Snorkeling in Bocas del Toro

By Geoffrey Nathan

After a 5 minute boat ride from our station at Bocas del Toro and a quick swim test, our group put on our snorkeling masks and fins and plunged into the warm coral reef waters. I had never snorkeled before and found the fins to be a little awkward at first, but after a few swim strokes I quickly got the hang of it. Looking down at the ocean floor, I was in disbelief at some of my sightings. Alongside the array of colors from the corals, I saw damselfish, parrotfish, puffer fish, barracudas, disc rays, jellyfish, angelfish, butterfly fish, and much more. Whenever I spotted a creature I found interesting, I floated over it for a couple of minutes to watch its behavior. Sometimes fish would scare off other fish in attempts to protect their territory, other times fish buried themselves into the sand, and other times they just swam around a reef or with other schools of fish. It also became apparent to me that levels of the ocean floor can change drastically. There were some areas of the ocean floor where I was 10-15 feet above the ground and within three swim strokes I was forced to do a superman impersonation in order to avoid touching fire coral and sea urchins.

            On our second day of snorkeling it was time to do research. Our invited marine researcher Beatrice instructed us the night before to collect sea grass, identify and mark the territory of a damselfish, and place the grass at locations on the edge of the border and beyond in order to test their defense ranges. The range of the damselfish was measured by the amount of herbivory found on the pieces of sea grass that other herbivores would potentially attempt to eat. My project partner and I unfortunately did not have an easy time with the experiment setup. We swam around the reef for about an hour finding what seemed to be just about every fish but a damselfish. When it started to get a bit tiresome and frustrating, Beatrice who also had been swimming around to check on the different groups, led us to an area of the reef with an abundance of damselfish. Relieved yet still a little frustrated that we had not found this spot earlier, my partner and I dove to place the individual pieces of sea grass. We then floated calmly over an identified damselfish for 10 minutes in order to observe its behavior and any other fish that approached the damselfish’s territory. Occasionally we observed a parrotfish swim up to the territory and watched as the damselfish darted at the parrotfish to send it fleeing.

            Despite blisters from the fins, occasional leg cramps, and exhaustion from hours of swimming, witnessing the coral reef was an incredible experience. Life below the water can often be hard to observe, but at the coral reef an underwater city emerges.