Friday, March 12 and Saturday, March 13, 2021
We’ve always liked traveling with Sarah as she is inquisitive and encourages to be more adventurous than perhaps we’d be if left to our own devices. Her quest to see the marine life of the Exumas led to the following photos and videos. We found the starfish on, you guessed it, Starfish Beach, and the rays came by to feast on the scraps from the fresh conch salad made at the shack on Chat & Chill beach.
Starfish, also known as sea stars, are quite remarkable creatures. They are not fish but rather are closely related to sea urchins and sand dollars. They usually have 5 distinct arms but there are over 2000 different types and some have up to 40 arms! They can actually regenerate their limbs if they lose one to injury or a predator. Starfish have microscopic eyes on the tip of each arm which aid them while they “walk” across the sand using the hundreds of tube “feet” on their underside.
A starfish’s mouth is in the center of the underside and their body houses two stomachs to digest the clams, snails, and others mollusks they ingest. Since they have no brain nor blood system, they pump seawater throughout their body, bringing key nutrients to all its organs.
Rays are one of the predators of starfish. We’ve seen both Manta rays (no stinger and mouth on the forward facing part of their large body) and Stingrays (stinger on their tail and mouth is on the underside of their body) on this trip. These Southern Stingrays came to the Conch Shack whenever scraps were dropped into the water. The cruiser kids dubbed the lighter colored one “Sandy.” Their skin felt like slimy velvet to me.
When not feeding, Southern Stingrays often bury themselves in the sand, with only their eyes and spiracles (gills near the eyes) visible. They don’t actually use their eyes to locate their food but rather rely on electro receptors on their snouts as well as their excellent senses of smell and touch. Then they uncover prey by blowing water out through their mouth and flapping their “wings” over the sand, like you see here:
Conch is king in the Bahamas. Or perhaps I should say Queen Conch is king. Basically, they are sea snails with a large, muscular “foot” that they attach to the sea floor for mobility and protection, preferably sea grass beds in shallow waters. Unfortunately this makes them easy to harvest and the species has almost gone extinct in waters off the Florida Keys. Their shells are strong, ornately colored spirals that are prized as decoration and as musical horns; their meat is prized for raw conch salad, conch fritters, and “cracked conch” (deep-fried morsels). It’s now being over-harvested in the Bahamas, too, so I’ve only eaten the salad once but the fritters are very hard to resist.
After a lovely evening at the beach, we headed back to Onward to get ready for our sail to Long and Conception Islands, the farthest south we will venture this year.
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