March 2024
Beneath The Surface
An exploration of Dominica's volcanic underwater world and the creatures that call it home.
The water is warm here, even at depth. Visibility stretches to thirty meters on good days, and the reef walls rise like submerged cathedrals from the black sand bottom. Dominica's underwater landscape is volcanic—sulfur vents bubble from fissures in the rock, and the terrain feels prehistoric, untouched by the tidy geometries of coral gardens found elsewhere in the Caribbean.
I came here to photograph seahorses. The island's southern reefs host Hippocampus reidi, the longsnout seahorse, in surprising densities. They're shy subjects—preferring the shadowed overhangs of sponge colonies to open water—but patient waiting yields moments of unexpected proximity.
The seahorse is the only fish that swims upright. Everything about them feels contrary to hydrodynamic sense, yet they endure.
The sulfur vents create an otherworldly effect—streams of silver bubbles rise constantly from the seafloor, giving Champagne Reef its name. Swimming through them feels like ascending through liquid mercury. The chemistry keeps most coral at bay, but creates niches for specialized life: black barnacles, tube worms, and the seahorses that hunt the currents.
By late afternoon the light shifts. What was pale blue becomes gold, then violet. The reef's inhabitants change their behavior—fish that sheltered in crevices emerge to feed, and the seahorses, being ambush predators, become more active in the dying light.
I follow one seahorse for twenty minutes, watching it navigate the complex architecture of sponge and coral debris. The surface is a different world entirely. Back on the boat, the island's volcanic peaks are visible through the haze. Dominica has no white sand beaches to speak of—just black volcanic stone and dense forest that runs to the waterline.
The lack of development has preserved what exists below. This is a place where the underwater world feels older than the one above it. Every dive reveals something new—an ecosystem that continues to thrive despite the changing world above the surface.