After finishing breakfast, we gathered our gear and made our way to the boat anxious for our 3 dives of the day. At our first dive site, Hepps Pipeline, named from the shape of the walls, had an abundant amount of fish and coral. One fish that caught my eye was the smooth trunkfish, it is identified by its large eyes, white spots and white hexagonal pattern on the sides of the fish. The smooth trunkfish is an extremely toxic fish, able to excrete toxins into the surrounding water when feeling threatened. They feed on crustaceans, worms and sponges, giving reason for them to be swimming within the coral looking for food sources. Another interesting fish we saw at this reef was the spot fin butterfly fish, it can be identified by its dark spot on the back fin, stripe on the head and the yellow sections on both ends of the body. The fish can grow to a size of up to 8 inches, and their diet consists of tube worms and gorgonians. The fish uses there pectoral fins to move swiftly through the coral and be able to stop quickly trying in order to get to the worms before they retract into the coral and sandy floors. After ascending to the surface and taking our gear off we headed to the next dive site.
On the second dive at Spanish Bay Reef we saw many different varieties of fish. One fish that caught my attention when I was swimming over the top of a deep wall was a trumpetfish. They can be identified by their long slender red and brown striped body. An interesting fact about the trumpetfish is that they are able to change colors to blend into their surroundings in order to swiftly attack their prey by opening their mouth to the diameter of their body. They feed on smaller fish including french grunt, long spine squirrelfish and blue-headed wrasse. When sitting in my safety stop under the boat I looked in the distance and saw a barracuda. They can be recognized by their long silver body, sharp threatening teeth and spots along their body. The can grow in length of over 6 feet, are able to swim at speeds of up to 35 mph and have a carnivorous diet. We then went to the surface boarded the boat and returned for lunch.
Shortly after finishing lunch, we got back on the boat to start the 45 minute boat ride to Stingray City. Stingray City was started when commercial fishing boats would dump the guts and carcasses of the fish they caught near the reef on the way into the docks causing many stingrays to start coming their for an easy source of food. Over the years it has become a tourist attraction where the stingrays come and feed on the squid each boat has. At Stingray City we sat on the sandy floor bottom on our knees while Atlantic stingrays swam around us allow us to touch them. We are able to identify them by the black body, and interesting fact was that the females were larger in size than the male. I look forward to another reef dive, a dive at the sunken USS Kittiwake and finally the beach clean up tomorrow.
