Honduras Underwater: Shore Dives

Part of the appeal of CoCo View is that right off its beach is one of the best dive sites in Roatan.

Three of the best dive sites, actually. (CoCo View Wall, Newman's Wall, and the wreck of the Prince Albert.)

After a boat dive many people choose to be dropped off in the water instead of on the dock. You can do a second dive at one of these sites and return home underwater.

On the right, Chris demonstrates that you don't need to end your dive just because you're 15 feet from shore. If there's air in the tank, use it!

Megan on the Prince Albert, the intentionally-sunk old schooner off CoCo View's shore.

On Newman's Wall we caught sight of the neighborhood barracuda stopped at a cleaning station. What luck!

This mean-looking fish would often hang around the house reefs. He scared us the first couple times we saw him by slowly circling as if he were sizing up prey. Fish at cleaning stations are more docile than normal, but our bravery here may have been unwise.

Barracuda do sometimes bite people. Megan met a colleague at Bank of America with a large scar from one.

Note the pearly whites.

Routine visits to the cleaning station are the best for pesco-dental hygiene!

Here's why the barracuda and grouper hang around the reef (and need those teeth in good working order).

Here comes the big fish!

These are scads, but they're often generically called "silversides"; the school is often called a "bait ball."

They shift and swim like one great undulating creature. Supposedly the mass of movement confuses predators who need to isolate single fish as prey.

Swimming amongst them is one of the most exhilarating experiences we've had as divers.

It was also fun to watch the grouper swim with them.

Some of the most charismatic fish: the puffers. It's those big eyes that do it.

This little guy is a porcupinefish. Not-so-little, really. He's probably about 18" long.

The ones below are sharpnose puffers. They're just a few inches long. With their rapidly-moving fins they look a bit like swimming hummingbirds.

Here's a graysby, a variety of grouper.

Like parrotfish, these are "sequential hermaphrodites". They starts life as females and transform into males.

We'd pass this garden eel colony just about every day.

A graceful stingray, yet another highlight of our Roatan dives.

Friends, family, and Steve Irwin fans: we weren't quite as close to that barb as it looks.

Just off the beach we spent some quality time with a sand diver.

These guys generally bury themselves in the sand when threatened.

Unfortunately for him concrete only looks like sand.

Fortunately for us lizardfish such as sand divers are fairly harmless.

Sorry, little fella, compared to the barracuda your teeth are just cute.

Who needs sand to hide? The trumpetfish: master of vertical camouflage!

Don't tell him we saw him. It really was a valiant attempt.

Above: grunts and a parrotfish. Below: wrasse.

All these fish were photographed in the sea grass — just a few feet below the surface.

A squirrelfish and a foureye butterflyfish.

Rain or shine, the water is perfect. On the last day, we really didn't want to get out.