 |
PLANKTON BITES, AND BITES HARD. By day it's harmless enough, drifting in the oceanic breeze to be consumed by everything from damselfish to whalesharks, but by night the zillions of tiny beasties that make up the bottom of the food chain act like English football hooligans after a night on the lash in Turkey.
These tiny Nosferatus loved the flesh behind my ears, my cheeks, neck and upper side of my hands. And as well as inflicting pain, they got in my hair, in my ears and, had it not been for the mask, I'm sure they would have got right up my nose as well.
The lights attracted them, and great swarms whizzed around in the beams like five-year-olds in a sugar factory. So you'll understand why, after 10 minutes of abuse to my noggin, I turned my torch off.
Kneeling in the blackness on the sand was like turning off the car headlights at night. I was left sitting in a black hole.
The coral reef within which I sat was, however, a hive of activity. Lights danced, casting eerie shadows as two boatloads of divers and underwater photographers gathered around the large, pyramid-shaped colonies of great star corals found in profusion on this section of Curaçao's fringing reef.
Known as Mushroom Forest, the area is one of the best places on the planet to watch a phenomenon that occurs only twice a year. For in September and October, the corals of Curaçao explode in a hands-off orgy of reproduction. We were here to witness it.
In my experience, most wildlife encounters require equal and large quantities of luck and chance. Curaçao's coral spawning event apparently didn't. The coral may spawn for only around 15 minutes during each event, but marine biologists and divers, so I was told, can almost set their watches by them.
If you are in the water seven nights after the full moon at around 10pm, you will more than likely see something.
So my head was being battered by micro-organisms, I was still jet-lagged after my flight across the Atlantic, but I was there, in October, not quite believing that nature could be this predictable.
We had entered the water early, at 9.30pm, because the divemaster had sensed that the coral might have been thrown by the water being a little warm for the time of year, probably affected by a previous El Ni–o event. It had taken me until 9.45 to find a suitable lump of inert-looking coral with no other divers gathered around.
Great star coral forms huge colonies, so produces a spectacular amount of spawn, usually around 10pm. The September event had taken place at 10.15, so by rights I should have been in good time to see the marine equivalent of a fireworks spectacular.
Mind you, of the 525,600 minutes that make up a year, I had to be in the water during the specific quarter-of-an-hour when the coral forgets itself, rips off its clothes and makes out in front of the world. I wasn't full of confidence.
Coral, being a simple creature, doesn't mate and reproduce like vertebrates. One coral doesn't dress up in its best gear, head out on a Friday night, get drunk and wake up in the morning with a headache next to a stranger, before realising it's pregnant.
Even amphibians or fish make a bigger deal of furthering their species, and probably have more fun doing it.
Coral polyps simply make a whole bunch of eggs and a whole lot of sperm and either release them into the water individually or wrapped in a bundle.
I was expecting the latter. Great star corals and similar species are known to scientists as "broadcast producers", because they expel both sperm and eggs in soluble-membrane covered packets. The membrane is designed to break open, releasing the eggs and sperm to fertilise in open water. The resultant embryo then drifts in the oceanic currents and ends up settling on some distant rock to start a new star coral colony.
Warmwater divers rely on the birth of new coral to provide the bedrock of the marine ecosystem we enjoy so much. So there I knelt, waiting for the phenomenon to bowl me over, as divers flitted from coral head to coral head.
It was warm, but the water was sapping my body's heat 20 times faster than the warm night air above, and I started to feel a little chilled. So I swam a little to warm up, mimicking the other divers and looking at each coral head I passed for signs of reproduction. There were none. Each structure was as unassuming as it had been during the day.
The Mushroom Forest is set within a small bay quite close to the shore, but because of the cliffs it's inaccessible without a boat. The site, like most in Curaçao, is permanently buoyed, so vessels don't damage the reef with heavy anchors, which leaves the coral colonies pretty much pristine.
The buoy is located over the 12m-deep shelf, which is a short swim from the drop-off. The wall is steep, sheer in places, and decorated with a profusion of hard corals, whip corals and impressive colourful sponges.
During the day, fish life is surprisingly diverse and prolific. I'm used to the Caribbean being a blander, less-populated cousin to the Red Sea, Pacific or Indian Ocean, but Curaçao was awash with angelfish, butterflyfish, trumpetfish, parrotfish, bream, grouper, barracuda, morays and a host of other tropicals, in numbers I had rarely seen in the Caribbean.
None were particularly large, but what they lacked in stature, they made up for in numbers.
In the open water just off the reef, great swarms of damselfish cavorted, collecting plankton while barracuda cruised by trying to select an easy meal. On the wall, parrotfish, angelfish and butterflyfish swarmed. And every so often, shoals of brown tang or Creole wrasse would maraud over the coral and ravage the algae in a particular spot before moving on.
On the reef lip, morays are found in the numerous crevices and peacock flounder, snake eels and scorpionfish make life hell for small animals on the areas of rubble between the coral heads.
The plateau, however, is where you find the structures that give the site its name. The great star corals form mushroom-shaped colonies with green tops. Some are massive, but most are the size of a traditional postbox.
During the day, although impressive and with small fish sheltering under the overhang, they are like most other hard-coral colonies and quite inert. What makes them so spectacular, however, is the sheer volume of reproductive packets they produce on those two nights of the year.
Many of the other corals and reef invertebrates that make up Curaçao's reefs spawn within the three-day period of reproductive activity that starts four days after the full moon, yet the star coral was said to be the most impressive to see.
Except that it wasn't playing by the rules. My enthusiasm was waning as boredom began to tickle my brain. It was 10.15pm, and this was not what I had been promised.
Then, through the inky water, I saw a few pale yellow balls, each about the size of a lentil, floating upwards just beside a small star coral to my right.
Was this it? Was I witnessing a spectacle of biblical proportions? It didn't look like it, and I was a little disappointed.
Then something extraordinary happened. The large star coral to my left exploded.
One second it was just a static, slightly green, rough pyramid of hard coral. The next, it had turned bright yellow and become an inverse snowstorm of yellow balls that erupted from every centimetre of the colony. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I turned, and the coral colony behind me started to release a few yellow balls too. Then, in a Mexican wave that raced from the bottom to the top, hundreds of yellow balls of sperm and eggs billowed upwards.
It was hard to tell where they had come from, as the coral's surface had no visible orifices. They just appeared at the surface to be launched into the water column. Looking more closely, I could see the tiny packages appearing at the mouth of each coral polyp just before the colony erupted.
Soon the sea was awash with tiny yellow balls, all heading for the surface, where they would break open and the eggs and sperm mix, fuse and form the beginnings of new star coral colonies.
All the great star coral colonies were doing the same. Something triggered that first one, which in turn triggered all the others. The sea was awash with yellow balls, all gently rising and drifting away from the parent in a slowly dispersing cloud.
The plankton and marine life went nuts. With so much food suddenly around them, it was like walking into a restaurant with a closing-down sale. Brittlestars clambered over everything to get at the nutrients in the water. The plankton was going crazy, and fish usually seen only during the day were out enjoying the free food. Moray eels, garfish and trumpetfish were roaming and snapping at a plethora of potential prey.
For a mere 15 minutes, that tiny bit of sea leapt onto the stage and started singing its heart out, in an Oscar-winning performance. I have seen sharks in a feeding frenzy, turtles fighting and shoals of fish so large that they blocked out the light from the surface, but this spectacle beat them all.
I was watching the birth of creation, the start of all my diving enjoyment. I was undergoing a personal epiphany.
I exhausted a film in 10 minutes and started for the surface surrounded by the dispersing yellow balls, which were already bursting. Visibility near the surface was decidedly hampered by the amount of sperm and eggs already forming new life.
Coral and many other animals use mass spawning as a way of ensuring that at least some of their offspring make it to further the species. Releasing so many gametes into the water means that there is enough sperm to fertilise the eggs and that some of the resulting embryos will be missed by the marine life that consumes vast quantities during that night.
You need only one juvenile coral to land on a suitable surface to start a new colony, but for every one, a million are sacrificed.
The next morning, we were back at Mushroom Forest. It was a different place. In the light, it was easy to see why the Habitat Resort visited the place during the spawning event. The reef is a "Valley of the Kings" beneath the sea. The great star-coral colonies are everywhere, from right up to the shoreline out to the drop-off.
The reef hid its secret night of passion well. Everything appeared normal. There were no signs of the previous night's spawning, and the coral was as inert as it had appeared to be a minute before it went bang.
The ambient clicking of fish and shrimps feeding was as normal as ever too. It was if the spawning had never happened.
But, as in Bethlehem on 25 December in the year 0, the world had changed. The new messiahs were out there, drifting quietly in the current, waiting for their time to found the new colonies of star corals.
|
|
Large star coral in various stages of releasing spawn packets.
Star coral the day after the night before - acting as if nothing has happened
A small shrimp enjoy the abundance of plankton, as the coral spawning sparks off a mass dining event
GETTING THERE: Curaçao is best reached with KLM, connecting through Amsterdam, or connect through Miami.
DIVING & ACCOMMODATION:There are many dive centres. Gavin Parsons' dive was with Habitat Resort, which follows an open-dive policy - you dive when and as often as you like, the centre trusting you to follow the rules and stay safe. It runs special coral-spawning trips for divers (www.habitatdiveresorts.com).
WHEN TO GO : Curaçao is in the Dutch Antilles, close to Venezuela and out of the hurricane belt. It is hot all year round, though the trade winds keep the temperature down a little. Water temperature is usually around 26°C.
LANGUAGE: Official language is Dutch, but the locals speak Papiamento and English is widely spoken, as most visitors are from the USA.
MONEY: Netherlands Antilles florin, but US dollars are accepted everywhere, with an exchange rate set at 1.77NFl.
NON-DIVING ACTIVITIES: Curaçao has many beaches, restaurants and an aquarium. Willemstad (or "Town") is a pretty place with a Caribbean feel, a floating Venezuelan market, quiet squares and good shopping. It gets very busy when cruise ships pull in.
COST: Kuoni Travel (01306 747008. www.kuoni.co.uk) offers seven nights at the Habitat Curaçao in a junior suite with breakfast only, including flights with KLM, from £862 per person based on two sharing. A six-day dive package costs £268 per person.
FURTHER INFORMATION: 020 7317 7416, www.curacao-tourism.com.
|
|
|
