Before we went to Saba, we did a couple last dives in St. Martin before the shop closed for vacation. (Last meaning last until the shop opens again, of course!) We dove a couple local sites and I brought along the camera with 85mm macro lens.

Visibility wasn’t superb, but I did get a few photos of fish, including various blennies and a jawfish.

As for invertebrates, there were arthropods, mollusks, cnidarians and annelids.

I also took a few close-ups of various things in a more abstract fashion.

On our last day of diving, I did a couple things differently. Our first dive was a pinnacle we hadn’t done yet, and I’ll have to check Jenn’s dive log for the name. On this dive, I didn’t bring my camera, which was really nice after diving with a bulky camera for every dive of the trip so far.

On our next two dives, I had my macro lens, so finally there are a few portraits of fish and other invertebrates. The second dive was Man o’ War Shoals, which was the only exact repeat I did on the trip, but it’s a wonderful site. Highlights for me included a golden coney and a white and red nudibranch that Kelly spotted.

On our last dive, we jumped in a the shallow mooring at Tent Reef and the long dive time gave us the chance to see many wonderful things. Highlights for me included large patches of garden eels, a half-dozen lettuce sea slugs and a basket star curled up on a soft coral.

The Sandy Cruz trail starts just above the town of Hell’s Gate and winds around the north side of the island. It is high enough to be in a damp, dense forest with luscious vegetation. We spent about two and a half hours on the trail. It could be done faster, but you wouldn’t have time to see much. If I had my choice, I would have poked along for four hours or more finding creatures and taking photos. Below are a few shots from our trip. They start with a few birds taken en route to the trailhead. Apparently the great egret turned up on the island after a tropical storm.

On the trail, we saw many of the usual subjects, such as the whistling frog, Saban anole, red-bellied racer and a rat. There were also, of course, many snails and other invertebrates.

Saba rises abruptly out of the water, leaving precious little space for extreme shallow snorkeling. There is, however, an area of tide pools near the airport that is quite suited to our favorite pastime. Below are some above water shots of our expedition to the tide pools. There is also some underwater footage that Madam J has, which I can hopefully post later. Nestled in a rocky outcrop, there were several large tide pools, including one that was big enough to support a variety of corals.

On a day off diving, Yann, Marie and I went to the top of Mt. Scenery, the tallest point on Saba. As mentioned before, it’s mostly a long series of stairs leading up through various types of forest to the elfin cloud forest at the top. On the way up and back we saw many things.

Many of them were snails. I think most of them are from the family Helicinidae.

There were many other invertebrates as well, mostly insects. Although I found few insects on the way up, on the way back I began to notice more of the smaller insects, like leafhoppers and flies. On the trip down I ended up seeing a pretty good amount of diversity, though not large numbers.

I have some reptile photos from the following day, but the most notable vertebrate we found on this hike was a big-eared rat that was walking around with his eyes closed. Yann and Marie gave him some granola bar.

There was also plenty of great scenery, which I did not capture in all its glory. It was still great to see.