In the late 1980’s Burt Kilbride a self proclaimed treasure hunter who lived in Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands, for many years, told me he met Jacques Cousteau many times and he went scuba diving with the gentleman. Anyway Burt picked up the cannons from the guard ship SAN IGNATIUS and placed 4 cannons in 10 feet of water on the inside of Coulequan Barrier Reef which is 200 yards east of the Bitter End Yacht Club. I first saw these 4 cannons in 1991 and again in 2007 they are marked with a red buoy, so that the Bitter End Yacht Club guests can snorkel on them daily. The picture you see was taken by me personally in 1993 or 4 as I took many of these pictures. All my guests enjoyed snorkeling on these cannons, many captains of charter yachts have no idea they exist.

Here is a very unusual fish that I have only seen 3 times in 50 years. This fish is found sparsely around most continents where mangroves and trees grow near the waters edge also in tropical waters. By sheer accident I stumbled upon this beauty, I noticed a large barracuda with it’s nose near the surface of the water, the rest of it’s body at a 45 degree angle with the seabed some 6 feet below and the Barracuda nose was pointing at a yellow leaf floating on the surface all by itself. I happened to look at the leaf a little closer because of the Barracuda concentration and realized the leaf was a fish which looked like a leaf. I could see the Barracuda saying to itself can I eat this or is it merely a leaf, this stance went on for roughly 45 seconds and I did not move, nor did the yellow leaf fish. The young Barracuda decided it was a leaf and disappeared, and then the eye of the leaf fish moved around in its socket. I had no idea that these yellow leaf fish got as large as they do, the one’s I saw were 2 inches long, same size as yellow mangrove leaves.

In late 1990 we were snorkeling on the outside of Horseshoe Reef which is a barrier reef in the Grenadines, when we came across a small shoal of red seahorses. I have seen sea horses in the wild a few times they were browns and yellows but none were red. So keep those eyes open for small movements when snorkeling and you may also find those most unusual little creatures.

My wife Gaile and I (married for 40 years) were sailing in our catamaran around Anguilla in 1990 when I first saw a racing can 2 or 3 miles out to sea, and then I dismissed it. A Racing Can is a large red buoy that yachts race around, these can be found marking the sailing race track. Gaile said to me, “what is that red thing over there pointing at that red buoy?” I said it is a race buoy and she said it can not be because there are no yachts. DUH of course, so she said let’s go and look at it. So we turned our catamaran and headed for the red buoy, it took a few minutes to reach it and as we got closer it was clear that 2 men with red life jackets were waving at us very desperately...

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