Our limousine was a 15 foot metal boat with enough green wooden benches to seat at least fifteen people and a tarp canopy overhead which was a major improvement from the previous day without the shade. Our tuxedoes were bright neon orange life preservers that went on the body in the old fashioned way of over the head and the single thin buckle to go around the body, but no one was complaining when our boat took off at a surprising 60mph, racing towards the low-lying mangrove patches that announced the entrance to the marine park. Our very helpful and well-rounded guide, Luis, expertly weaved his clunky vessel in and out of the tangled roots of the red mangrove trees picking up garbage in the boat’s wake in a manner that spoke of a deep-seated respect for the sea. Luis managed to get the boat close enough to the roots of the trees, where the water was only a couple of feet deep and he could grab a sea cucumber or sea star and pass it around for everyone to hold and see.

We next moved over to a shallow, sandy-bottom habitat, to begin snorkeling. Upon entering the water it came as a joyful surprise to me to see how absolutely biodiverse and healthy the environment was. Right away I saw two little four-eyed butterfly fish looking at me with an anthropomorphized curiosity. In this first location there were a few coral species: brain coral, fire coral, and a species of branching coral unknown to me. There were at least twenty varieties of sponge coming in all sorts of colors: reds, greens, yellows, orange, blue, and even a lavender purple. I saw one anemone, a sort I had only seen before in aquariums, with long translucent tentacles that were tipped with a splash of electric green. Encrusting all the rocks and growing on some of the coral was at least four different varieties of coralline algae (a type of very slow-growing algae that has a calcium carbonate skeleton much like hard coral) which grew in branching segments only a few inches high, or grew in plates much like a shelf fungus would grow on a tree, or grew in small spheres clustered together on patches of bare rock. All three of these were a bright and vivid chlorophyll green. The fourth algae grew like lichen on the rocks and was a pale burgundy.

There were hundreds of white urchins that had occasional purple or dark brown pigmentation on the tips of their many movable spines. Sea cucumbers were dark green, nearly black and scattered here and there leaving a trail of oblong sand pellets in the wake of their always-hungry mouth, the largest at around 15 inches and the smallest at about 6. There were many, many blennies all the same dusty tan color with a couple of dark brown bands on the nose and a few dark stripes on either side of the dorsal fin, the largest at around 4 inches. The entire bottom was covered with a species of seaweed I don’t know that grew up from the bottom to a height of about one foot that was chartreuse and branched out towards the surface in a way that reminded me of the branch of a juniper tree. A thicker, blade-like seaweed grew in between this, I suspect turtle grass. Here and there one would spot shiny little spheres in the substrate or in between sponges that looked like green and purple glass marbles. Luis later informed me that these were in fact a type of algae, that I then googled to find that they are called Valonia ventricosa, or bubble algae and that they are one of the largest single-celled organisms on earth. On every sponge or coral one could see bristle stars there must have been hundreds of them, each about the size of my hand.

Occasionally a sponge would send a cloudy puff of gametes into the water, triggering other sponges around it to do the same thing. Within 45 minutes of snorkeling the water quality reduced and visibility shrank to only about 10 to 15 feet in any direction, the water was thick with gametes. Suddenly I was surrounded by a school of maybe a thousand tiny minnows with more joining in all the time that were a translucent brown-green with an electric green iridescent stripe along their lateral line. These fish were feasting on the millions and millions of sponge gametes now floating around them and me. Raising my head out of the water, I located the boat and made my way back to it.

Luis then took our group to a small stretch of reef where the current was strong enough to allow one to just float along the surface and drift down the reef towards the restaurant where we would be having lunch. Here I saw much of what I saw at the other location. There were even more varieties of sponges, including large purple tube sponges growing as much as two and a half feet high with a huge round opening, upon looking inside one I found a small arrow crab. There were wide patches of stony coral, dull red in color, due to the corals symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae (a photosynthetic dinoflagellate that builds the coral’s calcium carbonate skeleton and provides glucose to the polyp, which in turn gives the zooxanthellae a safe home). On these coral beds lived bristle stars, small colorful fish, and black urchins no bigger than my fist, but with spines that reached nearly ten inches in length. Drifting along I spotted another anemone, like the one at the first spot, but it must have been a different species because at the tips of the translucent tentacles was a shocking and yet very beautiful neon pink.

There were a few slippery dick each about a foot or so long gracefully chasing each other in a playful manner. An unfortunate name for such a beautiful fish. It is a member of the wrasse family with a gorgeous thick bright rainbow iridescent stripe going along its flanks, surrounded by even more flashes of bright rainbow colors in irregular patterns. I became distracted by a blue fish that was trying to open up some sort of mollusk by forcefully hitting the shell against a rock. It would hit it a couple of times then toss it up and catch it again its mouth and hit it against the rock on a different side. This must have been a learned technique after finding it liked the taste enough of the snail to spend the energy trying to break it free of its shell.

Here and there I would see a sponge sending its gametes into the water but the current was so that I couldn’t stick around for very long to watch. Luis met us at the end of the reef and threw out ropes for us to hold on to while he towed us back to the start of the reef. However, once again, the water clarity had changed drastically in only a few minutes. The second time down the reef the water was foggy with sponge gametes. However now there was no massive minnow school to feast on the bounty in the water. From nowhere, jellies emerged. There weren’t very many, I only saw two moon jellies (one as big as a dinner plate and the other was much smaller and reddish) feasting on the food around them in the beautiful and peaceful ways of jellies. The second time down the reef I drifted all the way to the restaurant which rested on a dock overlooking the water passing many sergeant majors, and a few varieties of snapper on the way. Being extra careful not to accidentally brush up against any of the submerged wooden posts so as not to get stung by the hydroids growing on the beams. Landing on the slippery submerged wooden ladder, I pulled myself up on to the dock and concluded a rather wonderful biological experience.

We returned to the main island after a quick stop to see some three toed sloths lazily carrying out their existence in the calm and peaceful way that I believe only sloths can manage (they are so slow they naturally grow algae). Then to eat some oysters that Luis was able to pluck from the roots of mangroves because the tide was low enough to reach them. And finally to observe the incredible biological diversity that occurred in the roots of mangroves. I saw maybe five completely different species of sponges than I saw before. All sorts of bivalves grew incredibly close to members of a different species. There were oysters (which typically grow only in clusters of their own species) next to several varieties of clams. Beneath the bivalves were feather duster worms that pulled in their red and white feather-like tendrils when out of the water. Below them still were the brightly colored sponges which had little shrimps living in its porous body who jumped for the water when exposed to the air. The sponges were also covered with black bristle stars clinging to its surface with their thousands of tube feet. At the end of the day we all returned satisfied with our memorable adventure and most of us with rather incredible sunburns.