-3 inches and I've only seen one before in Panama. This one let me get pretty close with a slow approach.
Then I come across that one lovely head with lots of inhabitants! Cleaner shrimp can be found all around the anemones, including banded coral shrimp and spotted cleaner shrimp.
Pederson cleaner shrimp are particularly abundant and I came across a berried one filled with eggs.
Noticing some movement out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a darting juvenile highhat fish.
At first there were two juveniles, but the bigger one never made another appearance as the little one (thumb-nail size!) paced back and forth in the reef entrance as drums do.
This is another first sighting for me & must be the niece or nephew of the highhat found in Eleuthera…
