Our next stop was the Little Bay side of Fort Amsterdam. A swim from the beach at the Divi Little Bay resort brought us to a platform and a few boats where there is a sea trek underwater walkway and a sunken submarine that is probably at least 40 feet long. Unfortunately, a large swell made visibility poor, but we did hear that they planned to sink a small helicopter there in the coming weeks. A highlight was a rock formation where brown boobies were resting. We have to return when the viz is better.

We are currently on an extended snorkeling research mission to document as many snorkeling locations on St. Martin as possible. On our first day, we started with the west side of Mullet Bay, which was not too good, just a few rocks with some algae and a smattering of tropical fishes. We did see a lionfish there, though:

Our next stop was Le Trou de David, but the swell was too big there to enter safely. Instead, we tried the pool between La Belle Creole and Pointe de Bluff. The pool is quite large and varies in depth from a few inches to a few feet. Inside the pool it was calm, with a mix of seagrass, sandy bottom and stones. Wildlife included sea cucumbers, juvenile fishes, stingrays and barracuda.

Once again, here are some of Saint Martin’s tiniest residents from the Grand Case area. Of particular interest to me was the awesome spider in the first two photos. It also seems to be a good time of year for many true bugs (order Hemiptera). I feel like I see species I have not seen before almost every day.

Continuing my research on the new hairstreak, I recently took a quick jaunt, looping from Grand Case to Hope Estate and back via the airport road. Although the habitat on this trip was limited primarily to patches of grassland between developed areas, there was a large variety of invertebrate life on display, including several insect species I had not yet seen before.

The Porpoise is a shipwreck on the Dutch side of the island. It’s an artificial wreck that was sunk for diving and it sits on a sandy bottom at about 90 feet deep. There are often large southern stingrays there, although on this dive we only saw a few small ones. It used to sit upright, but after hurricane Omar it has been leaning to the side. As you can hopefully see, it’s one of the prettiest wrecks on Saint Martin.

After a lovely evening at Calmos celebrating my birthday, I managed to get up well before dawn to go meet up with the SXM Trails hiking club for a trek around my favorite local spot, Bell Point. The hike was lovely, of course, and there were a couple stretches through areas I had never walked through. It’s also the first time I’ve been serenaded with the happy birthday song on a hike! Next Sunday we are headed to La Belle Creole.

Hairstreak Alley is actually the dirt track continuing from Route du Millrum in Grand Case, but I figured I would call it that because that’s where I found the new hairstreak butterfly the other day. I was back today to do some research on it and the plants where it feeds because preliminary analysis by a stateside entomologist seems to indicate that this would be the most northerly sighting of this butterfly, and it also may in fact be a new subspecies.

At any rate, since I spent a long time in essentially the same spot today I saw many new things. One was a very interesting green cricket with a red and white back, and several were spiders I had never seen before, including one that has similarities in body and web to the Argiope orb weavers that are so common here. Plus, of course, there were plenty of old friends. I also realized while doing captions for the photos below that the easiest way to look up the proper names is doing so in my own book, which is kind of cool.

I recently found out about a hiking group (SXM Trails on Facebook) that has been doing walks at different spots around the island for about ten years. This morning was my first trip with them. They start early (5:45am), which meant I started even earlier to walk to the meeting point in Colombier. I left at 4:45 and headed the back way through Friars’ Bay, which was a bit eerie, and quite dark because the moon wasn’t out. I ran into a large pig rummaging around the Friars’ Bay Beach Cafe.

It was actually still quite dark at the meeting time, but by the time everyone arrived and found parking the sun was coming up behind the mountains. Our route led from Colombier down Rue Loterie to Loterie Farm where we took trails up to the top of Pic Paradis. The beginning of the trail was especially nice because it led alongside a small stream. Some remains of the Sucrerie Loterie, including a couple large cauldrons and a well, were beside the trail partway up.

For the first hour or so, it was still dark enough and cool enough in the forested areas that there weren’t a lot of animals out and about. I did manage to find a couple caterpillars I’d never seen before and a bunch of familiar creatures. I was fortunate to get a ride home from Jesus, who recently came two votes from winning a council seat in the Dutch side elections. It was his first try, so I think that’s a pretty good start. Next week the walk will be from Hope Estate through Grand Case, around Bell Point and into Anse Marcel. Quite handy, since I won’t have to hike to get to the hike.

I’ve been out and about a bit lately, and it turns out there are still plenty of things I haven’t seen before on the island.

On a recent trip down the airport road I ran into some mangrove buckeye caterpillars, feeding on mangroves, of course. I also went up a small stream that runs down from the Hope Estate area. Due to the mining there, the stream bed is covered in mud from the runoff.

I’ve also been scouting out nearby Mont O’Reilly. I don’t know of any trails that lead up there, so I’ve been testing some ravines as possible paths to the top. One of the first places I tried was on the side facing Grand Case, off Rue Millrum. There were a couple ravines, but they weren’t exactly easy going. I did find a lovely spot on the road where loads of butterflies congregate in the evening to feed and sun. One of them was an unfamiliar hairstreak. When trying to look it up, it didn’t seem to match any of the Caribbean species. A mystery!

Next, I made a couple more attempts, including one starting from La Savane. Again, I made a fair amount of progress up some ravines I found, but there definitely doesn’t seem to be an easy way up there.

Here are a few photos of clouds, sunsets and whatnot. As always, the photos never come close to looking as wonderful as the real thing.