Jan 23 - It is sunny again today, so back to the beach for more snorkeling. The weather report shows rain coming, so best to take advantage of outdoor activities now.
During our trip out to the reef, the only fish I see that I didn’t see yesterday is a masked pufferfish. We saw a lot of these at Dahab (Day 257). I would note that the fish life here is as much as one would hope from tropical waters, but the coral is in bad shape. A bleaching event in 2016 knocked out a lot of it, so many large coral heads are dead, with small live corals just starting to grow back on top of them. This is the same year that the north end of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was devastated by bleaching.
So what is coral bleaching? Coral itself is the result of coral polyps, which in a sense are animals, plants, and rocks rolled into one. They attach themselves to surfaces (usually old coral heads) and grow/propagate slowly over time, leaving behind their skeletons. They form a symbiosis with algae. The algae are protected by the nooks and crannies of the coral surface, and in turn the coral polyps eat some of them. The algae, however, has narrow temperature tolerances, and when these are exceeded (the world’s oceans are warming up, so it is always the upper temp tolerance being breached), they die and the polyps starve.
Generally hang out in a shaded part of the beach in the afternoon, then go for dinner. From about 17:00 the fruit bats are active, so catch a few videos of them hanging in the coconut palms.
Yet another dinner next door, I have tried several curries and they are all very good. After dark, go see the rays again, then a night beach walk to look at the crabs.
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