A Horse?

Yes, a carousel horse. I don't know who put this here, but I guess it's OK. There are a lot of 'newbies' and one-time visitors who dive Cane Bay, and this is a good landmark for them to get back to the right part of the beach.
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St. Croix has what I call boutique beaches, or designer beaches. Very small, fifty yards, meters, or so. Not like the coasts of the States, and continents that have beaches that go on and on out of sight. So, when you're finishing a dive, you should aim for the easy exit, not the rocky surf. Hey? An underwater landmark shows the way!

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So, The Horse of Cane Bay. .

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Some shallow scenery. Some of the fuzz on the bottom, silty rock, is algae, but these bushy things are corals. Yes, those are animals. I especially like the willow-looking corals in the background behind the candelabra corals. The water here isn't often crispy clear, but the next time it is, I'll take my new camera for just a shallow dive, and take hundreds of photos of them, groan!

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I download photos into my computer. Maybe I'll change that, and start right out putting them on disc, thereby saving my poor machine. I've been forced to buy external storage by keeping almost all the photos from each dive, and that runs from three to five hundred, no joke. Groan! My computer quit once, it was completely full.

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An old guy from Texas, returning to the dive shop from his first snorkel said, "Yes, it was great! Oh, but..." he frowned, "I was swimming along, and I saw a rattlesnake! But then I said to myself, this is underwater, that can't be a rattlesnake!" He had a delightful accent. "What WAS that?!"
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I laughed, and said, "That was a Lizardfish. And yes, they do have that rattlesnake pattern on their back."
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"Hrummph" said the man, shaking his head. "Sure looked like a rattlesnake."
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Lizard fish hunt by stealth, sitting there so still until they strike with the speed of light. This one is waiting for the little fish in the hole right in front of his snout to come out, a quick meal, except that I came along...

.There were several excavated burrows in a small rocky area, The fish find cracks in the substrate, and dig holes, bringing out mouths full of sand to spit and, for them, heavy boulders that they drop outside the entrance of their home. There are roomy chambers down below, where individuals or a mated pair of Blennies can live.
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I must go back and see who's there. Maybe tiny Sailfin Blennies, who pop straight up for a few seconds flicking their huge doral fin up and down, then scoot back down to safety, tail first. Blinking fish. But I'm not that good a photographer to get decent images of them.

Wish I could take the Lizardfish someplace else.

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Scenery. One lone French Grunt in front of, again, a bushy looking thing that's coral, an animal. Nothing to compare on land, a bush is one plant. A 'soft' coral like this is made up of hundreds and thousands of polyps. Started from one polyp, that was born and landed on this spot years ago, and started dividing, but not separating from its progeny.
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Growing from the tips of each branch, one polyp at a time, this coral could be twenty years old, or much much older. Unlike stony corals like Brain Coral, this coral's skeleton is like our fingernails, or a Rhinosceros horn. You sometimes find the little tree or bush like skeletons washed up on the beach.
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The round bluish thing to the right is a Sea Fan, and is an animal, too! The round lumpy rocks are dead stony corals.
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OK, all for this round of blogging, I need more photos! hahaha. Thanks for stopping by!