The snorkelling on Roatan was probably the best part of our vacation.
Scuba is the popular thing to do. But we didn’t feel like spending the money or time required to get trained, and were fairly confident we could see a lot. It was tricky finding good advice on sites – most of the printed material is focused on scuba, and the sites were too deep for us to visit. But with good glass-faced masks, and gradual improvement in our diving abilities we made it work really well.
The basic reef fish are just stunningly gorgeous, a rainbow riot of neons and pastels. We spent the first two days just marvelling at the basics, and then started trying to hunt out some more exotic critters. Below are a few of the best ones we saw. These are all stolen photos from the web, but let me give credit to one stunning photographer, Marc Occhio, who took the Blue Marlin shot below.
 |
The pipehorse is a relative of the seahorse. We saw greyish ones, usually totally straight and looking more fishlike. Quiet and gentle. |
 |
Lobsters! We saw plenty of full-size adults, hiding out under rocks in shallower water. Sighted on the west side of Half Moon Bay and a few of the sites west of there. |
 |
Lionfish are Asian invasives, aquarium escapees that are apparently causing a lot of damage in the Caribbean. They have a unique way of pinning prey against the coral by making a cage with their spines. Local diveshops vent their anger by offering lionfish barbecues, cookbooks and bounties. |
 |
Sea turtles: graceful and shy. The first was in the shallow seagrass, and bolted when it saw me. The second was in 5m water and didn’t object to us at all. The third and fourth were in deeper 15m water, spotted deep on the coral wall at the West End Wall. Definitely a magic moment |
 |
Spotted eagle ray: also awe-inspiring, with about a 1.5m wingspan. We spotted this one gliding along the edge of a reef wall in 5-10m deep water, looking serene and gorgeous. J was a bit surprised by it during a dive, and was a bit freaked out by it. |
 |
Green moray eel: midway through the trip, we started to see the predators. This guy was about 1.5m long, coiled around a rock on the bottom in 5m deep water. He didn’t move much, but his jaw looked frightening. Morays are awesome for being the inspiration for the “Alien” mouth design: they have two jaws, and when they open the outer jaw, an inner jaw with a second row of teeth darts out and pulls the prey in. Textbook learning did not translate into any freaky viewing, though. |
 |
Blue marlin. We saw juveniles about 60cm long in the shallows, zooming about just below the surface. They definitely looked like predators, but didn’t seem to care about us much, being far outside their prey size range. Very neat. |
 |
Barracuda are unnerving. In the Blue Channel area, we saw an adult hiding in a recess in the reef and a juvenile swimming nearby, and wondered a little – they’re pretty scary looking predators. That night, Wikipedia told us that they scavenge and rarely attack, but often unnerve divers due to their curiosity. It’s not uncommon for them to follow a diving group for their entire time. They sometimes mistake hands for little fish and attack, especially with shiny jewellery. So, we left our wedding bands at home the next day – and met some serious barracuda at Sandy Bay. A 1.5m adult met us in the 2m deep seagrass, and circled us about seven times, staring closely. Our Wikipedia-acquired knowledge felt a little… inadequate, but we held to it and edged slowly towards the main reef, where the barracuda didn’t follow. Freaky. I wouldn’t accept Wikipedia as a source for an undergrad essay, but I was taking life and death information from it… hm. The next ones were less interested in us, we did spot a juvenile swimming right next to the kids’ section of the beach at West Bay. I have to wonder if parents know what’s in the water. |
 |
Mahi mahi (dorado, dolphinfish): I spotted a 1.5m – 2m long fish that looked like this in the deeper 15m waters off of West End Wall. Didn’t really see enough to say much, though. |
| One hilarious fish was a big (1m+) reef-muncher. Every time he chomped down, you could hear the teeth-on-coral sound quite loudly. |
Getting deeper into snorkelling was interesting in its way. Novice snorkellers just stay on the top, and don’t see any of the vibrant colours once the water gets deeper than 3-4m. If you’re willing to hold your breath and dive down, you can see the reef surface in the same detail that scuba divers do, in 10 second bursts between breaths. By the end of the trip, we were able to dive down to 8-10m regularly – I was cruising the reef wall at 5-6m depth, rising and descending regularly for breath, and swimming in the schools of undisturbed fish.
It seems to be a bit of a continuum between snorkelling and freediving, actually. This type of snorkelling starts to fill almost yoga-like in the emphasis on breath control, and the breath control pattern definitely helps the mind and adds to the mood of it.
Finally, I think the real magic of reefs is the ability to see animal life up close. On land, humans look like classic predators (forward facing eyes, etc.) and are recognized as the top predator; animals are skittish and it’s rare to encounter much of anything. But in the ocean, fish can dart away from many predators easily, don’t really recognize humans as the top of their food chain and are basically unafraid of us. It’s a pretty unique experience.