I found an excellent set of 25 maps prepared by the Réserve Naturelle Saint Martin. A PDF containing the maps is available on their web site: http://www.reservenaturelle-saint-martin.com. The maps show the various geological, archeological and biological zones of the island, along with many other key natural and man-made features. I anticipate these maps will be very useful as we plan future explorations, and perhaps we can help advance studies of the island by independently verifying their accuracy. The PDF (64 MB) of the maps is here.

When you spend 400 hours underwater in near-freezing temperatures, you just might get some amazing photos. Norbert Wu spent 12 years documenting the underwater life and habitats in Antarctica over the course of more than 1,000 dives.

Below you will find photos of Les Fruits de Mer expedition field headquarters. Located at the Flamboyant (of course), in the town of Grand Case, they serve as both our living quarters and our expedition staging area. Our telecommunications center is located outside near the bay, where we are able to access WiFi. Unfortunately, I need to cut this post short, as the telecommunications center is also frequented by mosquitos.

This morning I took a walk past the airport and up the little dirt road I had noticed a few days ago. The area was a mix of trees and meadows and many butterflies and other insects were around the road, probably enjoying some water from this morning’s rain.

One of my first discoveries was the plant on which the swallowtail caterpillars feed. Although I don’t know what it is called, I do know that the caterpillars prefer the young shoots in shady areas. These they will eat until not a bit of leaf is left, while larger shrubs in exposed areas are almost totally untouched.

I was also able to photograph a couple of the local butterflies, including a tiny yellow sulfur and a fuzzy little blue butterfly. There is also a tiny white butterfly with yellow forewings, cabbage butterflies, larger sulfurs, the buckeye-type butterfly, a skipper, some sort of fritillary, the monarch and the swallowtail. There is also some small black butterfly or moth that I have yet to get a good look at.

On the hill there were plenty of goats, a tree with little green fruits that almost look like olives and a strange, super-prickly cucumber-like vine. On my way back, I found a struggling swallowtail. At first I thought it might be a dying mother that just used her last energy to lay eggs, but seeing the brilliant colors and watching how it pumped its wings, I realized it must be a newly hatched adult still working up the strength to fly. I also saw hundreds of baby spiders hatching from an egg sack and almost ran head on into a paper wasp nest.

Today we did an Extreme Shallow Snorkeling mission on Ilet Pinel, a small island near the town of Cul de Sac. While waiting for the ferry, we saw an octopus…and a man washing it down with leaves and sea water. Once we arrived, we were accompanied by a dog on our walk across the island and found that the surf on that side was too rough for snorkeling.

Returning to the protected side, we found that a new eco-tour business, Wakawa now occupied the main snorkeling area. We chatted with the marine biologist staff there for a bit before snorkeling. They have high-tech snorkels that give guided underwater audio tours of the snorkel area. While snorkeling, we saw many needle-nosed fish (I’m not sure of the name) and one spotted eagle ray, but again I did not get a good photo of it.

After a delicious lunch at the Yellow Beach restaurant (finishing with some coconut delight) we rested briefly before snorkeling the very shallow waters off the nearby beach. As we often do, we found a sea hare, a slug-like creature that feeds on sea plants. I also found a brightly colored crab and a very small green moray eel. Although there were not a great deal of corals, there were many small, green Cnidaria on many of the rocks.

Overall, it was a beautiful day and a very successful mission. There were so many interesting small fishes in the shallow areas, I really must return soon with my proper camera for some macro photography.

Yesterday morning we went over to the Dutch side of the island to take a class with Fraser Purdon. He taught us how to troubleshoot, disassemble, service and reassemble R-series Scubapro regulators. We also learned how to do maintenance on BCDs.

The class was great, and it was really cool to see how simple and straightforward unbalanced piston regulators are on the inside. We learned not just how to open them up, but also why they are designed the way they are and how everything works together. I love the idea of being able to understand and maintain my own gear, particularly because underwater I am depending on it for my air supply.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the regulator is the piece of scuba equipment that takes the high pressure air in your tank and converts it to a pressure that is easy to breathe. Because divers experience different ambient pressure at different depths, the regulator provides air at the required pressure whether you are on the surface or 100 feet underwater.

On my afternoon walk, I headed out past the airport, through Hope Estate, an industrial-ish area, and a little past the turn off to Cul de Sac, towards Orleans. Inspecting every milkweed plant, I did find some chrysalides, but only ones that were either evacuated or eaten by some sort of predator or parasite.

In an abandoned, or seemingly abandoned yard of rock and dirt piles, I did get a chance to photograph some sort of fritillary and a goat. Outside a nursery (the kind that sells plants), I photographed a young lizard. Also pictured below are some sort of skipper (the small butterfly) and my third iguana sighting, this one not so fortunate.

This morning I took a walk around the salt pond and nearby Grand Case Airport. Around the main pond and nearby smaller ponds, large muddy flats with some succulents and other vegetation predominate. I found a buckeye-type butterfly very common in this area, and numerous fuzzy orange caterpillars that I am guessing belong to the same species as they are neither monarch nor swallowtail caterpillars.

Also seen on this exploration were the so-called water chicken, a flock of egrets and a small bird’s nest with its entrance on the bottom. I’m guessing the nest belongs to one of the local finches that have bright yellow belies. I also saw another iguana, and like the last one it was in a tree over a marsh. A dirt road off the main road on the other side of the airport looks promising, heading up a forested hillside.

I have also noticed that despite seeing monarch caterpillars of all sizes on almost every milkweed plant I have encountered, I have yet to see a single chrysalis. Perhaps it is not quite time for that stage of life, but I would have guessed the butterflies would breed year-round in this climate. Perhaps I am just not good at spotting them.

Dr. Maillot had the great idea of blogging about the history of underwater exploration, inspired partially by the awesome 16th century painting of Alexander the Great being lowered in a diving bell. According to Wikipedia, the first account of diving bells was a description by Aristotle in the 4th century BC, making it the oldest known form of underwater breathing apparatus. Aristotle explained “…they enable the divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the water.”

The basic idea is to have a big bell with a guy inside and lower it into the water so the pressure of the water holds the air in the bell. They are always attached to a tether, and to keep them full of air at depth, air must be pumped into them from the surface. Any excess air bubbles out the bottom, making it an open circuit system.

After some design improvements in 1535 by Guglielmo de Lorena, numerous innovations followed in the 1600’s, when they were used for salvage operations, recovering canons and treasure. Today, diving bells are still used by commercial divers, particularly for diving to great depths, like on deep sea oil rigs. However, it is more common now to use sealed diving chambers, although they may be attached to a diving bell for access to the water.a

In the gallery below is the aforementioned painting, as well as a diagram of a diving bell, a diving bell from a Swedish maritime museum and the SAT system diving bell, used as a taxi to take divers to their saturation diving living quarters by the NOAA.

This morning I went out on the boat with Chris, Sally, Aure and ERB to explore potential new dive sites. Our first stop was in the channel between St. Martin and Anguilla. The seas were choppy, so we hopped in quickly. While the exact location of the site is top secret, I can tell you that we descended to the bottom at 74 feet and did a 35 minute drift dive. The landscape was what I refer to as a reef prairie: a long, flat underwater plain sprouting with corals and sponges. At one point, we crossed paths with a large school of sardines. The photos below are from this site, which we christened Fisherman’s Reef.

Next, we dove off the point to the north of Anse Marcel. Exposed to the current, the visibility was worse here, but there was plenty of life. We started at 55 feet and worked our way around the point to finish in the shallows. At the end of our dive, we were surprised to find an octopus sitting out in the open on the ocean floor. It studied us for a while before turning white and shooting off into a coral refuge.

Our last dive was at the rock in front of Anse Marcel. Similar to Creole Rock, the waters were quite shallow. We maxed out at 27 feet. This site was probably the best of the three, with many coral overhangs. Beneath one, I found an adult spotted drum and a small nurse shark. On the higher points, there were large coral heads. As we came around the southwest part of the rock, the reef gave way to areas of sand and sea grass with intermittent corals. Probably a great place to see rays. The cutest thing I saw on this dive was a young queen angelfish, less than two inches long, but still gloriously colored in blues and yellows.