I came upon a beach where thousands and thousands of starfish had washed up on the shore. I saw an old man walking along picking them up one by one and throwing them one by one back into the sea. I went down and asked the old man what he was doing. He said, "I'm throwing these starfish back into the water, for without the water, they can not breath and they will die." I said, "But there must be thousands of these starfish here. What makes you think it will make any difference?"
The old man picked up another starfish, tossed it back into the sea, turned and looked at me and said. "Well my brother you see, it made a difference to that one."
~ Author Unknown~
The last days of summer are upon us and I am finally getting back into the water after a so long wait. I have so much to make up for, so many fish to poke and things to see. I never thought I could miss the sea so much, but here I am, with straight days of diving planned, the bay, a wreck and the inlet. All the things I have missed.
The Back Bay in Belmar. I haven’t been here yet, I missed the mating of the horseshoe crabs and the slow return of life to the sandy bay bottom. Each week is different, a small difference but one you never get back. I meet a group from Divers Two after dinner for one of their Happy Hour Dives. We gear up in the fading evening light, wondering if the temperature and visibility will be our friend or if dark and chill will send us back early.
I am joining Carl and two of his students who are making their first night dives. We swim out to some deeper water and drop down as the gray of evening settles on the water. It follows us down and the water is dark and gloomy, lit up only in the circle of our lights. That is enough though, the first thing our lights hit upon is a small black tropical with white spots. I have no idea what it was and it swam off before I could poke it, but the promise of things to see sends us on our way.
Small is the theme this evening. Compared to the inlet side of Shark River, the starfish are small and there only a few in the 2-4 inch range. Tons of little blackfish swim through the beams of our lights and swarms of small drumfish, I think they are drumfish, those light colored fish with the spot on them, anyway they are all around. Flounder, still cant tell them from fluke so don’t hold me to it, but flounder the size of my hand are all around. They give me that googlyeyed stare like a cartoon fish and I scoot them on their way.
I pick up a few bottles off the bottom and give them a shake to see who is home and am greeted by a few teeny crabs with attitudes not happy about being rousted from their homes. Small glass eels are weaving their way about the grass and algae and a lonely 2 moon snails is all we come across. I never tire of watching them pull themselves into their shell. It always amazes me they can fit.
There is a lone whelk shell as we swim along and when I pick it up I am greeted by the sight of an empty shell with a small crab crawling about. And a small blowfish sat for a bit while we all shined our lights on him and took a look.
There were a few exceptions to the small rule. The blue claws were looking big and healthy and the hermit crabs were gargantuan.
As we finned along, a slight current kept us moving with little effort and I stopped for a moment when I saw what I can only describe as a scene from Sponge Bob Square Pants…… a gi-normous, as in scary big, horseshoe crab shell just sitting on the bottom and through the square opening where his tail used to be you could easily see a large blue claw crab just sitting and munching away on a little late night snack in his little bachelor pad. It made me laugh.
There was one other little find which always makes the dive worthwhile. Seahorses. Seahorses were hiding in the grass and I found a yellow and an orange one. Always the forerunners in fashion and complimenting their surroundings, they are amazing to watch.
We might have seen more with a little better viz, but we did just fine. We surfaced and as we slowly swam back to shore, just enjoying the water and quiet of the night, we noted that we hadn’t seen many tropicals. No butterfly fish, no pipefish, no live whelk. So few puffer fish and moon snails and no larger eels. I had seen the flash of trigger fish at the edge of my light, but no one else had caught sight of any. You have to go often to see everything, it makes a difference. They don’t all come out at once. I have so much catching up to do.