Before my visit, I’d seen many pictures of impossibly
turquoise Caribbean waters but was never entirely sure I believed them. Maybe
the colors were manipulated, I thought. I’d seen beautiful ocean views in Costa
Rica, Mexico, the US Virgin Islands, and elsewhere, but nothing quite matched
the hues of those photographs – until I saw the electric colors of Belize’s
coral reefs.
Setting out from Belize City, my family and I had traveled
25 miles by boat through the brightly colored water to Turneffe Atoll, out in
the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. Our destination was Blackbird Caye (named for
the grackles that hang out on the beaches), site of the Oceanic Society’s
marine research station.
Turneffe is the most biologically diverse coral atoll in the
entire Western Hemisphere, home to mangroves, reefs, sandy islands, lagoons,
seagrass beds, and more. The atoll also boasts the country’s only population of
offshore Antillean manatees and the country’s largest population of saltwater
crocodiles, while the mangroves are a nursery for many species of fish and
other wildlife.
Our first stop was a reef near Calabash Caye, one of the
best protected in the area. Among the elkhorn, staghorn, and brain coral, we
saw Queen conch, lobster, and a small school of Caribbean reef squid. With its
combination of hard and soft corals and schools of colorful fish, this reef was
one of the healthiest I’ve ever seen in the Caribbean, comparable only to those
of Tobago. After lunch, we also explored the reef in front of the station and
were lucky to witness a brief view of a graceful eagle ray swimming by in
addition to many fish.
The Oceanic Society opened its station in 1999 with the goal
of studying the incredible amount of ocean wildlife in the area and protecting
important habitat on Blackbird Caye. After years of research and advocacy, this
area was declared a marine reserve in late 2012, finally affording protection
to some of Belize’s most important ocean habitats. In addition to its
contributions to the reserve, the Oceanic Society has contributed in other ways
to the protection of this area, including testifying on the potential impact of
oil drilling on dolphins (which was ultimately stopped) and providing
employment and educational opportunities for local residents.
We had perfect conditions as we headed out the next morning
to look for bottlenose dolphins. A flat sea made searching easy, helped by a
lack of wind and good visibility. Accompanied by the Oceanic Society’s Eric
Ramos, a laid-back graduate student studying marine mammals, we explored
several lagoons surrounded by mangrove islands in our search.
Along the way, we saw a barge chugging along, carving out a
bright blue line on the shallow ocean floor. While this area feels almost
untouched by tourism, this boat on its way to supply a large new resort being
built on a nearby island was a sign that even the new protections aren’t always
enough to prevent damage to this fragile ecosystem. Fortunately, the country has
largely been spared the coastal overdevelopment that has plagued Cancun to the
north.
Soon we found Pat and Cat, a bottlenose mother and calf, who
were feeding in the area called Grande Bogue. Cat, the calf, stayed close to
mom as they cycled between feeding and resting. They both kept their distance
from the boat but gave us a couple of opportunities to capture them with our
cameras, underwater video camera, and audio recorder. On one pass, the calf, Cat
showed our underwater camera its belly, a common behavior of young dolphins,
allowing Eric to identify it as a male.
Eric has spent the past couple of summers here in Belize
studying how the different vocalizations (clicks and whistles) correspond to
their various behaviors. He is focusing on studying dolphin sounds, an
increasingly important area of research as noise from boats and other human
activities grows. One of the behaviors Eric is researching is the dolphin’s use
of low-frequency sonar to stir up fish out of the seagrass beds to feed.
After lunch, we headed out again, this time finding another
mother and calf known to researchers as Sawfin and Chance. Older than Cat,
Chance ranged farther from mom as they moved around a lagoon near the research
station. They made several passes by the boat, with this calf also showing its
belly (though we already knew Chance was a female). They too bored of our
presence after a while and moved on under the cover of the blue waters.
That night over dinner, we chatted with the station’s staff
and students, reliving our experiences and hearing more about these amazing
animals. In a single day we learned more about dolphins than we had from years’
worth of documentaries and movies, including how they communicate, what their
daily life is like (hunt, rest, repeat), and how protective the mothers can be.
We also saw first hand some of the threats that the marine
life of this area faces like increasing tourism and boat traffic. The research carried out by the Oceanic Society will help those who manage the marine reserve
better protect dolphins and other wildlife.
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