Roatan diving is all about wall dives - diving along underwater cliffs that drop straight down a hundred feet or more. Of course, we rarely went deeper than 60 or perhaps 70 feet. Often, we dove at 40 or 50 feet.

The walls were full of corals, sponges and sea plumes and sea fans, like this complex specimen.

There were larger fishes, like this marbled grouper, perhaps 20 inches long.

Bands of creole wrasses patroled the reefs, gulping in plankton and looking for other foods of opportunity.

Small creatures like this arrow crab, hiding in a vase sponge, were abundant.

Our resort, Coco View, is on a small barrier island just off the main island of Roatan. The bay in front of it held Newman's Wall, angling off toward the right, and Coco View Wall, toward the left.

We donned gear in the locker room right on the dock...

...and stepped right onto the boats, which took us out for the dives.

Coco View Resort from the water. We stayed in the second-floor room directly to the right of the green space in the middle.

The view from our room. The white caps in the distance indicate the presence of Newman's Wall.

After a first dive at a primary site, the boats would drop us off along one of the walls and we would dive our way back to the shore, ending up swimming in over a very shallow bottom to the platform in the distance and then walking on to the shore.

In deeper water just off shore was a wreck, the Prince Albert. The higher bow deck hosted considerable life in the form of gorgonians, sponges and tunicates

This porkfish was hanging out along the main deck...

...as was this gray angelfish.

This winch was totally encrusted with life.

These two arrow crabs were hanging out on a sponge on the Prince Albert's railing.

Under a ledge on the reef were these banded coral shrimps - cleaning shrimp that scurry over fishes' bodies and eat parasites and dead scales. It benefits both the cleaners and the clients.

Banded coral shrimps, like these two in a vase sponge, attract customers by waving their long antennae. While you might think the cleaners would be at risk of being eaten, they are not.

Not a great picture technically, but this is a parrotfish being cleaned in mid-water by juvenile parrotfishes.

We saw a lot of barrel sponges. Here, our divemaster, Mark, poses beside one bigger than he is.

The mottled sides of barrel sponges provide habitats for many small forms of life.

The actual point of this shot is supposed to be the little black-and-white bi-color damselfish. For whatever reason, they're hard to capture in a photo.

This is black coral, which, you will note, is really green. The black stuff used for jewelry comes from the stems.

These are little blue chromis fishes, against a background of brain coral.

Saw a lot of brittlestars, all of them hiding out in vase sponges.

In some cases, just letting it hang out.

We dove a chasm in the wall called Calvin's Crack. Here, trip leader Paul Adler photographs people as they emerge from the crevice.

This is Paul, looking like a crazed papparazi.

Along with the blue markings on this green coral plate you can see a number of tiny, blue, cleaning gobies just hanging out. When I passed it, they swarmed out and one landed on my hand, preparing to relieve me of any dead skin. However, the current was too strong and I was in danger of crashing into the reef, so I had to decline.

When another diver swam over this small conch, fin turbulance caused it to flip over. I assumed it was an abandoned shell...but when I looked at it more closely I found it was looking back at me with two eyeballs mounted on tentacles. We spent several minutes in silent contemplation of each other.

As spiffy as the shell looks on the underside, this is what it looks like on the top side. From my I.D. book, it might be a milk conch.

This appears to be coral growing atop a tunicate. I saw a number of examples of this.

This damselfish is only about three, maybe four inches long, but it was charging my camera at the time. They're very protective of their little algae farms and are aggressive about chasing off much larger creatures.

In fact, they frequently give you the Damselfish Star of Intimidation. Sometimes they nip you.

At the end of a dive, I was doing a safety stop at 15 feet when I saw this elkhorn coral at seven feet. Finished my safety stop and darted over to shoot it.

This is a little fairy basslet fish over a plate of green star coral. They're very hard to get a good photo of, perhaps because their colors are so irredescent. Also, they're fast little buggers.

I've seen plenty of featherduster worms, but never one so small, so green and so pretty as this one.

Often on a wall dive, you find some of the best stuff on the underside of overhanging ledges, like this green moray eel.

Yellowfaced jawfish are little three-inch fishes that live in holes in the bottom and dart out to score planktonic food and see what's going on.

As often as not, they stay in their holes peering out curiously and cautiously. Another jawfish in the hole to the left disappeared and never showed himself.

On a number of dives, we encountered several forms of jellies, although most appeared to be versions of comb jellies - different from cniderian jellies and don't sting. This appears to be a "warty comb jelly."

A magnificent featherduster worm - that's its name, since it's considerably larger than most featherdusters.

One day we dived on a small wreck called the Mr. Bud.

We knew it was the Mr. Bud because the name said so.

Okay, we already knew because Mark the divemaster told us.

From the wheelhouse.

Jack and Ken explored the hold.

The rare, elusive harlequin pipefish.

Actually, not so rare here. We saw a couple.

After diving along a wall we came up over this immense underwater sand dune at about 40 feet of depth.

A scrawled filefish passes by a stand of gorgonians.

A sea fan - a colonial structure of cniderian polyps.

Up close.

Lined seahorse.

Long-snout seahorse.

Toadfishes are so called because they emit sounds that resemble the croaking of toads. They tend to hide out under ledges. Apparently they're curious - Mark drew him out by releasing air bubbles from his regulator.

Artisitc shot of a "see through" along the Coco View Wall.

Atlantic spadefishes with a fetish for fins.

On one dive we encountered Caribbean squids, each about nine inches long.

Not a great photo - it was taken at a long distance - but there was a squad of them.

This was as close as I got.

Tigertail sea cucumbers hide under ledges during the day and extend out onto the open seafloor at dusk.

Tube sponges and thinleaf lettuce coral.

If I have time and air left at the end of a dive, under the boat, I like to settle down on the sand, remain relatively stationary and see what fishes come around. I believe these are tobaccofishes, small seabasses. They were a little skittish, unlike...

...this yellowhead wrasse...

...and this slippery dick.

Looking up. Last dive of the trip.