I am now selling select photos on Shutterstock. I would be amazing if you could spread the word. You can also always check out my YouTube Channel. A lot of my under water adventures are on there.
Since I have been volunteering at NOAA doing reef monitoring, I spend a lot of time in the water. As long as I am on the reef swimming anyway, I may as well snap some pictures for myself, right? So here are some of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
Green sea turtle diving.
Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Convict Surgeon Fish Schooling
Green Sea Turtle breathing
Masked Puffer
My husband Rich having a closer look at a Hawksbill
An octopus hiding in a rock
Oval Butterfly Fish over stag coral
Just a Bit of Reef
Octopus!
I don’t take a lot of pictures on land anymore. I am sure that will change in Oahu. It’ll be cooler, so hiking won’t be as unpleasant.
One of my favorite things about being the ocean is being surrounded by schools of fish. I love when they are swimming all around you like thousands of butterflies dancing on the wind. It doesn’t happen very often.
Eating algae off the dead coral
On Gab Gab reef I see a school of Convict Surgeon fish now and then. At fish eye I saw some other surgeon fish once. However, most of the time there are not fabulous schools of fish swimming around me.
Surgeon fish swimming past me
I am pretty new to life in the ocean. I grew up in mountains in California, and then in the desert in Arizona. I have not had much opportunity to even be near an ocean. When I was, it was usually a trip down to Rocky Point where we just splashed in the waves a little.
Bump head parrot fish schooling
When I put a snorkel on for the first time and saw what was under the water, it was amazing. I went from someone afraid to swim to someone that never wanted to do anything else again. I fell in love with the coral, and the fish, and the turtles.
Convict surgeon fish swimming by
Of course, then summer came and the coral bleached. I looked into it and found that the coral has been bleaching and dying off a little more every year. I started to look at what I had thought to be rocks, and realize that it was actually dead coral. Now, I have come to realize that my time being able to appreciate the ocean is short. There is simply too much CO2 in the air and water, and all the coral planting in the world can’t save our reefs.
My favorite picture of surgeon fish schooling by me
I regret not having the chance to see them before they began to die. More than that, I regret that there will probably be nothing left to see in my lifetime. It’s a tragedy that has left my husband and I sobbing on a beach more than once when we really saw how bad it is.
I saw this kind of surgeon fish last time I was in Oahu
However, there are still schools of fish sometimes. There are still manta rays and turtles sometimes. There is still beauty to see, and I am grateful and I feel privileged to have that opportunity. Between this blog and my YouTube channel, I am doing my best to share what I see. I know that not everyone gets the chance to see the reefs, and I hope that I help them connect with the ocean and the animals and plants that live there, even if it is from afar.
My favorite shot of the convict surgeon fish
The ocean is a beautiful place, and I wish that we could save it. That said, I know scientists have said that it is too late. I know that they have said we surpassed the levels of CO2 that will melt the polar ice caps. I know we are already in the middle of a massive extinction (the Holocene extinction.)
Feeding frenzy
However, anything you can do helps. Life often finds a way when no one thought it could, and if we reduce the amount of plastic that we use and try to consume less as a species, some life in the oceans might survive. Whatever you can do, please do it. If you can afford to put Testla roof tiles on your house, do it. If you can buy and use cloth bags for shopping, do it. If you can stop buying single use products, you should.
Schools of fish swimming by me
We should all be doing whatever we can, even if it’s not enough to save every species of coral and fish. If we can save anything, we have to try.
The Crown of Thorns starfish Acanthaster planci (COTS) has contributed greatly to declines in coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and remains one of the major acute disturbances on Indo-Pacific coral reefs.
I hadn’t seen them much around Guam for the first couple of years that we were here. I saw my first one at Dadi Beach on the Navy base. I ran into two at Fish Eye Marine Park, and so on.
However, I had heard that they could sometimes breed like crazy and take over an area. Last weekend, I finally saw that happen.
We were swimming from Gun Beach towards Tumon Bay. As we passed the Beach Bar and the stage where they have traditional dances, we began to see Crown of Thorns star fish. First just one, then another, then another, then another…
By the time we were even with the wedding chapel just past the beach area, we were in the midst of a huge bloom of Crown of Thorns, at depths of 10 feet to 30 feet all along the coral.
It is always discouraging to come upon these very poisonous and very evil star fish who gobble up healthy coral and leave barren wastelands. However, it is even worse at Gun Beach, where last year’s bleaching had already taken so much of the coral. Now what little is left is being gobbled up!
For anyone who snorkels or dives regularly, remember that it can make a huge difference if you report these Crown of Thorns blooms right away to whomever handles such things in your area. Here on Guam, it’s up to NOAA, who do reef monitoring, and who are piloting a program to begin killing Crown of Thorns star fish.
It’s harder than one would imagine to kill a Crown of Thrones. I always figured it would be a good idea to just grab them from the water and let them dry out and die on land. However, it turns out that they spawn when they feel threatened.
If you scare or upset a Crown of Thorns, it will essentially spray babies out. Therefore, it is up to the professionals to strap on a dive tank, and carefully inject each arm of the Crown of Thorns with poison.
This way they are killed without being jostled or moved, and so they don’t know it is happening. (They are only star fish after all, so it’s not like they have brains.)
So the takeaway here is: These evil star fish are killing what coral we have left. If you see something, say something. Don’t try to kill them yourself, or you could make a bad situation worse. And avoid contact because they are very poisonous.
It’s unfortunate that rays are such a rare sight on Guam. My husband and I have been snorkeling nearly every weekend that we have lived here, but we never say one.
Yesterday, we finally saw one for the first time ever and it was glorious. It went gliding along the ocean floor in front of us and it was beautiful. It’s hard to tell scale under water, but it was big. I would guess about four or five feet across; maybe a little more.
If it helps for scale, we were snorkeling on the surface of the water about 30 feet from the ocean floor. Anyway, it was a magical experience and I am really glad that we got to have it before we moved to Hawaii.
One more of the Manta Ray.
If you check out my YouTube Channel, you can find a lot of the other amazing sea life that we have seen here on Guam.
We have come across a lot of stunning things, from turtles to cowrie shells, and even a friendly barracuda. It has been a real adventure living here, and I’ll miss it when we go.
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