There are few words to describe a dive on a dark, moonless night to Purple Rain besides AWESOME, SUPER, AMAZING, GREAT, FANTASTIC, etc, etc, etc.
No other night dive beats this… yet. Plans for night dive on Hema 1 are in the works. Or a night dive on the deep 1000ft drop wall of Reindeer Shoal perhaps?!
[sorry no photos… shutter button on the housing was stuck - truly disappointing, but I guess you’ll just have to come and see for yourself!]
How do large gastropods right themselves? Click play to find out!
Mr. Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) visited Grenada last week… discovering the sights and scenes of the island. He also visited the beach where is his ladies come up to nest - Levera.
By far the most exciting part of his day was thanking the kids from River Salee for helping clean one of the beaches (Bathway), making him safer from dangerous plastics which he sometimes mistakes for his favourite food - jellyfish. He also met kids from Rose Hill and they had a blast seeing him in their community.
He took photos with the kind people at Fisheries, girls from AHS in St.George’s where he also did a TV interview for the local media! Before River Sallee and Levera Mr. Leatherback saw Grand Etang and hung out at a local Grenadian rum shop, meeting the local folks.
Mr. Leatherback has his own homepage and is the brainchild of the wonderful folks at Conservation International. They’re also involved in putting together the State of the Worlds Sea Turtles (SWOT) reports which make for some fascinating, fun reading!
2003 - 2008
Nothing lasts forever! These great hiking boots expired on a night survey at Levera this year. A few of the places they have been to.
Man sitting in front of a rum shop in Rose Hill junction, Grenada
My friend Yael is in Nicaragua working with Hovercare Nicaragua and has been posting some neat stuff on her blog page. Learn about health and water issues as well the culture… see videos of bubbling volcanic muds!
I head out to meet Yael in a couple weeks and look forward to exploring that part of the world… certainly looks like an exciting place to be at!
Jaws or 400 million years of beautiful evolution? Sharks are often ortrayed as menacing creatures, these wonderful beasties are vulnerable in many places…
Lauren Smith brings you a refreshing shark website that is all about… well sharks! Visit The Sharkiologist webpage to learn more!
Ever walk a beach late at night and spot a tiny but bright blue iridescent glow that fades and brighten real slowly (near the water line on moist sand)?
If you have and you’ve picked it up, you see nothing more than a bright blue spot. Turn on a light and it really looks like a little blurry whitish blob! What could it be, so tiny, yet so bright?!
Under a microscope the mysterious little blue spot looks like something from a sci-fi horror film, about to spawn out of an egg-case. It looks like a crustacean in a molluscan bubble shell, which is the best way I can describe it.
What the little deep blue spot from the deep blue is, is a bioluminescent marine ostracod! Here are some neat images of ostracods from Australian waters from Museum Victoria.
Below is an image of a biolouminesce marine ostracod from Levera beach, Grenada, West Indies (18-April-2008).
What a life… tiny little barnacle larvae floating around the ocean finding their way onto the body of the largest species of sea turtle in a vast, open ocean! Going with the current is what the larvae of Platylepas coriacea do once they’re stuck onto the leatherback (Dermochelys coriaca).
I found eight of these barnacles earlier this month at Levera beach, Grenada and John Zardus at the Citadel in South Carolina, USA was kind enough to identify the exact species.Some of the barnacles decided to spawn in the sampling bottle of seawater that I placed them overnight to their trip to a nice little comfy aquarium in the lab.
How do these tiny larvae of these leatherback-specific barnacles find their host in such a vast open ocean? What cues do they use to find their host surface and make their choice to settle? How is the leatherback’s conservations status going to affect the fate of these little creatures?
Platylepas coriacea under a dissecting microscope (adult, alive)
Platylepas coriacea early nauplii larvae at about 106 hours post-spawning (x100 magnification)
While the debate on the fate of Mt.Hartman and Hog Island see so recent, they seem faded. There is some sense of quiet resignation that nothing anyone does will prevent the advancement of development of the area. Large concentration of dry forest habitat (oh… and the Grenada Dove), fringe Mangroves, seagrass beds (and surrounding reefs) will fell the pinch of the heavy construction equipment. The feeling of inevitability stems from what seems an earnest (but not the first) attempt to get the project under way. What will happen to Hog Island (and the area) in the coming months? How will the final project look like? How will the environment fare? Will this development strategy be sustainable, both economically and environmentally - will the trade-off be balanced, will it make sense?
Those questions remain, and perhaps only time will be able to adequately answer those questions. The sleepy Sundays at Roger’s Bar at Hog Island where locals, tourists and sailors mingled to the sound of music and smell of BBQ may well be numbered.
Where will the Dove go? Where will the people go? Oh, Hog Island as it is today will be sorely missed.
Roger’s Bar at Hog Island (20 April 2008)
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