Tag Archives: Reef Fish

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FISH FRENZY AT FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE, ABACO, BAHAMAS

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FISH FRENZY AT FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE, ABACO

This is the first short video from footage taken in June at Fowl Cay, 2000 acres of protected coral reef waters. This was the start of another great day out snorkelling and island-hopping with dive-diva Kay Politano of ABOVE & BELOW ABACO Marsh Harbour.  In due course there will be more videos of fish and coral. There is very slight evidence that lessons have been learned since last year’s erratic novice snorkeler / underwater photographer efforts. Still a way to go of course. The production process has been hampered by a major format problem between my camera chip thingy and the Mac I now use. It told me the data was unrecognisable / corrupted / damaged etc, which was massively disappointing. Then I thought of  <<techno-tip>> downloading to an old PC and transferring to the Mac on a memory stick. Problem solved.

This huge swirling mass of (tens of) thousands of small fish confronted me as I round one end of the reef. I’ve never seen anything like it before, except on TV. It was an astounding, dizzy-making spectacle. When I swam into the middle of the shoal, I expected to feel tickled all over – but despite the huge numbers of fish, their speed, and their sudden and apparently random direction changes, I wasn’t conscious of feeling them at all. I assume the commotion resulted from the presence of larger fish feeding on the small ones. Or possibly from my appearance…

Music credit: Gordon Giltrap (Hofner champion) ‘Fast Approaching’

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EXPLORING CORAL REEFS: FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE, ABACO

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EXPLORING THE CORAL REEF AT FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE, ABACO

First, a warning for anyone arriving new to this blog (hi! welcome) either on purpose or accidentally: I can’t swim very well, I hadn’t snorkelled for decades until last year, and I’d never before used a camera underwater.

That said, there is probably enough in this 2:40 min video  to warrant a quick view. As with other videos from this expedition to Fowl Cay Marine Preserve (STINGRAY / BLUE TANG), best viewed small to avoid queasiness and disorientation. You can always Pause for a breather. There are some nice fish obligingly in view from time to time, and the coral is very diverse. And I’ll know what to do this year to get better results, besides trying harder with the swimming… (Music: East Wes by Eric Johnson, off Ah Via Musicom)

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AUDUBON CARIBBEAN FISHES APP £0.69 / $0.99 PROMOTION: GET IT NOW!

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AUDUBON FISHES OF THE CARIBBEAN & GULF OF MEXICO APP

iphone, ipad (172mb)    £0.69 / $0.99 offer until 31 Jan, then reverts to $9.99          rollingharbour rating *****

This is app is so good, and such an utter bargain until 31 Jan 2012, that I have awarded it the rh logo position at the top of the page. Praise indeed. Audubon guides are legendary, of course. The excellent Audubon bird app has already been reviewed and also given a rare 5*- see BIRD APP on the BOOKS ETC drop-down menu. Now here are the Caribbean Fishes, in all their glory. First, a clip shot of the download page – click on it to enlarge and avoid eye-strain

This is a very well designed app, a comprehensive search and identification tool with a myriad of features. It’s fine for an iPhone, but I guess it would really come into its own on an iPad. Whatever that is. Here’s a brief overview of the contents

SEARCH OPTIONS:  by shape (dividing size into 5 categories, from giant to tiny); family (alphabetical list of species); name (alphabetical list with useful thumbnails to assist – and cleverly, the ability to search by first name ‘Sergeant’ or last name ‘Major’), or advanced search (size / shape; habitat; regions; colour)

REFERENCE sections on biology; fish-watching tips; marine habitats; biogeography; conservation; fish taxonomy; dangerous fishes; large glossary

OTHER FEATURES include the facility for having a (free) account, enabling a ‘My Content’ facility; Journal; and GPS

Crits? Very few at first glance. The odd typo. My inital search for bonefish by size (over-optimistic, of course) led me to the larger ladyfish, but a search by name took me straight to it. The most significant confusions may arise from the present ‘single image’ ID format. For example, if you look for the uncomely  greeny-blue adult male stoplight parrotfish, you may be surprised to find the prettier black, white & red female pictured. Similarly, you won’t find juveniles, such as the small blue-with-yellow-spots yellowtail damselfish. But these are small points in an app with such a large scope. Anyway, who knows what upgrades will follow?

Overall for £0.69 / $0.99 a complete steal for New Year

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STINGRAY AT FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE ABACO

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A while ago, I posted stills from a reef-snorkelling video – my first ever underwater video attempt, and indeed my first snorkel for about 40 years CLICK===>>> REEF FISH   I started with a stingray, producing some rather… ok, very… modest results, but it was at least identifiable if you looked carefully and felt benign.

I’ve learned a few tricks since then. Here is the whole clip, still hopeless in most respects but there’s something quite cute about the creature. Mercifully it is only 37 seconds long. I reserve the right to delete this post when I realise no one has actually watched it! [LATER: Oh! I find a few hardy souls have done so. It’s a democratic vote for the ray to stay, as I see it]

[Belated credit to the fairly litigious Joe Satriani (see JS v Coldplay 2009) for borrowing the intro to one of his  songs. It’s a non-commercial tribute, Joe]

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REEF FISH & PREDATORY PARROT FISH – MORE FROM FOWL CAY ABACO

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Here are some more stills of reef fish taken from the video of our reef-snorkelling trip to Fowl Key with Abaco Above and Below. I’ll add the fish IDs gradually. The first batch are images of individual fish; the second batch is a sequence showing a queen parrot fish feeding on small fish (?gobies) – images that I’d expect David Attenborough to describe in his quiet and breathy way as “really quite extraordinary”, especially if he has seen the general standard of pics in this blog…

BLUEHEAD WRASSE (Thalassoma bifasciatum)

YELLOWTAIL DAMSELFISH (Microspathodon chrysurus)

YELLOWTAIL DAMSELFISH & Juvenile (I hadn’t noticed the baby yellowtail until I examined the video)

RAINBOW RUNNER (?)

STOPLIGHT PARROTFISH (Sparisoma viride)

STOPLIGHT PARROTFISH (Sparisoma viride)

GOBY with MUSTARD HILL CORAL

GOBY with BLACK SEA ROD CORAL (?)


BLUE TANG SURGEONFISH IN FORMATION

PREDATORY QUEEN PARROTFISH (CUE JAWS-STYLE THEME MUSIC)

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

THE ONES THAT DIDN’T*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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REEF SNORKELLING AT FOWL CAY MARINE PRESERVE, ABACO

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You will need: swimming kit; sweatshirt (it can be cold on the boat after snorkelling); stuff for Island Hopping later on, inc. camera, money etc; snorkel practice in the pool if you haven’t used one for (say) 20+ years – use the Club gear; Ian Took’s slim ‘Fishes of the Caribbean Reefs’. NB there is limited room on the boat, so you’ll need a bit of a nifty towel work to preserve modesty when changing…

Kay Politano of Abaco Above and Below in Marsh Harbour pencils in an unspecified number of places for a day’s island-hopping and reef-snorkelling while I find out how many non-fishing-that-day Delphi guests might be interested. Seven sign up, and one morning we all set off to Marsh Harbour. In Kay’s shop we try on our flippers, marvel at the scuba possibilities (a completely implausible proposition for most of us…), then we troop off to the marina and Kay’s reassuringly powerful and safe-looking catamaran. It takes 12 passengers; the other 5 are already aboard. We set off towards a threatening-looking weather front; rain later is a certainty…

Kay and rh at the controls

Passing by several Cays, we arrive at Fowl Cay Marine Preserve and drop anchor. We don our flippers, wrestle with our masks and snorkels, and in turn drop off the back of the boat (ok, stern, is it?) into warmish water, under thick grey cloud. My practice in the Delphi pool has paid off, and soon I am wheezing and gurgling my way towards the reef with my head (mostly) under water, a situation I generally avoid.

I am completely unprepared for what I find when I get to the reef. David Attenborough’s favourite production team has kindly arranged for a wide variety of bright fish, some electrically charged, to come up close and inspect me, an intruder in their world. I’ll spare you the colour-supp superlatives and graphic intensifiers – you’re probably blasé and have seen it all before – but I am totally gobsmacked, even with my mouthpiece in place. It’s all real! It’s even better than TV! And don’t get me started on the coral…

Sergeant Major

Parrot Fish

Blue Tang / Ocean Surgeonfish

Blue Chromis

Sting Ray

While I gasp and bubble my way around, I keep a small waterproof video camera running (see GADGETS review). My swimming is feeble at the best of times, but somehow it all seems to be coming together – my flailing limbs, the laboured breathing, the reef, the fish and the footage. We circle round the reef – occasional pale figures appear in my lateral vision – for about 25 minutes, then return to the boat and the struggle to remove our flippers…
 Everyone is excited about what they have seen (some saw barracudas). Who cares that it’s started drizzling… we are wet already and it’s off to Lubbers Cay for lunch; see forthcoming Island-Hopping Post. And see MARINE LIFE page for more reef fish photos taken on this expedition.

ADDITION April 2012 I notice there have been a few specific searches ‘what is the plural of Sergeant Major?’ Good question. The strict grammatically correct answer is, I suspect (as with the military rank), ‘sergeants major’ because it’s the sergeants who are plural and the ‘major’ is a qualifier to distinguish from other degrees of sergeant (were there sergeants minor, for example). It’s the same with courts martial – not ‘court martials’. BUT it sounds all wrong and pernickety. I reckon the whole fish is a sergeant major. If there are 2 or more, you’ve got some sergeant majors to play with.