Map of the Key Largo and Islamorada area, showing a few of the dive sites.
Great barracuda swimming along just beneath the surface at the Elbow during my last NURP mission in October, 1996.
Four barracuda near the surface...these are young adults (over 2' in length, but nowhere near the size of some of the other barracuda that you'll commonly see in the Florida Keys) and tended to stick together quite tightly. Exactly why they stick together is a good question, and formed the basis of much of my graduate research. The short answer is that there are lots of possible answers — welcome to the uncertain world of behavioral ecology!
Barbie, the big resident barracuda on the Aquarius habitat. Invariably, these kind of resident barracuda end up being named 'Barry' but, because the odds are good that the largest barracuda on a reef are females, we went for gender equity and tried to even the score a little in assigning a name. She — or, perhaps, he — has been a fixture on the 'wet porch' and other parts of the Aquariusundersea habitat. The habitat, formerly located in the US Virgin Islands, is run by NURP and accommodates scientists for week- to ten-day-long saturation missions...it's also a dandy place for barracuda to hang out. A large group of barracuda associated with the habitat's support barge while I was working with NURP, but Barbie pretty much stuck to her patch around the habitat itself (she even stuck around when the habitat and barge were removed for a lengthy service). From recent descriptions, it sounds like Barbie's still watching over the habitat and its scientists.
The other side of Barbie...
Barbie, on the move near the Aquarius habitat — her stomach looks like it was really empty during this encounter.
Barracuda under the Aquarius support barge...this shows just a small part of the big group (typically 75-100 barracuda under the barge, with more in peripheral groups) that gathered beneath the habitat's support barge. Almost all of the barracuda were at least 3' in length, with some up around and over about 5' long. Swimming among these predators was always quite an experience, and I was able to get very close quite easily. Wish I was there now, actually...
A big 'cuda cruises by the Aquarius habitat.
Part of the larger group beneath the support barge.
Two barracuda play 'follow the leader' at Conch Reef.
Two barracuda sticking together within the larger aggregation beneath the habitat support barge. Their individually-unique lateral blotches are very apparent.
Close-up of a great barracuda...nice teeth. This barracuda was a fixture at The Elbow, an excellent site that is loaded with fishes and healthier-looking coral than many other shallow reefs in the Keys, has a whole cluster of old wrecks, and usually has the best visibility in the area (it juts out a bit and catches some clear Gulf Stream water). The intrepid Captain Slate does his critter-feeding extravaganzas here, that probably explains the in-your-face approachability of the site's barracuda population and the easily-frenzied yellowtail snappers that managed to effectively obscure half of the video that I've ever shot at the Elbow.
Another large barracuda that was a long-term resident at the Elbow.
The pensive barracuda...what's going on in that mind? Quite possibly "I like to eat little fishies...little fishies good...little fishies yumyum" (and now you know why I'm not specializing in study of animal awareness).
Yet another Barracuda Appreciation Photo...the diver in the background is not to scale, in case you were wondering (it's Jay Feeley, my assistant during 1996, using my video unit at the Aquarius site)
One more barracuda portrait...just the tip of the iceberg! Photography and videography proved very handy in capturing data for my graduate research, though extracting the data often proved tedious beyond belief. I consider myself fortunate to be conducting underwater research at a time when diving technology, imaging technology, and terrestrial computing technology have helped make previously impossible tasks merely improbable. Technology is not a cure-all, but upcoming advances in diving gear will undoubtedly make underwater research even more productive and safe.
Great barracuda accompanied by small bar jacks...several plausible explanations exist for this 'following' behavior, including that (a) the jacks are tagging along in hope of getting scraps from the barracuda's meal, (b) the jacks are keeping this potentially dangerous animal in sight (and letting it know that they are aware of its presence) by following it, (c) they're using the bigger fish's slipstream to 'hitchhike' from place to place, (d) they're protecting themselves from other piscivores by 'allying' with the barracuda, (e) there's some (possibly mutually-beneficial) foraging advantage to the relationship, or (f) all of the above or some combination of the above (and other factors not mentioned).
A large barracuda shows off just how adeptly it's able to blend with the transparency of open water.
A barracuda in the 2-1/2 foot range checks me out as I pass across its home sand patch. On many of the shallower reefs I visited in the Keys — particularly at North and South Carysfort Reefs (two of my favorite spots, though the coral's getting more and more thrashed every year at both sites) — many small and large sand patches inevitably had at least one barracuda waiting patiently in them (for what?).
The same barracuda — its very pale 'mottled' coloration is apparent and matches well with lighter-colored substrates found in its habitat, especially when visibility is down and the water itself appears grayish.
Barracuda, head-on...odds are good that you'll see barracuda from this perspective quite a bit (and maybe get 'yawned' at, that is probably a low-level threat display). Barracuda are often undoubtedly curious, but sometimes their lack of shyness can be a tad intimidating.
Hello...sometimes barracuda couldn't get much closer without donning your SCUBA gear
Another approaching barracuda...twelve o'clock high, straight out of the sun. Oddly enough, barracuda seem to know exactly where the blind spots are in human vision, and close approaches are often a real surprise. Barracuda appear to hate my attempts to cross behind them (to get photos or video of both sides of the fish for identification purposes), though, probably because I briefly enter their blind spot — as a result, I've ended up swimming in continual circles with barracuda on many occasions.
One more no-nonsense head-on approach from a barracuda at the Elbow before we get on to other beasties that share the barracuda's habitat...
Creole wrasses, barracuda, and horse-eye jacks on the Aquarius habitat...this site was pretty rich in predators. During my second year with NURP, I often saw some huge tarpon at the site — they didn't seem to pay the barracuda much respect, though, and would usually do the piscine equivalent of elbowing their way through the crowd beneath the barge. One scientist saw black marlins at Conch Reef (the site of Aquarius habitat). At the same site a team of scientists had a too-close encounter with a mako shark ("too-close" because visibility was very low, meaning that the shark was way too close for a mako). I began one of my research trip's diving two days after the shark encounter, in terrible visibility, and my first tarpon encounter of the trip was thus somewhat more exciting than usual.
Southern sennet, one of the smaller schooling species that coexist with great barracuda in the Western Atlantic. In three years this was the first I'd seen of the species, that seemed to be resident on Davis Reef for a few months in 1996. When I wanted to do a project that required several barracuda species to coexist in the same area I had to move my focus to the Indo-Pacific region (Papua New Guinea, to be specific).
More sennet, swirling about in a very compact school. A solitary great barracuda was right behind their 'curtain,' sitting in the middle of a sand patch.
Permit...a highly-regarded game fish in Florida, cruising past me into a stiff current at the Elbow. I saw a few of these in the Florida Keys but most of my encounters date from my earlier dives in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where they were a regular occurrence at wall sites. Permit will often make fast approaches at divers (as will black jacks and certain other carangids) and the usual way that you'll see them is as a fast-moving, transient presence.
Green moray, a species that grows big in these waters (it maxes out at about 8'), at Conch Reef. On one of my 1995 research trips, with my brother (now a noted author and authority on WWII U-boat history) as my research assistant, I was somewhat startled (this being somewhat of an understatement, in the sense that the eruption of Krakatau was somewhat noisy) when a large green moray suddenly reared up before me like a striking cobra and swayed in the current before we both jumped back (not easy to do underwater) and went in mutually exclusive directions. I think what happened was that the moray (in search of a snack, perhaps, though they're generally nocturnal feeders and have very poor eyesight...sort of a piscine Mr. Magoo) and I (in search of barracuda) were both oblivious to the fact that we were on a collision course until the very last minute. Another exciting moment with morays came on a beautiful (albeit perpetually low-vis) inshore reef called Hen and Chickens, when I was kneeling in a sand patch, filming a smaller spotted moray snaking out of its hole to a fish carcass left by a fisherman. The moray grabbed the fish in its jaws and wiggled its way backward across the sand but managed to miss the hole it had just vacated by a good ten feet, backing up between my knees, instead. At least I was able to get a good close-up.
Nassau grouper — as I mentioned above, this species is often a very approachable beast that must be no challenge at all for a spearfisher. Sometimes these groupers act as much like puppydogs as they look, and will follow divers around the reef for a while. Sadly, they're being decimated throughout the wider Caribbean region as a result of overfishing, primarily, particularly with targeted hammering of the huge spawning aggregations that form each year at predictable times and places. Many of the Nassau grouper's known spawning sites have already been depleted. When I began my postdoctoral position at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research I discovered that the Nassau grouper — in the '60s the second-most caught commerical species in Bermudian waters — is commercially extinct (possibly even biologically extinct, or well on its way there) and has been for a number of years. Divers who'd dived around Bermuda for 25 years or more had never seen a Nassau grouper in all their dives there.
Butter hamlet...sometimes, this fish has an extra black blotch above its jaw. Hamlets are colorful inhabitants of Western Atlantic reefs but the really interesting thing about them is that they are simultaneous hermaphrodites — both male and female at the same time, switching modes with their mates during spawning. As if that weren't enough, there's debate on whether the many different-looking 'species' are really species at all, or just color morphs of one species. Whatever the truth, hamlets are always a highlight of any dive in the Keys.
A young hogfish...these large wrasses (they grow up to 3' long) have quite an array of color changes and spend a lot of time rooting around in the sand, like their terrestrial namesakes, searching for food. They are a very tasty fish and offer little challenge to spearfishers, as is also true of many grouper species, because they often approach divers very closely. Hogfish usually occur alone, but once I saw a big school of them off the wall around South Caicos Island, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Like many wrasses, hogfish change from female adults to 'supermales' once they reach a large size.
Queen parrotfish...I've generally found it hard to get pictures of parrotfishes in the Florida Keys (had a lot of luck in the Turks and Caicos Islands, with video, though), primarily because it's hard to catch them between bites of coral or algae, as they slip their way through gorgonian fields. They're much more approachable in the Keys than I found their cousins in Papua New Guinea to be, though. Oddly enough, the only parrotfish species that have really approached me in PNG have been the bumphead parrotfish (the largest parrotfish species), a species generally considered to shy away from divers...bumpheads got so close that my photos are almost all of parts of the fish's head, not the whole body. Queen parrotfish are a common sight on Western Atlantic reefs, and spend most of their day swimming about the reef, grazing on algae, that is exactly what this one was in the middle of doing.
French grunts clustered about a coral head on Davis Reef. This is a very common and extremely abundant species in the Florida Keys — grunts spend most of the day sheltering in particular areas of the reef before following 'traditional' feeding migration routes to their nocturnal feeding grounds, away from the reef, where they disperse to munch on invertebrate prey. By early morning, they're back at their daytime resting sites.
Pair of foureye butterflyfish and elkhorn coral...this photo comes from a roll that I shot at the wrong speed, but I kind of like the ominous darkness of it. The butterflyfish have false eyespots near their tails (a common morphological antipredatory device), giving rise to their common name. The elkhorn coral's growth form is one that's unique to the Western Atlantic and very distinctive — elkhorn grows fast, that is a good adaptation for shallow-water corals in areas often hit by hurricanes and other severe weather (not to mention idiots in motorboats).
Another beleagured elkhorn coral — they're now so rare in parts of their range (including areas in the Keys) that there's talk of getting them listed as a threatened or endangered species.
Spotfin butterflyfish...again, the eye's position is obscured — this time by a vertical black bar. Divers in the Western Atlantic can see five butterflyfish species (a sixth lurks down below 250-300'). This level of diversity is a fraction of the number that divers in the Indo-Pacific might run across. In Papua New Guinea, that may have the greatest butterflyfish diversity on Earth, at least 36 butterflyfish species occur — I encountered most of that total in one small part of Papua New Guinea. This image of the spotfin butterflyfish was used as the basis for a 70-cent airmail postage stamp in Bermuda during 2003.
Christmastree worms...after a long day spent taking barracuda snapshots, I thought I'd see what my housing, camera, and lenses can do on a smaller scale.
A colorful tubeworm caught my eye during the few minutes that I had my vision adjusted to size scales other than those of the 'charismatic megafauna' that I was studying. The reef has a lot of intricacies, secrets, and beauty for those who take the time to look a little closer. Of course, it's still pretty darned impressive enough even for those of us who don't see much beyond the big stuff.