Underwater in Freeport, Bahamas
Note: all pictures are hot-linked to a bigger version. Just click on the picture to see more detail…
I recently purchased an underwater case for my camera.
My trip (for business) to Freeport (Grand Bahama Island) seemed the perfect opportunity to try it out.
When I arrived on Wednesday, it was raining. It rained all afternoon. And all night. And all next morning. Heavily at times. Streets flooded kinda rain.
So, after spending the day with the customer on Thursday, the sun was shining and I was itching to see if I could get some cool pictures. I hurried out to the beach (not much time before sunset). The case was great, but the water was so murky that I couldn’t see my feet much less any fish. Fooey.
On Friday I didn’t have an opportunity to hit the beach.
Last chance - Saturday morning (my flight wasn’t until 2 p.m.). I had tentatively scheduled a breakfast meeting with a customer, but it fell through, so out to the waves…
Just to prove that it was me:
If you look closely, you’ll see some water in my mask. I just can’t keep the dang thing from fogging up (and I’ve used several of the different products). As such, I just let in a small amount of water and, every now and again, slosh it across the glass. I would rather not, though…
A quick shot of the hotel from the water…
Upon hitting the water, I saw what appeared to be a lionfish. (I wasn’t aware that they were in the Caribbean…) I was pretty excited as I hadn’t seen them on previous snorkel trips at the Bahamas (or anywhere else in the Caribbean - snorkeling or SCUBA diving).
By the end of the hour or two I was in the water, I saw four more (two pairs). The next picture isn’t very clear, but I wanted to include it because of the background - the bell housing from a car! They lionfish seemed to like it…
Near the beach, there’s not much to see upon first glance. Just a bunch of sand with huge masses of dead seagrass drifting back and forth in the currents…
But, careful observation rewards one with numerous sightings of a large variety of fish doing their best to blend in with the sand. In the sandy shallows, this type of camouflage helps avoid being eaten by hungry birds…
These seem to be palometa (AKA cobbler)…
I’m not sure why these (and the previous fish) have black stripes. Makes them a bit easier to spot…
Possibly amberjacks or perhaps bar jacks…
I couldn’t decide which shot of the following fish I liked best, so here are all three…
(I believe that they are yellow fin mojarra.)
A couple of the sand dwellers have black spots near their tails. I guess that could make it seem like a bigger fish (two eyes, spread that far). Dunno…
I think this might be a baby lane snapper…
Try as I might, I couldn’t identify these fish. Oh well…
I can’t see the pattern well enough to identify this guy. Probably a jack…
Of course, some of the fish use sand coloration to hide from their prey, like this small stingray…
A yellow stingray, maybe?
I’m not sure what this is. It has a foot (or some type of anchor) buried in the sand. Like a tiny, gelatinous balloon…
Along the beach, there are several spots with a lot of large rocks piled along the water. I assume this is to keep the sand from "migrating" down the beach. Some very small fish could be found among the rocks, like this tiny guy (about a half inch in length). (I think it’s a baby sergeant major.)
And some of his buddies. The suspended sand gives a good indication how small these guys are…
Possibly a juvenile schoolmaster (and another picture showing the stripe through the eye)…
A young blue-stripped grunt (or maybe a French grunt but I don’t think so).
Parrotfish are more common out in the coral reefs, but this little (less than 6 inches) spotlight parrotfish doesn’t seem to know that…
Once I went out into the (relatively) deeper water (10 to 20 feet), I found that the sediment was still a bit too stirred up from the storm. For clear pictures, I had to free dive down to snap a shot. I didn’t have my fins, so I could only get one picture (maybe two) with each dive. (I was taking pictures of the lionfish in the bell housing when my right calf cramped up so much that I could barely swim. I wasn’t able to free dive for another ten minutes or so. Even though I put that picture at the start of the post, I was pretty much done by that point anyway. I’ve got to find my fins…)
I would look at the picture before moving on (or trying again), but the little display isn’t always good enough to let me know if the picture is good enough so I had to scrap a lot of pictures. Oh well, I have 8 GB of memory in the camera, so I can take as many pictures as the battery will allow…
Some invertebrates, starting with a couple of starfish…
…and a short-spined sea urchin…
..and a couple of sea anemones…
I think this may be a juvenile blue tang…
This plant (or algae) is on the cover of a book for identifying marine plants, but I can’t find anything online to tell me what it is. Sigh…
Even if I don’t know what it is, I still think it really looks nice…
Edit: Okay, despite searching for hours for various identifications for this blog post, I just couldn’t give up on this "plant". (Especially since this is my favorite picture of this series.) So, I turned on my mad Google skillz…
I believe that this is one of the Acetabularia family (species?). It is known as the "mermaid’s wineglass" and the "stem" and "bowl" of each "wineglass" are a single cell. Whoa…
This is species of green algae called penicillus, or Neptune’s shaving brush. I just thought it looked cool…
I just can’t seem to identify these things. They look like tiny glass globes. They’re fairly common…
This concrete "anchor" seems to be popular with the smaller fish…
A group of four or five bar jacks (?) followed me for a while. I guess they thought I was a barracuda or a shark - hoping for some of my "table scraps"…
This picture does a good job of demonstrating how much sediment was suspended. Unlike the previous pictures, I couldn’t just swim closer to take the picture. These guys were about ten feet away.
A couple soft corals…
I think this may be a banded butterfly fish…
Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper post on my blog without some flower pictures. This is a hedge-type plant around the pool at the hotel. I believe that it is a beach naupaka. The first picture shows the flower (wee bitty things) and the second picture shows the fruit.
This post literally took hours (six or seven) to write. I was all OCD about identifying the fish. Even with the wonders of the internet, it took a while…
And the thing is, of the two dozen or so people that will actually look at this, I’d be willing to bet that not one clicks on a single link…
Sigh…
Cool pictures. I think the camera case did a really good job even with the murky water. I hope you cleaned it well after the saltwater. You know that it will ruin it. I did click on at least one!
Comment by Kelleigh — 8 October 07 @ 8:43 am
Brilliant photos! I didn’t realize that new underwater gizmo would work so well.
Comment by Donna — 8 October 07 @ 10:30 pm
Hi doug! Terrific pictures; what kind of camera are you using?
Comment by Pie — 24 January 08 @ 9:41 pm