Until yesterday, my first and only visit to Chris’s Reef was over a year ago when it was first discovered. The reef is located in the channel between Saint Martin and Anguilla, and contains the wreckage of various cars and trucks. One theory is that they were destroyed by Hurricane Luis in 1995 and subsequently taken there for disposal. Regardless of their true origin, these parts have clearly been out there a while, as they are entirely encrusted in coral and sponges.

Numerous free-standing coral formations, on car remains and otherwise, make this a great spot for underwater photography. During the dive, the most exciting find was a scorpionfish, which was resting well-camouflaged near a sponge.

A couple weeks ago, I obtained a pair of house gecko eggs and was keeping them in a high tech incubator (empty spice bottle) in the closet of our guest bedroom. Over the last couple days, both babies hatched, and a few photos of them are below. After taking the photos, I released them on our balcony (where another young house gecko already resides) and their current whereabouts are unknown. I wasn’t able to capture it in the photos, but their bellies were translucent and you could see the vague shape of organs inside.

There were plenty of underwater curiosities at Turtle Reef yesterday. A lined seahorse was hiding in the seaweed near the reef, an urchin seemed to be eating a lobster and blueheads were gorging on unattended sergeant major eggs. I also saw some baby urchins with shells less than an inch in diameter and, of course, turtles.

Below are some shots of a rather attractive longhorn beetle that I found on the ground near the dive shop. After brushing off the ants (it was already dead), I saved it so I could take some photos. As I have found lately, it is quite hard to take good photos of dark, highly-reflective creatures. Reflections from the flash are inevitable, regardless of attempts to diffuse the light, although they can sometimes be minimized by aiming at areas that will create smaller reflections. It is also necessary to coerce one’s camera into using the correct exposure. With a white background, it will underexpose the subject, so using exposure compensation is a must. Likewise, autocontrast or other similar Photoshop functions tend to be counterproductive for this type of shot, although manual adjustments can be beneficial.

With tens of thousands of species of longhorn beetle in the world, the id on this particular one may take a while.

My Family and Other Animals is Gerald Durrell‘s memoir (or actually, one of them) of his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. I had read it as a child, and I’m happy to report that it remains engaging and entertaining over twenty years later.

Durrell moved to Corfu with his eccentric family at the age of eight, and spent most of his time observing and capturing the local wildlife. The book is evenly split between accounts of his outdoor adventures and anecdotes about his family and other residents of the island. He is excellent at capturing the wonder and excitement of being a young naturalist. In fact, probably better than anyone else I have read. The hijinks of his family and other characters are generally hilarious, and recounted from the perspective of an eight-year-old, which results in a very natural deadpan style.

Durrell went on to become a zookeeper, conservationist and host of television documentaries. His concept of the zoo as primarily a “stationary ark” rather than an amusement park was ahead of it’s time. My Family and Other Animals recounts the boyhood fascination with nature that continued throughout his life. This book is a must-read for nature lovers, and I think would be quite enjoyable for almost anyone in general.

Thanks to D$ for the book and bringing down to Saint Martin. Also, if you like it, you’re in luck. He’s written loads more books, including two others that chronicle his time on Corfu.

Below are a few photos taken while Extreme Shallow Snorkeling with my old Powershot SD1000. Photography while snorkeling is much harder than while diving, because it is much harder to remain still, and you don’t have too long to compose your shot. These factors are compounded by the challenge of using a point and shoot camera, which can be quite unforgiving. Still, it’s a fun challenge to see what shots you can get.

Today I saw a pipefish for the first time since I’ve been here. It was in about 18 inches of water just off the shore in some algae. Add this to the batfish and the sea robin and I’m starting to accumulate quite a list of interesting fish that I’ve seen while snorkeling but not while diving. It just goes to show that snorkeling and diving are complementary activities, especially if your snorkeling in shallow water, which is usually a very different habitat versus a diving-depth reef.

Boston.com’s The Big Picture is a generally fantastic photo blog, and today today they posted some really striking photos of oil-soaked sea birds.

I think it is interesting that, as far as oil spills are concerned, birds really seem to capture human emotion more than almost anything else. I think partially it is because birds are relatively intelligent and vocal and we can recognize their suffering. Part of it is probably that they are perhaps more visible than many of the creatures that are undoubtedly dying out in the ocean.

I think it also comes from the impact of seeing these sleek, soaring animals grounded and stuck in sludge. They’re essentially the tribe of dinosaurs that took to the skies, and in these photos, they’re transformed into gruesome apparitions stuck in ancient muck.

With all the recent rain in Saint Martin, the hills are green and I am expecting to see lots of creatures in the coming week. Over the past few days, I’ve gone out a bit at night to capture some of the nocturnal nightlife action and found quite a few things, mostly unidentified moths (including a variety of very small ones) and other insects. One of my more interesting finds was a large sphinx moth that was flapping on the ground even though someone had already eaten his abdomen. I also was alerted to the roosting place of a zenaida dove by a friendly security guard. Also of note was a house gecko with a necrotic tail. My guess is that it had tried to shed the tail in self-defense, but it hadn’t come off entirely.

For more nocturnal action, check out the previous creatures of the night post.

Today I added a spider section to the Saint Martin Wildlife Guide. Unfortunately, although I have a lot of spider photos, I am not so good at identifying them. If you can help, please take a look and let me know if you recognize any of these guys!

Circus of the Spineless is a monthly round-up of interesting invertebrate blog posts, and the latest one is up at Deep Sea News. Deep Sea News also has some of the most informative updates on the gulf oil spill, and many other things that are worth checking out.