The sea is still pretty rough, so instead of leaving Saba last night Captain Jean-François moves the boat to St. Eustatius this morning. We left at 6:30 a.m. and arrive off the island of St. Eustatius at 7:30 a.m., a 17-mile trip. St. Eustatius, also called Statia, is another old volcano. This volcano is much older and larger than the one that made Saba. The volcano blew up thousands of years ago. What is left is the old volcanic crater. We explore the reefs here, which seem larger and more developed than the reefs on Saba. At Statia we also investigate artificial reefs. Artificial reefs can be anything on the sea floor that is not natural. Shipwrecks, for example, are artificial reefs. The first wrecks we explore are two ships sunk in a battle in the eighteenth century. After being underwater for over 200 hundred years, these wooden ships can't be seen. The wood has been completely eaten away and metal parts have corroded. The only things we see are two large anchors resting on the sea floor about 55 feet underwater. We also find round rocks in the outline of a ship on the bottom. These are the ballast stones that ships used inside the hull to help with balance. Now the two ships have become a reef and home for many different underwater animals. People sometimes sink ships on purpose to form artificial reefs. Our next dive is on some ships that were sunk within the last 20 years. As we explore an old tugboat and a barge, we find that fish are already using these wrecks as places to live. Looking closely at the wrecks, we see marine plants and animals have started to grow. A new reef is forming! In a few hundred years, these wrecks will be gone, too. And a new reef will be in their place. We see eyes watching us from the sand around the wrecks. We swim closer to see who they belong to and discover a bunch of southern stingrays hiding in the sand. These stingrays are two to four feet across. The stingrays lay perfectly still, but we see a flap of skin behind their eyes opening and closing. The stingrays are breathing and this opening sucks water into the stingrays’ gills so they can breathe underwater. Stingrays are fish, but they are a special kind of fish. The closest relatives of stingrays are sharks. Both sharks and rays have no bones in their bodies! Their skeletons are made of cartilage. Grab your ears and wiggle them. Your ears are made of cartilage, just like a stingray skeleton! Karen slowly swims up to the stingray. The stingray has a very sharp and jagged stinger at the base of its long tail. Karen knows she has nothing to fear from the stinger, since the stingray will only use it to protect itself. Karen slowly reaches out her hand to touch the stingray. (Later, she says it felt smooth and a little slimy!) The stingray seems to be nervous about this big pink sea creature, so it shakes off the sand and swim away. We watch as the stingray swims through the water like a big bird flying through the air. We’re getting low on air so we return to the Caribbean Explorer where we planned our dives for the next day, wondering what other exciting things we might discover. |
The island of St. Eustatius is also called Statia. The city is at the base of the old volcanic crater. Statia’s biggest mountain, the Quill, is the cone of an extinct volcano.
We found an anchor from an old shipwreck lying on the sand.
Karen investigates the plants and animals living on the propeller of a ship sunk as an artificial reef
Watching us (watch it) is a large southern stingray half covered with sand.
As Karen slowly swims up to the stingray. It shakes off the sand and swims away. |
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December 19, 2000
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