Echinoadventures in Tenerife - July & August 2024

International Dives

I’ve been fortunate enough to dive in three different times outside Costa Rica. First time was in Yucatán, México, for a course on Taxonomy, Systematics, and Ecology of Echinoderms in 2019. Then I got to dive in Baja California, México to capture sea urchins for my master’s experiments. Last year (2024), I went to Tenerife to present my master’s thesis on the 17^th International Echinoderm Conference but stayed longer to do some experiments and vacationing. I had already visited Tenerife in 2018 for my undergrad’s final project and performed an experiment on Sphaerechinus granularis larvae. The only paper I have published so far is about its early developmental stages. You can find it here: Early developmental stages of the sea urchin Sphaerechinus granularis (Lamarck, 1816) (Echinoidea: Toxopneustidae)

Boca Cangrejo

First dive was at Boca Cangrejo, in the Northeastern side of the island. It was quite the experience as I didn’t know we were using steel tanks instead of aluminium ones. I was overburdened because I wasn’t sure how much weight I needed by using a thicker wetsuit - in Costa Rica, either I use a a 3mm one or none at all. Either way, it was a frustrating but adventorous dive, down to 40 m! The first picture I took was of the bearded fireworm Hermodice carunculata and its one of my favorite ones.

Due to the overweight, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the dive, but I still took some pictures.

Radazul

Diving operations in Tenerife are quite different - perhaps more developed - than the ones in Costa Rica, but what they do have in common is nice, welcoming people. I enjoyed my dive with Macaronesian Divers with Daniel as our divemaster. We were expected to go alone but there was a walk-in couple at the last minute; I don’t think it’s common here in Costa Rica to have walk-ins for diving! We had a nice dive in Radazul.

Common names are quite fun. In Costa Rica, we call many species from the Balistidae family “pez chancho”, while in Canary Islands they called these ones “pez gallo”. Respectively, they translate to pig and rooster. I’d have to do some research on why they’re called like that in each place - which I don’t actually have time for - but it’d be fun to learn why these names! Rooster might make sense if you take into account that they can come to you to “peck” you. Pig, not so much for me.

Other fish I captured:

As you can imagine, I love seeing echinoderms! Here are some:

And more invertebrates:

Punta del Hidalgo

An intertidal adventure. In 2018, I went to this same place and had a GoPro Session with me, so I took some videos but couldn’t take good pictures of small critters. This time, I took my reliable TG6 and had some fun with a dear friend. No extraordinary creatures this time but still some good pictures came out of it. Last time, I saw and recorded an abalone and didn’t even know it until recently when I revisited some videos from that time and was uploading observations to iNaturalist! Anyways, here are some pictures: