Oh, Christmas Tree Worm!

Oh, Christmas Tree Worm!

Christmas_tree_worm

Christmas_tree_worm


When swimming over the reef, divers are often amazed to see what appear to be tiny, feathery Christmas trees growing out of many of the coral heads. These little tree-like objects are in fact a calcareous tube worm commonly known as the Christmas tree worm.

Christmas tree worms produce glue-like mucus which is mixed with fine sand to build a hard, calcareous tube to conceal and protect the worms’ body. The tubes are normally hidden in the reef substrate. Calcareous tube worms like the Christmas tree worm look more like flowers or trees than worms because, while their bodies are hidden from divers and snorkelers, their gill structures called crowns or radioles are extended from the end of the tube. Christmas tree worms have two spiraled gill crowns each one to one and one half inches tall.

These feather-like appendages act as both gills for respiration and to capture food in the form of plankton. There are a variety of crown colors and patterns, including black, gold, orange, pink, yellow, and multicolored. The worm’s mouth is at the center of the feathery crown. The calcareous tube worm uses an operculum similar to that of snails to cover its tube opening when the gill structure is retracted.

variegated Christmas tree worm

Christmas tree worm variegated

Many new underwater photographers have learned that tube worms can instantly retract their gill structures if disturbed by either movement or changes in light intensity. This phenomenon can be witnessed when a diver waves his hand over the gills or in some cases when a diver’s shadow covers the worm tube. Frustrated photographers will find that with a little patience, the crowns will slowly extend and reopen after a few seconds.

Christmas tree worms are abundant on all areas of the reefs in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Florida. When next cruising over the reef, take a close look at these tiny tube worms inhabiting the coral heads and ruble. They definitely enhance the beauty of our underwater world.

By
Lynn Hughes

Stingrays, Rays, & More Rays!

The stealth flight of Southern Stingrays

The stealth flight of Southern Stingrays

Some of the most graceful creatures in the sea are undoubtedly the stingrays. Because of their shallow depth ranges and feeding patterns, snorkelers are also often able to see these unique creatures.

There are eleven species of stingrays in North America. Although they do not have a normal fish shape, stingrays are fish with a skeleton of cartilage just like sharks. Since stingrays are bottom feeders, their body has developed into a unique flattened, diamond shape formed by enlarged pectoral fins. These fins form pointed wing tips on each side of the body and extend forward past the mouth into a pointed snout. The absence of a dorsal fin, and a long whip-like tail, which is about the length of the body, further enhance their unique look. The pectoral fins are used for swimming, feeding, and when burying their bodies in the sand.

Stingrays are armed with one or two poisonous spines on their long tails. In the accompanying photo, this spine can be seen protruding slightly from the top edge of the tail just behind the body. Body color depends on the ray’s surroundings and varies from shades of light brown, gray, or olive green on the upper body with the bottom surface white with gray or brown edges. The ridge near the eyes and the tail are usually much darker.

Southern_Stingray

Southern_Stingray_buried_in_sand


Like many other masters at camouflage on the reef, Southern Stingrays can bury themselves in the sand in only a few seconds with a wave of their pectoral fins, leaving only the eyes and tail exposed.

Giant_Manta_Ray_&_Southern_Ray


Since these rays are bottom dwellers, versus swimming rays like the Spotted Eagle Ray and Giant Manta, their mouth and gill openings are located on the bottom side of the body. Moving backward and forward using their pectoral fins to stir the bottom sand, they dislodge worms, mussels, and small crustaceans which they suck into their mouth much like a vacuum. In turn, Southern Stingrays become a food source for larger fish like the Goliath Grouper and sharks, particularly hammerheads.

The Southern Stingray can reach body lengths of up to five and one half feet, excluding the tail, but the average is three to four feet long. Females are much larger than the males

Southern Stingrays can be found in all habitats and depths from one foot to around 80 feet deep, but they are more commonly found in sandy areas, near shores, or in bays where they feed. They have a wide range extending from the east coast of the United States down through the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil.

Southern_Stingray_on_sand

Southern_Stingray_on_sand

By
Lynn Hughes

Will We See Dolphins Today?

Two Dolphins underwater in Provo waters.

Diving Provo with Bottlenose Dolphins at Magic Mushroom.

Will we see dolphins today? That seems to be the question asked most often by divers on the way to the dive sights. Well, quite often dolphins are seen on the rides to and from French Cay, West Caicos, and Northwest Point in the Turks & Caicos Islands. We have also been fortunate enough to snorkel and scuba dive with both Bottlenosed dolphins and Atlantic spotted dolphins on several occasions.

Because of the nature of the reef systems with deep walls dropping into the abyss near areas like West Caicos, French Cay, and Northwest Point, we have had several opportunities to witness the playful antics of dolphins in the wild. On one scuba dive we encountered a pod of between 75 and 100 dolphins off West Caicos. They appear to enjoy playing in bow wakes and occasionally even jumping clear of the water.

I think our most memorable scuba diving and snorkeling experience occurred at West Caicos. We were conducting Discover Scuba Diving experiences with a group of teenage cancer survivors. Upon surfacing at the end of the dive, the crewmember on board told us that a pod of dolphins was moving in our direction. We moved away from the boat and soon they approached. There were eleven Atlantic Spotted Dolphins in a tight formation. Ten of the dolphins appeared to be protecting another dolphin in the center of the pod. They approached within about 5 to 10 feet of our group and appeared to be unconcerned with our presence. The individual in the center of the group was quivering. Periodically it would surface and forcefully slap its tail. We dove and snorkeled with them for about 20 minutes before they moved out to deeper water. After moving away, one individual jumped clear of the water.

Two days later, we returned to the same sight. Prior to mooring, we noticed a pod of dolphins on the surface. Upon approaching, they began to play in our bow wake. We then observed a larger adult with a much smaller juvenile next to it. We wondered if we had observed the birthing process and this juvenile was the result. What a memorable day of diving for those kids and us too!

A Dolphin of Roatan Underwater Photo.

Scuba diving with the Dolphin of Roatan.

By
Lynn Hughes

Flamingo Tongues A Gem of the Sea

Click on Flamingo Tongues

Have you ever noticed that you can dive the exact same area several times and see something different each time? What you see often depends upon your frame of mind. On one dive you may hope to see big creatures like sharks, turtles, or rays and so concentrate on looking out into the blue. On the next dive, you may decide to look in all the holes in the coral and under ledges and, therefore, concentrate on looking for smaller things. It is that type of dive that often leads to some of our most fascinating discoveries.

As you are swimming over the reef, you spy a tiny spotted thing attached to a sea fan. While this intriguing creature blends in with the surrounding hard and soft corals, it still vividly stands out to the observant diver or snorkeler. But what is it? You have just spotted one of the gems of the sea, a mollusk named Cyphoma gibbosum, better known as a Flamingo Tongue.

Flamingo Tongues are in the Phylum Mollusca, Class Gastropods, and Family Simnias. Gastropods, or snails, make up the largest and most important class of mollusks, and include more than 80,000 species of which about 60% are marine species. In the Turks and Caicos Islands marine gastropods include some very important species like conchs, whelks, and tritons.

Gastropods do not have a true skeleton, and with the exception of the shell-less snails, enclose their soft bodies within a spiral, cone, or cup shaped shell for protection. The head of the snail consists of a proboscis mouth and two tentacles with the eyes at the base. Look closely at a conch on your next dive, and you can easily see the mouth and eye stalks peering out at you. A muscular pad, called a foot, allows the animal to move across the bottom. A leathery skin mass, called the mantle, covers the head, foot, digestive, excretory, circulatory, and genital organs.

When a Flamingo Tongue is active, its creamy white mantle extends out from the bottom opening of the shell onto and over the shell for camouflage. The mantle is covered with numerous yellowish orange rectangular, oval, or oblong spots outlined in black. When inactive or if touched, the mantel withdraws exposing the glossy shell beneath.

Flamingo Tongue with mantel withdrawn

The animal’s diet and the water conditions, including salinity and pollution, determine the color and pattern of both the shell and the animal so each shell will be unique.

Flamingo Tongue shells range from ¾ to 1 ¾ inches long. The calcium carbonate shell and its glossy finish are both secreted by the mantle. The shell is elongated with blunt rounded ends and has a raised ridge running from side to side across the center of the shell. The shell is yellow, pink, or a reddish cream with a white patch in the center and white around the edges. It has a long, narrow, smooth opening at the bottom of the shell where the animal’s body emerges.

While easily overlooked by divers and snorkelers, Flamingo Tongues are quite common and can be found along the east coast of the United States from North Carolina to Florida. They are also common in Bermuda, the Bahamas, throughout the Caribbean and the West Indies, and as far south as Venezuela and Brazil.

Found typically in depths from 6 to 45 feet, but as deep as 120 feet, Flamingo Tongues once formed large colonies on Caribbean reefs, but they have been seriously over collected in nearly every part of the Caribbean.

Flamingo Tongues live on and feed on soft corals, sea whips, sea fans, and gorgonians. While usually only one or two will be seen on a gorgonian, occasionally groups of seven or eight may be found. They lay single eggs, and the young emerge as free swimming larvae called veligers. The veligers feed on suspended food particles in the water as they are carried by the tides and currents far from their place of origin. During this larval stage, many will become food for filter feeders like rays, bivalves, and corals, and other pelagic animals. After several days, as the growing shell becomes too heavy to float, the veliger will drop to the ocean floor where it will start its life as a bottom crawler. Once the Flamingo Tongue becomes a bottom crawler, it then becomes a food source for crabs, octopus, grunts, porgys, triggerfish, hogfish, spiny puffers, and permits maintaining the reef’s food chain.

So the next time you go snorkeling or scuba diving keep you eye out for these amazing gems of the sea. You might be surprised just how many you can find once you start looking. The Bight Reef, the Grotto on Grace Bay, Magic Mushroom and Coney Island on West Caicos, and Tons of Sponge near Sandbore Channel are all good places to look. And don’t be surprised if you are lucky enough to find a shell that looks like the Flamingo Tongue, but with a mantle with fingerprint type markings—the Fingerprint Cyphoma. Ah, but that is a story for another day! Good hunting!

By
Lynn Hughes

Goats Underwater?

Click on photo of Yellow goatfish.

Swim over the sandy bottom of the upper reefs of most areas, and you will likely see a group of fish feverishly working their way across the sand rooting into the bottom. When diving at West Caicos in the Turks and Caicos Islands at Rock Garden Interlude and those sites to the north, clouds of sand can be seen being dispersed in the fishes’ efforts to locate small invertebrates hiding under the sand. Most of these rooting fish are goatfish.

Goatfish are members of the Mullidae family. There are four species found in the Atlantic—spotted, yellow, red, and the dwarf goatfish. All goatfish have two appendages under the tip of their chin, called barbels, which can be retracted into a groove under the throat when not in use. These barbels serve two purposes. They are loaded with highly developed taste cells aiding in the search for food, and they are used to dig in sand and around areas of rubble to locate well-hidden invertebrates. Goatfish have small teeth on the roof of their mouth and in the lower jaw used for crushing.

The two most common goatfish seen in the waters of the Turks and Caicos Islands are the spotted goatfish and the yellow goatfish. Spotted goatfish are the smaller of the two reaching a maximum of about eleven inches although five to eight inches is the average size. Spotted goatfish are typically found in depths of five to sixty feet deep.

Yellow goatfish are slightly larger than spotted goatfish reaching a maximum of fifteen inches with the average being six to twelve inches. Yellow goatfish have also been recorded in all depth ranges from five to two hundred feet deep.

Spotted Goatfish at Boat Cove TCI


Spotted goatfish, when actively feeding, are normally white with a row of three dark, rectangular spots running along the side of the body. Light bluish lines may extend from the head down the length of the upper body. When resting or inactive, the white base color and dark body spots vanish to become a mottled reddish brown allowing them to blend with their background on the reef. Spotted goatfish are common in Florida but are only reported occasionally in the Bahamas, Caribbean, West Indies, Gulf of Mexico, and south to Brazil. On some dive sites, like Whiteface on West Caicos, they are more abundant and may be seen in small groups of two or more.

Yellow goatfish are white with a yellow tail and a yellow mid-body stripe. As seen on the photos, they may have blue shading on the edge of the yellow stripe. The nose may be reddish. With the exception of the tail, all other fins are white or light yellow. Yellow goatfish are quite common throughout Florida, Bahamas, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Bermuda, and south to Brazil. The yellow goatfish may feed alone or in groups of up to twenty. When not feeding, they often swim in large schools over the nearby reefs as depicted here.

Click on the school of Yellow goatfish

Both spotted and yellow goatfish appear unconcerned with divers and will generally allow a close approach allowing divers to observe their foraging efforts. All goatfish feed primarily on invertebrates and, in turn provide food for graysbys and other groupers. In some areas they are also highly prized as a food source.

Many fish, including goatfish, have traditional spawning areas on the reefs where hundreds of fish may congregate. Goatfish are considered to be “resident spawners” with their local spawning areas only a few hours away. This group spawning increases the possibility of egg fertilization and may also limit the predation of the eggs. Even though they are classified as resident spawners, goatfish also pair to spawn.

When observing feeding goatfish, scuba divers will often notice many other species of fish including wrasses, porgies, yellowtail snapper, and bar jack in the same area. Yellowtail snapper often take advantage of their similar appearance. These two species are the only reef fishes in the Caribbean with a bright yellow mid-body stripe and a deeply forked yellow tail fin. Although yellowtail snapper typically may be over two feet long, when they associate with yellow goatfish, they will be about the same size as the goatfish. This mimicry allows the yellowtail snapper to be much more successful in capturing those small fishes that normally ignore the feeding goatfish.

When you make your next dive on the reefs around Providenciales and West Caicos, keep your eyes open for these interesting fish working their way across the bottom or swimming over the reef.

By
Lynn Hughes

Something Fishy?

Goldentail Moray

Our underwater world is an amazing and wondrous place for all divers, but it can appear especially mysterious and alien to a newly certified 11-year old. One such young diver recently asked me after a scuba dive, “Is the brown snake we saw hiding in the coral poisonous?” I had to smile as I remembered my very similar reaction many years ago when I encountered my first moray eels. Fortunately, we don’t have sea snakes in the Caribbean, so there is no reason to panic if you are new to the reefs there! This young diver was fortunate to have seen one of the many species of eels found on the reefs around Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands–a small Goldentail Moray.

Spotted Moray Free-swimming

There are 14 species of morays in North America. Moray eels, while resembling snakes, are really fish. While most fish have obvious pectoral fins, ventral fins, and scales, moray eels do not. Most fish also have distinctive and separate dorsal, tail, and anal fins, but on a moray these fins are merged into a long continuous fin beginning just behind the head near the small, round gill opening, continuing the length of the body, around the tail, and extending midway back up the belly. With a thick, leathery skin, the eel’s body is muscular and quite flexible allowing easy access to small openings in the reef. The body is covered with a clear, mucous layer to protect it from burrowing parasites. Morays have extended tube-like nasal openings on the end of their snout giving them an excellent sense of smell. This highly developed sense of smell is very important to a predator with extremely poor eyesight.

Spotted Moray --showing teeth

Most species of morays have powerful jaws and mouths equipped with numerous sharp needlelike teeth with an additional row of teeth angled slightly backward running down the center roof of their mouth. This configuration aids in catching and holding prey. Some species have grinding teeth rather than needlelike teeth.

Spotted moray peeking out of hole

In order to breath, morays must constantly move water through their gills. This requires them to continuously open and close their mouths, making them appear quite threatening to a new diver. While morays can move quite rapidly when distressed or feeding, they are not aggressive unless baited with food or molested. During the day, most morays tend to hide in reef openings with just their heads or tails visible. Most only come out in the open to forage for food at night. However, two species, the Goldentail and Spotted Morays, hunt primarily during the day. Morays stalk or chase their prey and are, therefore, called roving predators. They are also piscivores, a carnivore that eats primarily fish, but their prey also includes crabs, octopus, small crustaceans, and occasionally even other morays.

Goldentail Moray at night

The Goldentail Moray averages eighteen to twenty four inches long while the Spotted Moray may be over 3 feet long. Both are found in depth ranges from 5 to 50 feet preferring shallow to mid-range coral heads.

Identification of morays is fairly easy due to their distinctive colors and markings. The Goldentail Moray’s body is brown with small yellow spots, the tip of the tail is normally yellow to gold, and the eyes are ringed in yellow. Occasionally, a reverse phase color pattern moray is seen with a yellow body and brown spots like the small Goldentail often spotted on Sunday Service off West Caicos.

Spotted Moray looking out

The Spotted Moray is yellowish-white above and white or yellow on the bottom, with tightly spaced, irregular, brownish to purplish-black spots and blotches. They also occasionally show a reverse phase pattern with a dark body and white spots or blotches. Both the Spotted and Goldentail Morays are common throughout the Caribbean, western Atlantic, and the Bahamas but uncommon elsewhere.

Hunting moray at night


Even though they have drastically different color patterns, they both rely on camouflage to blend with the surrounding coral. As a result, they often go unnoticed by divers and appear unconcerned when divers are near. If approached too closely or molested, they simply withdraw into a reef crevice disappearing from sight.

Spotted Moray free-swimming

Some sea bass, primarily Graysbys and Conies, hunt with Goldentail and Spotted Morays, to increase their odds of capturing prey. One to four fish will follow the moray as it moves from crevice to crevice in pursuit of concealed prey in a feeding behavior known as nuclear hunting. I have witnessed this hunting pattern at both West Caicos and French Cay. While the eel searches the interior of a coral head, the fish cover the escape routes waiting for prey attempting to escape the eel. Even though Graysbys and Conies are typically shy, they can be closely approached when they are hunting with an eel.

On your next dive, look closely at those Conies sitting around the reef, and you may also discover an eel in close proximity. If you are fortunate, you may even witness an eel’s run between coral heads. And when that new diver asks about sea snakes, just smile, and remember your first sighting of an moray eel.

By
Lynn Hughes