Night Diving! Caribbean Island: St. Lucia City: Soufriere March 10, 2000 by Wayne and Karen Brown

At night we use our dive light to see what fish do when they do to sleep. We find parrotfish sleeping in little sleeping bags that they have made out of their own mucus! Parrotfish sleep in transparent mucus cocoons, which look like clear plastic bags, to protect themselves from moray eels. At night moray eels slither around the reef looking for sleeping fish to grab for dinner. Moray eels can't see in the dark, but they have an excellent sense of smell. Moray eels sniff around the reef like a dog. When they smell a fish they grab it.

As we swim over the underwater drop-off and look down the wall that drops into the deep, Karen finds a strange creature on top of a basket sponge. It's a giant basketstar, about two feet across! Basketstars have five arms that look like branches of a tree. They are related to sea stars and crinoids (see Journal 3/14). Basketstars only come out at night. During the day they curl-up and hide in sponges or under corals. At night basketstars climb up on top of corals or sponges and extend their long branching tentacles, which they use like baseball glove. They catch zooplankton floating by in the ocean currents.

As I take a picture of Karen with the basketstar it slowly starts to move. It is curling-up! The basketstar is so sensitive to light that even the light from our diving lights is enough to make it curl-up. We don't want to stop it from feeding so we turn our lights away and leave the basketstar to catch its dinner.

As we continue our swim along the underwater wall, Karen quickly waves her light back and forth. That is the signal that she has found something. I swim over and see she has found a big spider crab! Karen has her face right up to the spider crab and the crab is just ignoring her! We see this big crab is having its dinner. It is slowly picking algae (al-GEE)(underwater plants) off the reef and eating it, using its long claws like chopsticks. During the day these crabs hide under corals and in holes in the reef. At night they slowly crawl across the reef to eat the algae growing there.

As I move closer to take a picture of Karen and the crab, I suddenly jerk my right arm up! Ouch! It feels like needles poked into my elbow! I realize I have accidentally put my arm down on a long-spined black sea urchin, and its spines poked through my wet suit! The sea urchins that we found yesterday hiding in the reef are now out and crawling on the reef, eating algae. They use the shorter spines on their underside, like stilts, to help them "walk." After our dive we join Dr. Baynes and Michael exchange our night diving stories. Tomorrow we will look for shipwrecks!

As the sun sets Wayne and Karen are ready to make their night dive. Michael Allard joins Dr. Baynes for a night snorkel.

This queen parrotfish has found a nice place in the reef to sleep. Look carefully and you can see the transparent mucus coccoon around it.

karen finds a giant basketstar holding onto the top of a basket sponge. Its long tentacles are stretched out to catch any tiny animals floating by.

As Karen shines her light on the giant basketstar it begins to curl-up.

Karen watches a big spider crab eat its dinner.

These sea urchins are crawling on the reef eating algae.