Some time back, my friend Earl mentioned the thrill he had finding tiny tropical fish swimming around his feet while he splashed in the azure Mexican ocean. Gripped by a sense of nostalgia, I re-created for myself the sweet, hot mornings my wife and I spent snorkeling over the reefs of Jamaica on our honeymoon.
There is some artistic licence here. Even though I was thin enough when I was married, I didn't look this good. Then again, nobody does. I'm certain that one scene with Daniel Craig in the ocean in the James Bond film was all computer generated. That, and my snorkel technique consists of the "dead man's float". To our Jamaican guide, I figure all of the tourists must look like pale face-down corpses dumped fresh off the boat and left to float away on the tide.
What I do remember are all the fish. Without my glasses vision is blurred, but I did take some pictures with a disposable underwater camera. Then too, some of the fish obliged by swimming directly into my face where my visual focus resides. Primarily, I saw sergeant-major fish, Abudefduf saxatilis, which is a common balck and yellow striped damselfish that likes to swim in large, tight schools. The snorkeller is soon surrounded by a zebra cloud of these curious, benign creatures.
The Jamaicans attract the fish by throwing bread onto the water. I discovered the damselfish are willing to peck at my sunburned flesh as well, which was ticklish. A quick Internet search pointed out that the sergeant-major fish also enjoy snacking upon dolphin vomit. Unfortunately, I was out of that for my honeymoon.
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