INTO Shallow Waters

January 2009

Lighthouse Reef, Belize

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

By Lyn Hancock

Shallow-water paddling at Lighthouse Reef, Belize.

EVERYONE has different reasons for loving Lighthouse Reef, the most remote of Belize’s three coral atolls.

Blame it on the many natural wonders.

Jacques Cousteau and scuba divers love it for the Blue Hole, a circular hole in the middle of the atoll, 1,000 feet wide and 400 feet deep. Its image from the air, a dazzling sapphire set into a shimmering emerald sea, defines Belize.

 

Surveying a wreck.

Snorkellers love the reef for its sheltered shallow lagoon, littered with patch reefs, gutted with canyons and edged by walls and dropoffs. They relish its clear warm water and its exceptional marine life so abundant that many sites on the reef are labeled The Aquarium or The Zoo.

Anglers love it for the ease in which they can haul in a multitude of fish like barracuda, tarpon, grouper and snapper.

Birders love it for its easy viewing of rookeries full of magnificent frigate birds, which inflate their red throat pouches into big balloons to attract mates in breeding season; and a unique colony of red-footed boobies that are white, not dull brown like elsewhere.

Photographers love it for the customary tropical images of white sandy beaches, turquoise waters full of colorful corals and fish, multi-coloured sunsets (and sunrises), and waving coconut palms. Their bonus is the abundant and tolerant wildlife – not only the boobies, frigates, ospreys, grackles and pelicans but the iguanas, turtles and ubiquitous hermit crabs. Opportunities are endless – from dramatic lighthouses and artistic shipwrecks to fun, photogenic multicultural people.

Soon after arriving I found myself looking at a long, curving peninsula of whitesand beach, narrow enough to skip across from sea to sea in less than a minute. At one end, half a dozen airy wall tents with adjacent hammocks peeped from a grove of slanting coconut trees to face the lagoon, just steps away from the tents. At the other end, a dense canopy of glossy ziricote trees hid who knows what treasures. A few weeks later, I discovered that treasure – a breeding sanctuary for magnificent frigates and booby birds and an old, rusty but romantic-looking lighthouse topped by a nest of ospreys.

A red-footed booby.

Kayakers love Lighthouse Reef because everything is provided, with the bonus of a Belizean staff full of fun. There’s even yoga before breakfast. Some have called it their favorite place on Earth.

Each day we had the option of paddling to a different location inside the protected lagoon, sometimes to patch reefs close to camp, other times to undersea cliffs at the edge of the atoll. We tied the kayaks together in a line and snorkeled free or we drifted over the reef pulling our kayaks behind us. Always a motorboat accompanied us in case anyone tired or ventured too far from the group.

One day we hoisted sails on our double kayaks and paddled west five miles across the lagoon to Long Caye. Sailing a kayak was new to most of us so we vied to partner with Don, a veteran yachtsman from San Francisco who had sailed solo twice around the world. Well, almost solo. Had his yacht not slid onto the back of a blue whale off Africa and he thought it prudent to land in Cape Town for repairs, he would have succeeded in his goal to do it without contact with another person.

Ironically, Don was the one who capsized his kayak on the way over to Long Caye, not once but twice! We looked on in disbelief.

“Kayaks have no keel,” he said with an embarrassed grin. “They’re sensitive, tippy. I guess I was too cocky.”

Another day we paddled to a picturesque shipwreck within sight of camp then continued north for six more miles. We watched the waves crashing on the outside of the reef, which had claimed five ships. We were glad to be paddling the lagoon side.

“Time for lunch,” called Dick, our leader, a biologist who bides his time between Oregon and Belize. “Tie your kayaks in a line and I’ll set up tables.”

I wasn’t the only one who circled the featureless horizon with our eyes and wondered how he could do that. We didn’t realize the water was so shallow till we dropped overboard, our feet touched bottom and we walked on top of the reef to the feast. It was uncanny to be standing at a card table eating lunch in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight.

After lunch we had no need to don our snorkels to explore the reef. We just bent over to study the reef’s colorful creatures.

The camp set among palms at Lighthouse Reef.

Lighthouse Reef has its ups and downs. I didn’t need a helicopter to take a picture of the osprey nest on top of the old lighthouse. I just needed Jaime, a cheery young Kiwi travelling the world as an outdoor guide. Jaime was afraid of nothing, either up or down. Carrying my camera and telephoto lens on his back, he clambered up the new steel lighthouse which was much taller than the old one and happily clicked dozens of shots for me of fluffy white chicks in the nest and an adult osprey flying in to feed them. The old lighthouse far below was an artistic backdrop for his images.

Next day he was down. Fifty feet down. I traded my underwater camera for his fearlessness. While I trod water at the top, Jaime dived down fifty feet, found and followed a massive turtle skimming the sandy sea bottom, maneuvered himself into the best camera position, took time to take shots from several different angles, then rose calmly back to the surface to take his first breath. Amazing!

You don’t have to climb into the sky or swim to the depths of the ocean to have an adventure on this island. I found my most memorable adventure on the ground.

In the early mornings before kayaking, I would stroll the nature trail to the viewing platform overlooking the rookery on Half Moon Caye. Its most famous inhabitants are its red-footed boobies. They are a motley lot with their white clownish faces, blue beaks and bright red feet. About 4,000 of them nest at the western end of the island in the orange-flowering ziricote trees. Living alongside and sharing the same trees are the magnificent frigate birds, all black except in the mating season when they inflate their throat pouches into massive red balloons that overpower the rest of their bodies.

 

Preparing for a sailing trip.

There is tension between the boobies and the frigates. Frigates feed by forcing the adult boobies to drop their catches as they fly in to feed their young. The booby’s defence is to out-maneuver the bigger frigate in the air. Sometimes they slant their bodies against the sun to dazzle and blind their pursuers.

It’s not so easy when the booby is a chick and helpless in the nest.

A sudden screaming and a rush of wings in the basket of branches above my head and I looked up to see a gang of black frigates swooping down, one after the other, to attack a vulnerable booby chick, all alone in the nest, valiantly jabbing the air with its slender beak. Miraculously, the fluffy white chick remained intact. Perhaps the frigates were too big or too clumsy to move into position for a successful kill. Unable to help and with my paddle mates waiting, I had to leave.

That afternoon, Edna and Diana, my pals from B.C., found the chick in a huddle on the ground, amazingly still alive. They took it to Sylvestre, the Audubon warden. Sylvestre sees these battles on a daily basis so he was reluctant to take it in. “We have no time to look after them. I had two die in my house yesterday. You should leave them on the ground for the iguanas and hermit crabs.”

Back in B.C. I have a history of raising orphaned animals such as eagles, seals, bears, cougars, apes and raccoons, so I did a deal with Sylvestre to care for this one. He called it Lyn. I spent the rest of my time on Lighthouse Reef – before and after kayaking – assembling materials for a platform nest, keeping it clean, scrounging and cutting up fish and feeding it to the chick, much to the amusement of the few Belizeans on the island.

Keeping busy is never a problem on Lighthouse Reef.

Lyn Hancock is an adventurous Aussie Canuck, an author of 19 books and multitudinous articles, a photographer, teacher and presenter based in Nanoose Bay. She calls her kayak Lyn's Ark and readers of her books such as There's a Seal in my Sleeping Bag will know why. Visit her at www.lynhancock.com.