Hey RoatanMan, is there any secret to "catching" all the life Roatan has to offer? I actually bought a magnifying glass after reading your posts. What's the best way to see all the life?
Make sure that magnifier is actually
glass, have it handy and always carry a small flashlight, even during the day. Skip the camera for the first couple of hundred dives
Amazing what you can't see with that box blocking your sight.
The best advice is to
go slowly. The DM that taught me this would give that advice in halting English and it sounded like "Go Slow, Seymour", which I later figured out he wasn't calling me Seymour, after all.
Go slow, See More was his advice.
Most divers feel they have to go deep and move fast to get the most out of their dives, and this is certainly NOT the case on Roatan's South side.
Slow and shallow is the key- that's where all of the life is in this protected and sheltered environment. This is where the little stuff lives.
Shore diving the Prince Albert Wreck is a great way to perfect these skills. You can do this from either FIBR or CCV. Just spend your entire tank at 35' or less, move slowly and stop for 3 to 3 minutes (hard I know) and
study that square meter of reef in front of you.
Try not to get bored and move-on before that Octopus gets comfortable enough to reveal itself by moving.
Most divers won't play the game, but remaining motionless not only saves air, but it also allows your eyes to see details that you had missed. It also allows critters to ignore you- they usually react to movement, not recognizing a motionless diver.
In the example of Roatan again, just hang near the rear of the wreck. Get neutral and motionless when no one else is around thrashing about. You'll likely see Spotted Eagle Rays drift in for a snack. If there's a lot of bubbles and almost any movement, they'll stay in the blue. Relax, get neutral and adjust your vision.
Adjust your vision? This entails the understanding that when we are underwater, we often only see objects at a certain distance. My famous example is when I missed a 45' Whale Shark because I was staring at it's closer nearby 8' long baby. Never saw the momma. Your eyes tend to lock in at one distance and that's it.
For years, those larval Lobster were swimming
between my faceplate and what I was gawking at. I couldn't see them because I wasn't looking at them. Then, my eyes relaxed and focused a little closer and I began to see.
At the end of every night dive, stick your flashlight pointing straight up in the sand, then get comfortable and study the column of light and what it attracts.
Finding the small stuff is really a matter of looking in the peculiar niche environments they inhabit. Likely you'll need a flashlight- they use contrasting light and shadows as a camouflage. Learn that Juvenile Spotted Drums always patrol back and forth frantically in small overhangs, you'll find them every time. Learn the type of exposed coral faces that Arrow Blennies prefer, you'll have them by the dozens. The exotic Sailfin Blennies prefer tiny holes in rocks, usually in 3' of water when most divers are standing up in "the sand". Crawl out of the water on your belly and get up to exit when you "
run out of water".
Here's a task that I give the eager: I tell them I need abandoned Sea Urchin shells that are no bigger than a Quarter. I give them a plastic cup and send them on their way. Upon return, they quickly realize that
the point of the exercise is not to collect shells- we throw them back. They are instead quickly amazed at
what they began to see as their eyes became trained to look for little, almost invisibly colored objects.
(Don't tell them anything more than you want to measure the shells- make up some cockamammy story)
Once you get good at this, enlist new recruits. Point out those little Shrimps that live on the Wire Coral, the Pedersen Cleaner Shrimp that can be found on any Corkscrew Anemone, the peculiar Arrow Blennies, the predictable Secretary Blennies. Use a flashlight to show them, buy a laser pointer when you learn to find really small stuff.
That list above will amaze most anyone, as they have been swimming past these obvious things like Wire Coral, Corkscrew Anemone and
specialized niche environments (places these critters like to live) without ever seeing them. You will find that
they won't ever go past a Wire Coral again without checking it for the specific Shrimp that inhabit it.
It's a whole macro world out there, a lot more than 12" Lobsters and 2' Parrot Fish.
