Before the Caribbean Explorerreturns to St. Maarten, we’ll spend one more day at Saba. Today we will dive at a special place called Diamond Rock. Diamond Rock is shaped like a gigantic up-side-down ice cream cone! It sticks up from the sea floor, 80 feet underwater, and juts out of the water about 30 feet. Diamond Rock is white and shiny, like a diamond, because of all the guano – bird droppings – on it! We dive into the water and notice a lot of surge. (Surge is water moving back and forth caused by the waves hitting Diamond Rock.) As we swim deeper and deeper, away from the surface, the surge gets less and less. We see things waving back and forth on the sides of Diamond Rock. These are soft corals. Soft corals include sea fans and sea plumes. These corals are soft and flexible, which allows them to be pushed back and forth with the surge and water currents. Like hard corals, soft corals eat plankton that floats by. Unlike hard corals, soft corals do not feed only at night. They eat both day and night. We swim down to the sea floor and see something else waving around. It’s a sea anemone ("ah-nem-oh-nee"). Sea anemones are large cousins of coral polyps. Sea anemones are soft and don’t create a hard outside skeleton to live in. Like coral polyps, sea anemones have stingers on their tentacles to catch small fish that swim too close. We touch the sea anemone tentacles with our fingers and they feel sticky. This sticky feeling is actually the stingers stinging our skin. Fortunately, the skin on our hands is too thick for them to sting through, so we don’t feel the sting. As we swim around the base of Diamond Rock, Karen makes an up-and-down flapping motion with her hands. She’s found a sea turtle! I follow her around the corner of a rock and lying on the bottom is a hawksbill sea turtle. Karen slowly swims up to the turtle. She reaches out her hand and pets the turtle’s shell, called the carapace ("care-ah-pace"). The turtle just lies there watching us. We remain still and watch it, too. After a while, the turtle slowly swims up to some sea sponge growing on Diamond Rock, and bites a chunk out of it. Hawksbill sea turtles are one of the few animals that eat these bad tasting sea sponges. After another bite, the turtle slowly swims up to the surface to take a breath. The turtle takes a big breath of air and then slowly swims on. Over our shoulders we notice something is watching us. We turn around and right behind us we see a big three-foot-long barracuda, with big, sharp teeth! We’re not scared, though. We know barracudas are curious like cats and just want to see what we're doing. Barracudas often follow divers around, but they will not bite. Barracuda eat fish, not people! This is our last dive on the Caribbean Explorer. Now we’ll return St. Maarten and start part two of our expedition. We’ll be studying the history, nature and culture of the Lesser Antilles Caribbean islands. Stay tuned! © 2001, The Ocean Adventure. All rights reserved. |
The Caribbean Explorer is anchored next to Diamond Rock at Saba. Diamond Rock looks kind of white because it is covered with bird droppings!
Looking up Diamond Rock toward the surface, we see a three-foot-long growth of soft coral called a sea plume. The soft coral sways back and forth with the water currents. The bumps and colors on the rock are tube sponges.
A sea anemone, as big around as a tea saucer, reaches its stinging tentacles out into the water to catch small animals that come too close. Around the sea anemone are sponges and hard and soft corals.
Karen pets the back of a hawksbill sea turtle.
We see this barracuda watching us. Barracuda look mean but they are just curious ’ like cats! |
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December 23, 2000
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