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Locust Fish
by Laura Radford
Mid-dive at Overheat Reef, located east of Sandy Bay, I was watching a pair of
four-eye butterfly fish as they wove gracefully in an out of the reef when
suddenly I saw something large and dark approaching. I lifted up a few feet and
saw that the mass was actually about sixty blue tangs swimming in unison,
gliding up and down over the coral heads. Suddenly, in perfect synch, all
turned nose down and began feeding. Just as suddenly they righted themselves
and continued on.
My dive buddy and I nicknamed them “locust fish.”
Two days later at nearby Melissa’s Reef I saw another swarm of about forty blue
tangs approaching. Amazingly another swarm of equal size was approaching from
the opposite direction. I decided to hang back and watch what would happen.
Collision? Chaos? Tang Warfare?
The two groups seemed completely unaware of each other until they were face to
face. As if prearranged, all tangs tipped down and began feeding. After a few
moments, all lifted and swam off in one large school of locusts.
The bubbles from my laughter flooded my mask and prevented me
from seeing where they went from there.
Laura Radford is a writer and a PADI
certified SCUBA Instructor. In 1995 after completing an MFA in Creative
Writing she moved from Alaska to Costa Rica where she taught diving and lead
SCUBA tours. She later returned to her home state of California where she
worked as a high school English teacher.
Currently Laura is working as a
freelance writer and is traveling and diving in her free time, which is most
of time. She was drawn to Honduras by the extraordinary diving off the Bay
Islands but was lured to mainland by Honduras’s natural beauty and
fascinating history.
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