A couple months ago, I put some pretty serious scratches in my Ikelite dome, which clearly showed up in any wide-angle or fisheye photos I took with the dome. Rather than get a new dome, I got a Micro Mesh kit for acrylic restoration. It was about $40, or about a tenth the cost of a new dome.

Essentially it’s a bunch of very fine sandpaper that you use progressively. First, you use regular sandpaper to sand out the scratches, if they’re big enough to warrant that, and mine were. Next, you use the micro mesh sandpapers, which go from 1200 to 12000 grit. At each step, you sand in one direction, ninety degrees from the last step, making sure to eliminate any traces of the previous sanding. After finishing with all the sandpaper, you buff it with a special paste.

Does it work? Yes. As you can see from the photos, things start off looking bad, but quickly get better, until the dome is totally smooth again. The toughest part is the edge of the dome, where it is hard to always remove the previous sanding. In my case, I ended up with a few small sanding scratches at the edge of the dome, but they don’t show up underwater because water is essentially the same density as acrylic, so it fills in minor scratches.

 

Below are some photos and video of a lettuce sea slug (Elysia crispata) that we found while Extreme Shallow Snorkeling near the pier on Pinel Island. These are a common sea slug in the Caribbean, but they are not commonly seen because they are very small and well camouflaged. The skin frills on the sea slug’s back increase the surface area to increase oxygen absorption from the water.

 

After having seen the giant caterpillars of the tetrio sphinx (Pseudosphinx tetrio), I was quite excited when Sally brought over a present: a tetrio sphinx pupa she had found while sweeping the porch of her new house. The large pupa was wiggly and mysterious, although you could see the outlines of the wings, eyes and proboscis through the shell. After hosting the pupa for a couple weeks in a large jar, the moth finally emerged, clinging to a paper towel to pump out its wings. Unfortunately, much like our beloved Crépe, the wings never expanded fully and after the sphinx disappeared for a day, I found it dead.

 

While I was napping on the beach on Pinel, Madam J and Katie found a dog with an iguana in his mouth. Thankfully, they woke me up and brought me to see the iguana, post-dog attack. Normally iguanas will leave quickly if approached, but this one was clearly injured and perhaps not very mobile, so it was easy to get photos of it as it eyed us warily and whipped its tail. As you can see from the photos, it has a large subtympanal scale and heavily barred tail, clearly marking it as the common or green iguana and not the lesser antillean iguana that I was hoping to find on Pinel. There is still hope, however, that the lesser antillean iguana still lives on Tintamarre.

 

After dozens of visits to Pinel, I was quite surprised to find a small house hidden amongst the trees on the far side. The trees were full of bananaquit and the ground was covered in thousands of hermit crabs. There were pots and pans, a fireplace, a sailboat sail and various chairs and tables. There was even a ping pong table. Later we learned that the house belonged to a woman who built it before the island was a nature preserve and still lives there part-time.

 

Since it was unusually rainy on Sunday, we went with Jenn’s cousin Jim and his aunt Suzie on a tour of closed island attractions. First up was the Plantation, which has apparently been closed since hurricane Omar. Next, we visited The Old House and Rum Museum, which is apparently closed on Mondays and every other day as well. It did have a nice, rusty, wasp-filled boiler. Finally we went to the movies, checking out the game room (Flamin’ Finger, anyone?), the Party Room and the under-construction room. Whatever you do, don’t go to see The Wolfman. Finally, we drove up to Pic Paradis to enjoy the view of the island, as well as St. Barths off in the distance. Good times!

 

Here are a few Grand Case-related photos. First, a spider that had captured a fly. These spiders are very common on our balcony. I believe they are jumping spiders, which doesn’t narrow it down that much as there are over 5,000 known species of jumping spider. Next is a view of Grand Case from Goat Mountain. In the distance you can see the Terres Basses area of St. Martin and part of the lagoon. Our apartment is in the white building with the light green roof directly below the swimming pool, behind the larger white building which is the Les Alizés motel. Last is a photo of some ships sailing in the Heineken Regatta sailing competition. Plans are currently underway for the first annual Presidente Dinghatta dinghy race.

 

A few days ago I returned to Goat Mountain (a.k.a. First Stick Hill) and found it considerably drier than previous visits. Many trees were losing their leaves, which some species do to preserve moisture during dry periods. Of course, since then we have had some substantial rain so it remains to be seen how permanent the change will be. On my visit I saw a few interesting things, including a green caterpillar that was shaped like a fuzzy oval. The head and all the legs were hidden under the large abdomen, making it relatively featureless on the dorsal side, which was a very good, green, fuzzy match for the sage-like leaves of the shrub it was eating.

 

Here are a few photos of some creatures and plants I encountered at the summit of Pic Paradis, the tallest point on the island of Saint Martin. The most interesting was probably the large slug I found crawling across a tree trunk. Compared to slugs I have seen in North America, this had a peculiarly flattened shape and seemed less moist, no doubt an adaptation to the drier climate here. I was also able to spot several dwarf geckos in the leaf litter of the forest, including this Sphaerodactylus macrolepis. There were a number of butterflies as well, including several skippers and a very pale, small sulfur that I did not capture on film (or memory card as the case may be).

Also, I almost forgot to mention that I saw an indian mongoose (Herpestes auropunctatus) running across the road. It looked a bit like a reddish-brown squirrel with a scraggly tail. Apparently the mongoose was introduced to the island in 1888, and since then it has been implicated in the demise of various local species of animal.

 

I happened to look into a hole in a tree near the road at the top of Pic Paradis and found a pair of blue eyes looking back at me. A gentle prodding with a small stick prompted this grasshopper to partially emerge from his hiding place to pose for photos.