We may not have been adventurous in Antigua but there was a reef just outside the guesthouse and we managed to find a couple things.
This was a sneaky puffer fish. I didn’t see him until swimming right overtop of him as he was rested on the sandy floor.
Most of the area that I explored looked like this.
There were lots of interesting looking sea grasses growing in the shallow waters before the reef. To get to the reef you had to walk over it which I didn’t really want to do.
Partly because these urchins were all over the place and I didn’t want to bump into any of them.
This was a tiny rock on the beachside of the reef and I went here several times to visit the residents.
There was only one lonely butterfly fish. I’m not sure why he decided to hang around with all these other fish. Maybe he go confused by the colours and though he was one of them.
The one fish that I made sure to keep an eye on was this guy. Didn’t want to get stabbed by him.
This guy must have swam over the reef as I saw a couple others on the other side but only one here.
Most of the time I would find these fish by getting too close and having them dart away extremely fast.
The bottom looked quite neat as I swam over top. It was quite shallow and in most places I could reach down and touch the grasses from the surface.
Had to pay attention to the current and where I was drifting to make sure I didn’t get stuck.
I did my best to get some cool pictures of the lionfish because they are really beautiful fish, tasty buggers too.
The reason why everyone was hanging out could be due to these guys.
I’m not sure if they are a type of cleaner shrimp but maybe.
I think this was a display of “go away this is my rock and stop bothering me”.
Instead I continued to hang around and get more pictures of shrimp and got to see a couple of different urchins hanging out too.
But one last picture first.

They are indeed cleaner shrimps (banded shrimp). The puffer fish is a balloon fish, a very young one it appears. If scared they inflate and the spines that lay flat on their skin become erect to discourage predators.