The Grouper

It all started with breakfast on the morning of October 10, 1992. Three friends (Al, Wayne, and Ken) and I were in the Bahamas for two weeks of diving. This was day six. The weather was calm, clear, and warm.

On completing breakfast, I noticed that Ken still had two intact pieces of toast on his plate. I was curious about why he had taken the toast but hadn't eaten it, and I asked. He announced his intention to feed the toast to fish during one of the day's dives. He'd thought it through. He'd put the toast into a plastic bag, and dispense it slowly to whatever fish happened to be interested. The fish would respect the relative size difference, and would politely wait for food to be dispensed.

I'd fed toast to fish before. Usually, you end up in the middle of a mob of yellowtail snappers and sergeant majors. I'd also stopped doing this because this kind of mob scene isn't the kind of behavior in which I'd like to see fish engaged. To phrase this another way, I didn't find it aesthetically pleasing. However, I had no objection if someone else did it.

I figured that Ken really didn't know how thoroughly mobbed he would be. I thought that seeing his reaction would be humorous.

The first dive of the day was at Barracuda Heads. Maximum depth: 50 feet. Perfect for fish feeding. We jump in and head for the bottom.

Nassau grouper

The site contains a number of coral heads separated by sand. We settle onto the sand. A Nassau grouper wanders over to check us out. It's about 16" in length, a respectable size. There are no other fish in the immediate vicinity.


Ken pulls out his plastic bag of (now soggy) toast, carefully opens it just wide enough to reach in and extract a bit of toast. The grouper has taken an interest and floats in the water about 2' in front of Ken. The first bit of toast comes out, and the grouper moves in and takes it in the blink of an eye. It's now about 1' in front of Ken, who reaches for another piece. As quickly as a lightning strike, the grouper moves in for the remainder of the toast. But Ken's got a good hold on the bag.

Now there's a scuffle. The grouper booms, filling the water with low frequency sound. Ken and the grouper are twisting and pirouetting as each struggles to get possession of the bag. Bubbles, sand, and fins are flying in every direction. From my vantage point, I can't tell whether the grouper has Ken's hand in his mouth or not. I start to move in to help, but they separate before I can get there. The entire struggle takes less than 5 seconds.

The grouper has won, but it's eaten a plastic bag in doing so. Groupers are tough, but the plastic bag might eventually kill it. I feel sick. I feel responsible. I could have prevented this whole episode at breakfast. We continue the dive. My logbook shows that we saw lots of other stuff that dive, but now I only remember the grouper.

In September 1993, Wayne and I were back in the Bahamas. On September 4, we revisited Barracuda Heads. Halfway down to the coral heads, I was bitten on the hand by a Nassau grouper, which had approached me from behind. I couldn't be certain, but I'm reasonably sure that it was the same grouper. A Nassau grouper has never bitten me before, and this aggressiveness concerns me. The grouper, on finding that we have no food, spots some other divers and takes off. I pulled out my slate from a BC pocket to write a note to Wayne, and was immediately mobbed by yellowtails. Something's not right here. Fish don't naturally look to humans for food: these have been "trained".

After the dive, I heard one of the other divers relate his story of an encounter with an aggressive grouper on that dive. He showed the bite marks. Apparently, the grouper was so aggressive that the diver felt it necessary to terminate the encounter by stabbing the grouper with his dive knife. Other groupers immediately attacked the injured grouper.

Later that week, at a dive site near Barracuda Heads, I saw a Nassau grouper, about 16" in length, with an enormous section of its back missing, bitten away.

The Birthday

The Birthday

The following was an article that I originally wrote for the newsletter of the New England Aquarium Dive Club. I was a member there during 1998 and 1999, when I was living and working in Massachusetts.

I present the story here as originally written. I'd like suggestions regarding how it might be improved.

Running to Kitkatla on the Redonda Bay

In early September 1986, 6 other divers and I were aboard the Redonda Bay, a dive boat operating in the protected waters of northern British Columbia. The Redonda Bay, unlike most modern live-aboards, was primitive at best, which seemed to fit the wild and craggy landscape through which we passed. Although we departed from Kitimat, the journey's end was to be five days later at Prince Rupert, the northernmost city on the Canadian western coast.

The first two days of the trip had been cool and overcast. While the seas were calm, dark, and not the most inviting for diving, the diving had been good. We finished day 2 with a night dive in Hawk Bay on Fin Island, our anchorage for that night, followed by a soak in one of the natural hot springs.

Day 3 dawned as the previous two days: cool and overcast. After breakfast - and a brief and unsuccessful shore search for a floating underwater camera, lost during the previous night's dive - we raised anchor and motored to the mouth of Hawk Bay. There, we did our first dive of the day.

The bottom is made of tumbled boulders, covered in life. A carpet of brown, broad-leafed kelp, half obscured by silver patches of encrusting bryozoan, prevents the rock from being visible over enormous areas. There are nudibranchs everywhere, the most common of which are small white nudibranchs. Many are engaged in egg-laying, producing large white spirals. Where the kelp does not hide the rock, brilliant purple encrusting coralline algae does. Large colonies of orange social sea squirts and orange cup corals contrast with the algae. The colors are magnificent: red crabs; red, pink, and green anemones; sculpins in pink and green; orange, red, and white sea cucumbers; pink, purple, and red sea stars; bright orange sea peaches. The total effect is mesmerizing, and an hour passes by much too quickly. If I had gills, I would stay longer.

We left Hawk Island shortly after noon, and lunched on the way to Eddershank Island in Nepean Sound. The weather continued overcast and cool. The shore, rising steeply from the water, slipped by. Except at the water's edge, the rocks were completely hidden underneath a cover of dense, dark green pines. Their reflection in the water made the water even less inviting than before. The peaks of the hills were obscured by fog. By 4:00 we had arrived at the island. The trees on shore were impressively tall, with most approaching 100' in height. Surrounded by silent giants, we prepared for the second dive of the day.

This dive site is completely different from the previous one. The broad-leafed kelp is absent, but it's been replaced with plumose anemones. They're huge, most exceeding 2' in height and some approaching 3', and there are so many of them that, from a distance, the rocks look ghostly white. The riot of colors continues here, as it does everywhere on the west coast. There are hydrocorals, sea pens, cup corals, tube worms, crabs of every description, red and purple urchins, sea cucumbers, and sculpins and rockfish in large numbers. There are nudibranchs too, but not the same varieties seen at Fin Island. Instead, these are mostly red-gilled and giant nudibranchs. This dive lasts only 50 minutes, not nearly enough time to explore every nook and cranny. Must we leave?

While the tanks were being filled after the dive, the compressor developed a problem: a broken belt. There was no replacement aboard. Tom, the owner and captain of the boat, contacted home base and arranged to have a replacement belt delivered by air to Kitkatla, about 60 miles to the northwest. We couldn't be there until the next day, and at that we had to hustle to recoup as much of the day as we could. Fortunately, it wasn't too far out of our way. Although some of the tanks had been refilled, there would be no more diving on day 3.

We weighed anchor and headed up Principe Channel. Supper was prepared, and we ate shortly before nightfall. The sky was clearing in the west. It looked as though some nice weather was on its way for day 4.

Immediately after supper, many of us learned that it was Brenda's birthday. Mark, the organizer of the trip, had known about this beforehand and had managed to smuggle aboard a birthday cake without alerting the other passengers. Just before sunset, we had our birthday cake in the open air on deck at the boat's bow. Seven people quietly enjoyed each other's company after a satisfying day of diving (and after a good meal), the sunset glowing the shade of sea stars through breaks in the clouds, the steady, quiet chug of the engine, the gentle lapping of water against the hull. The scene could hardly have been more perfect.

At the final setting of the sun, two Dall's porpoise came to ride the bow. We laid down on the deck with our heads overhanging the bow to watch them. They scooted and danced less than 6' below us, shooting from side to side, occasionally turning slightly on their sides to look up at us. Moments later, they were gone, as quickly as they had arrived. We told Brenda that the porpoises had come to celebrate her birthday. She needed no convincing. She already knew.

It had been a good day.

A Change of Focus

A Change of Focus

The following was an article that I originally wrote for the newsletter of the New England Aquarium Dive Club. I was a member there during 1998 and 1999, when I was living and working in Massachusetts.

I present the story here as originally written. I'd like suggestions regarding how it might be improved.


It was 1983. I had been certified for nearly 3 years, and was on my 2nd trip to the Bahamas. Although I had 68 dives under my belt before this trip, few of these were on coral reefs, so I still considered myself something of a novice. My past impressions of tropical diving consisted of remembrances of colors: blue water, purple sea fans, yellow and brown coral. Life consisted of a myriad of fish whose names I did not know, and some that I did know: barracuda, shark, sting ray, angelfish, grouper.

I enjoyed tropical diving. The water was warm, and the sights were rather more exotic than the eastern Ontario lakes and rivers with which I was familiar. I'd read many of the magazines. Bahamas diving was supposed to be spectacular, and yet I didn't find it so. Looking back, I realize now that I didn't feel connected to the coral reef. I was simply a sightseer.

On August 7, 1983, on my second dive of my trip, something happened that irrevocably changed the way I dive.

I had traveled to the Bahamas alone. For this dive, I was buddied up with two people that I really didn't know. We had no real plan as to what we were going to do for the dive, other than looking at fish and trying to find "interesting" things. The dive site was typical of the "second dive" shallow sites in the area: small, low coral heads separated by sandy areas. About halfway through the dive, I noticed another diver hovering motionless above a flat section of one of the coral heads. I recognized her. She was an older woman, probably in her early sixties. She was diving with her husband, who I saw disappearing to the other side of the coral head, out of sight.

She was hovering horizontally a couple of feet above a flat section of coral, unmoving but breathing normally. Because her husband was not in view, I paused about 50 feet away just to watch and make sure that she was OK. Her forearms were up against her chest, and her mask was pointed straight down. I couldn't imagine what she was doing.

After a couple of minutes, she began moving. She extended her hands into a small crevice in the reef below her, and all that I could see was that she was doing something with her fingers. In a few seconds, she lifted her hands from the reef. They were cupped together, as though she had something in her hands. As she raised herself into a vertical position, she began looking around, presumably for her husband. He was still out of view. She saw me and beckoned me over. My curiosity was piqued. When I got to her side, she carefully opened her hands to reveal the smallest creature that I had yet seen on a coral reef. It was a small white brittle star, easily less than half an inch across. I was impressed that this woman had taken the time to study the brittle star and had taken the time to share it with someone.

Unidentified brittle star

Because of that event, I began thinking about reefs in a completely different way. Before, a reef was simply a place where exotic fish could be found. Now, I see it as an entire community in and of itself.

Getting to know these communities well is the challenge. In my experience, most divers who travel to the tropics go to see fish, but there is so much more. In addition to the reefs, there are other communities. Sand is usually overlooked, while eelgrass flats and mangrove shallows are generally considered to be far too shallow to be of interest. For me, a complete tropical dive experience now includes all of these environments.

My diving, never fast to begin with, has slowed down even more. I like to take the time to really inspect an area, because the smallest details are the easiest to miss but can be the most interesting as well. I learn the names of the organisms that I observe. I try to see how everything fits together.

My memories are much more complete now: sponges and the organisms that live in them, riotous colors of small sponges that grow in shadows, anemones and shrimp and crabs, the way that a jawfish constructs its burrow, the vibrant colors of tropical nudibranchs. By getting to know the marine environments, I feel vastly more connected than I used to. I wouldn't have it any other way.