Introduction To Our Website and Objectives

History

The idea behind this website has only recently come to fruition, since I retired from earning a living as a marine biologist in 2013. Due to family preferences I found that I was visiting coastal holiday resorts in numerous locations around the world. I was continually surprised at the lack of information provided about the marine life in the waters immediately off the resorts I visited. The attitude seemed to be; qualify as a diver, jump on a boat and go diving at some location remote from the resort, generally at great cost to the individual guest, and, if you are interested in the marine life, buy a book! The people who want to stay at the resort, who are too young, too old, not confident or can’t be bothered with the phaff, cost, or risk of diving, but still wish to learn about the marine life, are rarely catered for.

During my working life I frequently undertook ecological surveys, using both diving and snorkelling; employing photography, habitat recording, in-situ and laboratory identification of species, all to a very tight deadline. I have been able to use these skills to rapidly record the species at each resort I have visited on holiday, so that others can appreciate them, without the need to buy books or wade through numerous internet pages. Of course if your interest grows then I would recommend that is exactly what you should do and I have added at the bottom of this page some of my favourite links and references. But in the meantime please enjoy and hopefully appreciate what you can see while Resort Snorkelling!

More on the objectives:

To provide snorkellers with a guide to what species of marine life you might be able to see when visiting specific coastal resorts. We do this by providing a collection of species and habitat images. The images used have nearly all been obtained while snorkelling, hence what you see on these webpages are what you should be able to see while snorkelling at any particular resort. I have cheated on a few occasions, where I have used better photos from elsewhere. This accounts for less than 5 percent of the images. I have also tried to convey how the species fit into their environment; hence they are often not the close up shots found in conventional marine life guides.
To provide the resorts with a guide to the diversity and condition of the marine life off their shore. I believe resorts should exercise a level of custodianship over the shallow waters adjacent their seafront, even if local laws or regulations preclude them from ownership. In this respect the resorts have an obligation to provide protection, through active management, of their local marine assets. Having a clean beach is not good enough!
To increase the wealth of knowledge on the distribution and status of the species on a wider scale, contributing to a better understanding of the marine environment. All data is good data if it is properly defined. These images are highly specific in terms of location and, if the species and habitats are properly identified, they will assist in future studies of habitat condition and species distribution. On that basis I have included all species that I could possibly record, regardless of how unimpressive they may appear to be!

To clarify, this website is not designed to advise you on where to go to see the best marine life or underwater scenery. It is designed to inform you of what you should be able to see if you visit a specific resort. This is why the listed resorts are also encouraged to participate.

My belief is that there is always something interesting to see at almost any location, although I agree that the effort to reward ratio is very poor at some of the lower visibility areas! Clearly while the website is new the number of resorts will be limited, as they are those personally visited by me, but with your cooperation we can extend this to many hundreds, including, hopefully, what will be some of the best in the world.

Links

I have added some links (that I have used) based on different types of information as follows:

Snorkelling guides, with species photos .
General photo guides to species, limited descriptions.
Specific species groups, photo guides with descriptions
Wide ranging groups of species, detailed descriptions, sometimes including distribution and photos. May be specific regions only.
Taxonomic classification info, sometimes with illustrations/photos
e-books

You could, of course, use books! Bibliography coming soonish.

If the link doesn’t work then I’m afraid it is a cut and paste job!