Well-Trained Eyes - St. Vincent

Waterlogged Date: 8/15/98

I don't like to publish trip reports on SeaHorse Tales, but this St. Vincent trip, my umpteenth dive trip here since 1981, is exceptional. There are too many stories. There is no way I can even cover the highlights of this trip in a short tale so this one sounds like a list of Who's Who for marine creatures. Roger Steene, noted Australian author and photographer, was inspired by Woody Mayhew to make this July/August trip. We came with 5 sets of keen critter spotting eyes. The perfect group for thoroughly searching the habitats here consisted of adding the eyes of Woody, Rich Garrett, Tony Matheis and myself to those of Roger Steene. We turned up something interesting everywhere we looked. I dived a new site, Mystery Reef, in the far north of St. Vincent. This site is accessible only in the doldrums of summer and never guaranteed to be diveable due to the frequent presence of strong currents and the distance from the regular dive sites. The corals there were among the prettiest I've seen anywhere. Read roger's comments at the end of this Tale. While others might scoff at diving in 5-10 feet of sand in front of the local French restaurant, this group hopped in and promptly found two Striated Frogfish (also called Splitlure), one brown lined and one solid black, dangling their boomerang shaped pink lures to reel us in for portrait making. Within seconds we turned up a good sized short-nosed batfish (a misnomer for sure with its unicorn horn) which cooperated for the most part, but had a habit of swimming underneath anyone trying to photograph it. Roger is keen on poking about in the sand as were the rest of us. We are eager to see his photos of a Spotted Spoon-nosed Eel as it swallowed a whole Blackbar Soldierfish. These rare eels hide buried in the sand with only their heads poking during daylight hours. Rich was overjoyed to finally get the opportunity to photograph a male Yellowhead Jawfish incubating eggs in its mouth. The jawfish were beautiful with bright yellow heads, blue eyes and a glowing blue edge to their dorsal and tailfins. Rich also spent a great deal of time with Sailfin Blennies. All kinds of shrimps were common this trip. Pistol (Red Snapping) shrimp were everywhere and I found a cooperative one in a clump of sponges in the sand near Anchor Reef. With a little coaxing, it came out to attack and we were all able to get some clear shots of the shrimp outside its Corkscrew Anemone home. Golden Coral Shrimp, Scarlet-Striped Cleaning Shrimp, Peppermint Shrimp and the more common Spotted Cleaner, Pederson, Red-Banded, Squat Anemone, and Red Night Shrimps were everywhere, if you know where to look. We did! My prize find was a pair of Bumblebee Shrimp living on a sea cucumber. Of course we found the usual contingent of seahorses and Longlure Froggies. After about 3 days we all had enough photos of them and generally refused to go look at them again. We changed the signal for a seahorse and frogfish to a ho-hum, pat an open mouth with a hand, gesture and then laughed on the boat about doing so when these critters are generally so difficult to find! The dive guide kept finding interesting mollusks to show us. We found a fair number of nudibranchs, Rough Fileclams, Fingerprint Snails, sea slugs, octopus and squid. The Two-Spot and tiny Brownstripe octopus were found during the day. We didn't see a single White-Spotted which were so common last November. Schooling squid were common. If we held still for a few minutes, they would surround us and come so close they were almost touching us. My prize photo was a pair of tufted nudibranchs that had just laid an egg spiral. Pinnacle had its usual contingent of frogfish, but we turned up a Red-lipped Batfish and a Magnificent Sea Urchin. Upon close inspection, I found two tiny purple shrimp with a bold white stripe living on that urchin. Magnificent Urchins are normally found at depths deeper that sport divers would reach, but occasionally are seen shallow here. As usual, we found a large variety of crustaceans other than the shrimp. The beautiful Red-Banded Lobster was probably the most interesting. They live fairly deep in the reef wall and can often be found here if you have a week or more to dive. Spanish Lobster, Spotted Spiny Lobster, a variety of hermit crabs and all kinds of sponge and decorator crabs are found on every night dive. This tale is not as cute as some of the others but then, neither were we! Well-worn gear, well-used camera housings and eyes that perhaps could use a little help from a prescription mask betrayed the real reason for the success of this trip. Well-trained eyes. A quick addition totals more than 140 years of diving experience in this group. That is perhaps an underestimate! Roger's Comments: "St. Vincent was a complete surprise to me! I had come from Australia to dive Bonaire and was urged by my friend Woody Mayhew to join him! My first dive was at night - instantly I recognized it would be different to my previous 3 trips to the Caribbean!! The background colours that night were equal to anything I had found in the Indo-Pacific. Lots and lots of critters to photograph including my favorites, the crustaceans. Day dives were similar with no shortage of macro subjects. I had not encountered this in the Caribbean!!! Coming directly from Bonaire (which I liked) the comparison was one-sided! Over 2 weeks diving St. Vincent, I shot more good subjects that I had dared to hope! Beautiful sponge gardens deeper at most sites, unusual animals like the 2 species of bat fish and gorgeous red lobster that on the cover of Humann's book and a real gem, a 10 foot long eunicid polychaete worm that is almost as thick as a ladies wrist and resembles a huge underwater centipede!! It must rate also as one of the outstanding place for frog fish and seahorses. I love this place! Why are divers steaming to the West Pacific to find exotic animals? St. Vincent has some bloody beauties and wonderful topside scenery as well!" Roger Steene See the SVG tourist office for information on the diving in St. Vincent or visit www.scubaSVG.com, the official site for SCUBA in SVG for more photos, travel, dive and island information. Photo tours to the island are offered semi-annually. Contact Tours@SeaHorseTales.com for details. Thanks to BWC Imaging Labs in Miami for promptly processing and returning film from this trip to St. Vincent so this Tale could be published. Film Fed Exed out on Tuesday noon was received back in St. Vincent Thursday afternoon. Story by Deb Fugitt.

Send us an email.