We made another trip to our favorite mangrove spot on Valentine’s Day, but once again encountered bad visibility in the area where the salt pond meets the ocean. This time, we headed out into the shallows of Baie Lucas and found a great many things in the bay. Clouds of mystid shrimp and schools of juvenile fish abounded. Another highlight was finding a batwing coral crab (Carpilius corallinus) doing strange stuff with a small rock in 18 inches of water. Red warty anemones (Bunodosoma granifulera) were also common.

We finished up back at the mangroves where we attempted to revive a number of mangrove upsidedwon jellyfish (Cassiopea xamachana) that had been stranded on the sand by the retreating tide. These harmless jellies have symbiotic algae in their tissues that help nourish them. At rest, they pulse upside-down to let the algae get more sunlight.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Explorations, Extreme Shallow Snorkeling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.