



It's just another day at the office for City Dogs Sailing. We woke up with the sun, took the doggos to shore for a quick pee & poops walk, then went back to the boat for a snorkel in West End. This time, we went a bit farther west out to one of the Roatan Marine Park buoys, where we tied up the dinghy with a quick bowline knot and dropped into the water.

Upon submerging, Andrea noticed a spotted eagle ray cruising by, so we followed behind, watching as this big, graceful creature hunted in the shallows. Eventually we let him go and ran into some colorful scrawled filefishes.

We saw at least two matched pairs of scrawled filefish -- their colors are just amazing and they have strong, powerful jaws that can bite into just about anything.

After that, Andrea found a huge moray eel ... and after my third or fourth dive down to try and get a decent video, I noticed there was also a tiny little drummer fish playing around down there. Fun fact: eels are constantly opening and closing their mouths not because they're angry or menacing, but simply to allow fresh sea water down into an internal gill chamber. Who knew?

Our final treat of the morning was running into a sweet squid party -- there were six Caribbean Reef squid in the shallows near the reef and we had a blast just watching them. The colors on their backs, their movement through the water, the look in their large eyes -- everything about these cephalopods is hypnotic and strange. Like other cephalopods, the Caribbean reef squid is semelparous -- meaning they die after mating.

Now it's on to boat projects and working on that novel...