Sue had not snorkeled before this trip, so Honeymoon Cove was her first experience. The water was clear and we quickly encountered a fabulous variety of tropical fish, most of which were completely new to us. It is a fun challenge, trying and failing to memorize and keep separate all the different colors and patterns and body and tail shapes, long enough to get back to Cilantro and look them up in our fish books. We do a lot of post-snorkel head scratching: Did that silvery fish have vertical stripes or was that the one with the yellow tail? Or was it a blue tail with yellow edges....It's no wonder eyewitness testimony has been losing favor in the courts. Our visual memory isn't nearly as reliable as we thought.
Here are some favorite new fishes. King Angelfish were common but always gorgeous. They were very territorial, aggressively chasing off other fish that strayed near their "patch." Balloonfish, also called Porcupinefish, are a kind of puffer fish that hovers over the sand, waiting to ambush bite-size prey as it swims by. Puffers protect themselves by inflating their spine-covered bodies into a spiky round ball that no self-respecting predator would try to bite. Reef Cornetfish also hover over the sea floor, waiting stealthily to "vacuum" up smaller fish that swim too near. We had seen Reef Cornetfish before, usually in the talons of Ospreys, who can easily pluck them from shallow water and deliver them to a cliff-top nest. The photos below were taken from the kayak rather than underwater. We were reluctant to put Sue's new Olympus TG-4 camera to the waterproof test, since we depended on it for kayaking and hiking. Maybe next time!
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| King Angelfish |
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| Balloonfish |
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| Reef Cornetfish |
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| Close-up of Reef Cornetfish waiting to ambush prey. |
One morning we kayaked around to the north side of
Isla Danzante to explore the tidepools. An amazing variety of lifeforms inhabited the rock crevices and pockets that covered and uncovered with the tide! We plan to do a post just on tidepool critters.
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| Some tidepools along the north shore of Isla Danzante. |
Sue was gripped by the shallow underwater drama of a couple of hermit crabs tussling over a
third shell. Red-legged hermit crabs, common in the Gulf waters, adopt any
suitably sized spiral shell they come across. These two appeared to be
struggling over a rather battered, algae-covered one; apparently there is no
accounting for taste among hermit crabs! They were taking their time about it,
poking a leg out here, a leg in there. When you carry your entire home on your
back like a suit of armor, everything—including fighting—happens ponderously. After a minute or so (which might be the equivalent of an
entire day in hermit-crab time) one crab moved off and the victor held tight to
its new prize. Later, reviewing the photos, Sue noticed a bit of red inside the
third shell and theorized there might have been a female crab inside it!
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| Two red-legged hermit crabs face off over a third shell. |
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| Claw-to-claw combat, hermit crab–style. |
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| Can you see a smidgen of red inside the third shell? |
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| The victor holds tight to his prize; the vanquished moves off. |
In the afternoon we kayaked back to Honeymoon Cove, rounding
the point at 1:00 p.m. only to see Cilantro
about 200 feet downwind of where we had left her! Yikes is an understatement. She had dragged anchor! The wind had really
picked up from the north while we were out, and it must have been strong enough
to pull the anchor free from its holding. We had tucked up into the north end
of this cove, where we knew the bottom was rockier and had a significant slope.
In addition, we had taken up scope (shortened our anchor chain) when another
boat anchored close to us a few days before. This hadn’t been a problem, until now. All these
thoughts and others were running through our heads as we paddled faster: Is she still dragging? Has she run aground?
Or has the anchor reset in the new spot?
Very fortunately, it appeared the anchor had reset on its
own and Cilantro was blithely
swinging about in her new neighborhood, although unnervingly close to a tiny
mangrove patch and rocky shore at the south end of the bay. Also fortunately,
the two other boats that had been anchored south of us by the mangrove patch that morning were
gone. Lucky again!
As we neared the stern and swim ladder where we climb aboard
from the kayaks, Curtis spotted a pair of big fins in the shallows by the
mangroves. Dolphin? Shark? Sue paddled over to take a look—a mystery fish
definitely takes priority over re-anchoring! A spiny, blue-black dorsal fin and
pointy tail fin slid through the water about 4 feet apart. “Sailfish?” Curtis
suggested from the cockpit. “Dorado?” Sue was thinking. The big fish was dark
and fast and very bendy as it swept back and forth, apparently undisturbed by
the yellow kayak drifting in. Sue got a few photos with her point-and-shoot
before the creature slid away, then she headed back to
Cilantro to help Curtis.
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| First look at the big fish in Honeymoon Cove. |
Re-anchoring went smoothly, and we ended up in a better spot than our previous one, but the experience was a reminder that our portable home could quickly become a bit too portable. It was also a good lesson not to shorten scope even if other boats drop anchor close by. Anchoring etiquette says that they (later arrivals) are the ones who should move. For the record, our primary anchor is a 45-pound CQR, which performed well in the Maine coastal mud and the clean sand of the Gulf of California but hasn't been quite as foolproof in a mix of sand and shell or sand over rock.
Later, poring over our favorite fish book, Reef Fish Identification: Baja to Panama (a most welcome gift from Bob Steneck, our marine biologist friend from Maine), we came to the consensus that the mystery fish was a marlin, probably a striped marlin. If you look closely at the second photo, you can just make out a narrow dark shape extending forward of the dorsal fin and head. This would be the marlin’s sword-like bill. Marlins are pelagic, but they are reported to hunt inshore occasionally, especially when there is deep water nearby. Between Isla Danzante and mainland Baja California Sur, the sea floor drops quickly to 200–300 feet deep. We would see marlins several more times during the trip.
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| Marlin near the beach at Honeymoon Cove, Isla Danzante. |
Next up: A bonanza of whale and big fish sightings as we make
our way south.
