Mona Island, the amazing sight of waterfalls on a dry deserted island, AEB field trip 1980.

Water falling from the 200 feet tall cliffs in the area of Pajaros beach

We tried to fend off the water with anything that we could find

We had to take refuge in the area of Cueva del Caballo since the rain swamped the camping area.

Mona Island is a deserted island usually most remebered by hikers for its dryness and its endless vistas of dry fearsomely thorny scrub.  Althought the island can have periods of rainlessness that lasts months, from time to time it does gets hit with the great weather systems that make their way from Africa to the Caribbean.  In this case the Association of Biology Students was camping in Sardinera beach and decided to go to the other side of the island, to Pajaros Beach, about six miles away as the crow flies.  During the night we were camping in Pajaros beach a tropical wave or depression unexpectedly dumped an enormous amount of water over us (I know this is almost beyond belief but at the time we didn't have cellphones or even (gasp) Tweeter).  When we woke up the next day there was water everywhere and the astonishing sight of waterfalls falling from the central plateau of the island.  The previous day the island had been bone dry and now it everything was soaking wet.  We took refuge in a small cave nest to the Cueva del Caballo and made jokes as we shivered and tried to make the best of it.  I have gone back to Mona Island many times over the years but I have never again witnessed this spectacle again.

Mona Island, exploring the Acropora palmata reef, circa 1982

Acropora palmata, notice the extreme clarity of the water

Various types of coral, In the center of the photo Jorge Saliva, notice the puny arm lacking the basketball sized muscles that later appeared there

The reef crest was haunted by an unbelievable quantity of fish

There was coral all over the place

I took these few photos of the coral at the reef that borders the Sardinera beach in Mona Island.  At the time visiting this reef was for me a new and unbelievable exciting thing.  I took just a few photos because I was too busy drinking deeply from the incredible experiece of snorkeling there.   There were so many things to see and explore that it was like visiting an alien city in outer space.  The diversity of corals, fish and invertebrates made this place a dream experience for a biologist that had read all about them in the books but had not until them too much oportunity to see them in the flesh.  I have been told that the reef I visited so many years ago no longer exists, that most of the Acropora has died, that there are much less fish and algae reigns supreme.  I vividly remember marveling at a school of large parrot fish, two feet long feeding in water that was less than three feet deep.  These photos stand as a testament of the beauty that was and hopefully some day will again be.

1980 Mona Island, a happy smile in an awful spot, a memory from my AEB times

This is a photo of one of my dearest friends.  It was taken during a trip to Mona Island 1980.  I can hardly believe that thirty one years have passed since we did that trip.  Mona Island is an uninhabited island between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.  It boasts some of the most dangerous and inhospitable terrain in the Caribbean, its central plateau is dominated by fearsomely thorny, horribly poisonous xerophytic flora.  As hard core biology students we decided to visit one of the eastern Caribbean largest breeding colony of red-footed boobies.   The colony is located in the most remote and inaccessible part of the island.  To reach it we traveled for hours through very difficult terrain and did so enduring air temperatures that in the sun reached up to 120 F.  It is a wonder nobody died.  This photo was taken near Punta del Norte, we had found a cave to take refuge from the tremendous heat and had rested for a time inside it.  The cave was filled by a several feet thick blanket of dried goat droppings.  But we were so overjoyed to be out of the sun that we didn’t mind in the least.  As we rested our tired bones on the cave floor we were thankful for a cool place to rest.  This photo reminds me of the times when life was simpler, when we were alarmingly skinny and when a cave full of dried droppings was another amazing thing to be experienced and not a horrific ordeal to be endured.  So many years have passed and we are still good friends and he is still a very nice person, always with a smile on his face.  My friend went back later to the colony and took with him his future wife.  Now he has two beautiful children and a wonderful marriage.  I suspect that if a girlfriend has the fortitude to endure the heat, the thorns and spines, the endless walking and the awful cave, there is little that can put a dent on this relationship.

One one trip to the red footed booby colony I found a an orchid in full bloom with flowers that I have never seen before.  It looked so delicate and out of place in the arid landscape.  I took a flower back with me and Hector Colon who was quite familiar with the flora of Mona Island identified it as something new for Mona Island.  Later it was identified as Broughtonia dominguensis, this was the first time this orchid had ever been found in the Puerto Rico area.  I was fascinated by the fact that this small orchid could thrive in such a hostile enviroment.  This was the start of my interest for orchids, which continues to this day.