Rare Sea Creatures Discovered in Maine and Cozumel s Hidden Caves

Meet Jonathan Byrne, one of the world's top underwater nature cinematographers. Traveling the world on assignment for all the major networks, he is an Emmy award-winning authority on the underwater world. In freshwater or salt, reefs, wrecks or caves, Jonathan documents the world beneath the waves. Welcome to the Blue World. It's a beautiful day in Eastport, Maine. This small scenic city on the New England coast is located on Passamaquoddy Bay, as far north as you can go on the coast of Maine before you hit Canada. Eastport's my favorite place to be in the summer, with perfect down east weather. Passamaquoddy Bay is an inlet off the Bay of Fundy, world renowned for its extreme tides. With a tidal range of more than 20 feet, water really moves in and out of the bay, at speeds exceeding 10 knots, creating turbulence visible from the air. We've done segments here before, but I wanted to introduce Zach of all trades to Gene, the world famous wolffish. Are you excited? Oh, I'm so excited. Do you think you're going to be able to stay warm in this arctic water? Are you kidding me? I have my Snyder suit. I can do anything. Let's go. Also, I have this cool new macro lens to try out, which allows me to film really small creatures, so I'm excited to try filming some of the miniature marine life in the The Blue World team and I are diving from our backyard, the Blue World Dive Shack. Because of the strong tides, we can only dive during a short period of time when the tide changes and the water is slack. Slack lasts about an hour, so our timing has to be perfect. It's agony to put on a dry suit on a hot summer day. Then you get all sweaty walking to the water. But once you get into the water, it feels great. Sinking down, we are disappointed to discover bad visibility. Like really bad. The water is never particularly clear here, but this is something else altogether. Even though I've completed more than 200 dives on this site, I'm having a hard time finding my way around. Passamaquoddy Bay is full of colorful stuff, like anemones, sea stars and sponges. And they are pretty small. Fortunately, we don't need great visibility to film small stuff. I have my super close-up lens with me, so I start looking for small stuff. A purple smooth sun star with ten arms can grow to more than a foot across, but this one is only a few inches. I look to my left and notice that I'm being watched by a small fish known as a grubby. It's a type of sculpin, a bottom-dwelling fish that relies upon its camouflage for protection. I'm pretty sure it thinks I can't see it, and doesn't swim away. Only an inch long, a nudibranch is sort of like a snail with no shell. The colorful bristles, called serrata, on its back are a combination of gills and defensive organs. Each serratum has a stinging cell in the tip for defense. But its body cannot manufacture these stinging cells. Instead, the nudibranch eats various species of hydroids—basically tiny non-swimming jellyfish—and recycles the hydroids' stinging cells. Nudibranchs are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning they are both male and female. So when any two meet up, they can mate and produce a tiny ribbon of eggs for the next generation. Some nudibranchs mimic their habitat for protection. The bushy-backed nudibranch lives in algae or kelp and can be quite hard to spot. Just below the low tide line, I come across a Green Crab. Although this crab is quite common throughout New England waters, it's actually a foreign invader. Originating in the waters of the northeast Atlantic around Europe, this sneaky little crab has spread around the world, mostly because its planktonic larvae get a free ride in the ballast water of ships. They like to eat baby clams, mussels and scallops, which means they are not particularly welcome in Maine, where scallops are big business. Fortunately, lots of animals like to eat Green Crabs. Meet Jane the Wolfish. She is particularly fond of Green Crabs and does her part to keep the population under control. Jane and Bob are two of our local Wolfish. They live together in a big den under a rock. We named them after our neighbors, because they are such a cute couple. We're not sure what Bob likes to eat, but Jane keeps an eye peeled for crabs. A crab shell is no match for these teeth. Any crab that wanders into this neighborhood is in big trouble. Jane would probably eat a Decorator Crab too, but she never sees any. The Decorator Crab has camouflage made from marine growth and moves slowly. If this crab doesn't move, it's almost invisible, even to Jane the Wolfish. The Rock Crab is the most common crab in this most crabby place, with a face only a mother could love. And it's mating season. The male carries the female around for days until she molts, because they can only mate when her new shell is soft. Her soft shell will make her vulnerable to predators, but the male will protect her. And when the mating is done, the crabs are hungry. It's a crab-eat-crab world, and Rock Crabs will happily devour any green crab they can catch. This crab has nothing to fear though. Hermit Crabs live in recycled snail shells, making them very tough. It's like living in a portable bunker. They feed with busy mouthparts on tiny invertebrates and detritus. At the other end of the scale, this crustacean also has little to fear. The American Lobster is the king of the local crustaceans. This one's eating a muscle that it cracked open with a powerful crusher claw. It's time to introduce Zach of all trades to Jane the Famous Wolfish, so we make our way over to his den. Gene has lived here for more than 20 years, and he's so big that he barely fits through his front door to the huge den within. Christine shows Zach how it's done, coaxing Gene out of his den with a delicious snack. The entrance to the den is so small, sometimes Gene has a hard time squeezing back through. Next it's Zach's turn. He's a little apprehensive about getting his fingers chomped, but Gene is actually quite gentle with us. He's a good fishy. After an hour, the tide has started to turn and the current is starting to run, so we make our way up to shallower water for a short safety stop. In the shallows, we are greeted by a lion's mane jelly, one of the more potent jellyfish in the world, so we are careful to steer clear of the stinging tentacles. But even the mighty lion's mane can be prey. If the current pushes a lion's mane down too close to the bottom, it can get snagged and become the victim of an army of sea urchins, slowly advancing and oblivious to its tentacles. The cold waters of Passamaquoddy Bay are a far cry from diving in the clear waters of a tropical coral reef. But the marine life hidden in the cold green water here is every bit as fascinating and engaging as marine life anywhere in the world. And by diving here so often, I have been able to get to know some of the residents quite well. Every time I step into the water in Eastport, I feel like I'm visiting old friends—a reunion in the Blue World. The island of Cozumel, just off the coast of Mexico near Cancun, is known for its crystal clear water. Divers flock to this scuba diving paradise to see healthy reefs and lots of marine life. The splendid toadfish, one of the local marine rock stars, is found around only two islands in the world. Further offshore, reef sharks sometimes sleep in caves, a behavior that has not been witnessed anywhere else. And Cozumel has something else unique in the world. This special cenote containing species found nowhere else on Earth. Cameraman Todd and I head on down to Cozumel for a cave diving adventure. We team up with our favorite local cave diving guide, Christine Lowe. Then we head on over to Arelito Cenote. It's bigger than most of the cenotes we dive. It almost looks like a pond. And it's only a couple of hundred meters from the ocean, which is one of the things making Arelito special. Even though the surface water is fresh, down deeper it turns to salt water because it's connected directly to the ocean. And because of that, it has some marine life unique to this environment. So one of the great things about Arelito is an added element of excitement. Apparently there are crocodiles. We go over our plan. Christine has been here before, but we haven't. So we'll be following her. Then it's time to get our gear together and suit up. As we put our gear on and kick up the bottom of the algae-filled water, I try not to think about crocodiles. Once we get underwater and swim away from the silt we kicked up, we can see much better and follow Christine into a small cave opening. Due to our proximity to the ocean, the halocline is quite shallow. We pass through this swirly barrier between the freshwater and the saltwater at a depth of only 20 feet. Todd and I follow as Christine runs a reel from the entrance back to the permanent cave line. The permanent line starts pretty far from the entrance to discourage open water divers from following it. It takes a while, but eventually we find the permanent line and Christine ties in. Even this far in, the greenish tint of the algae-filled pond water persists. Then we find something spectacular. A cave brittle star. This species of brittle star is found nowhere else on Earth except this one cave. Like many cave-adapted organisms, it has lost much of its pigment. And it can detect the presence of light. This survival skill causes the brittle star to run from my flashlight. As I look around, I realize that there are quite a few of these brittle stars, all running from our lights. But here's the most amazing thing. Arelito is the only cave in the world known to have cave-adapted sea stars. But it's not just this one species of brittle star. There are actually three species of sea stars in here, and I'm hoping to find all of them. Our search takes us deeper and shallower, at times getting shallow enough to enter the halocline again. But we know the sea stars all live below this depth, in the salt water. So we travel further into the cave, taking a passage that goes in the opposite direction as the ocean, traveling further inland, seeking deeper passages. But the cave never gets very deep, and we stay close to the halocline, not the most likely place to find our elusive sea stars. Finally a crack that drops deeper into the salty layer, below the influence of the tides which cause the halocline to rise and fall. Christine scours the walls of the cave with her light, casting an experienced eye for cave life. And then we swim down another crack even deeper. Now we're really getting into the realm of the unknown. We end up in a dark tube, with odd dark colored limestone and a gravel bottom. There are almost no speleothem formations. It's a spooky place. Soon we start seeing signs of ocean life. Little orange sponges dot the walls. We press on, watching our limited air supply and pushing deeper into the cave. I watch the floor of the cave carefully as we go. At last a white splotch that looks like another sponge, but the pentagonal shape gives it away. This is one of the rarest sea stars in the entire world, a cave-adapted type of asteroid similar to one seen on reefs around the Caribbean. But here in Arelito, it has lost all pigmentation and lives entirely in the dark. What it eats is not known. And we struck gold, because right nearby, the monster of this cave. Copadastra cavernicola. This large sea star, reaching about a foot across, is also a cave-adapted relative of a deep water species seen in the ocean. But unlike the others, this sea star hasn't lost all its pigmentation. That may mean that it hasn't been long enough to fully adapt. Give it another 200 generations over a thousand years and we'll check back. Having found our three species of sea stars, we turn and make our long swim back towards the entrance. Plastic line arrows always point the way out, so we know we are going the right way. We pass fields of brittle stars on a sandy section of the cave. There must be something they like to eat in or on the sand. And we find another magnificent cavernicola snuggled up to a sponge. Sponges, in fact, are everywhere. As we get closer to the entrance, we are also getting closer to the ocean, and the water contains more organic materials for the sponges to eat. And the sponges are crawling with brittle stars. Finally we make it back to our reel, and Christine unties it from the main line. We are back to the cavern zone, where we can see sunlight streaming in. After a few minutes doing a safety stop, we can head back up into the sunlight, keeping an eye peeled for crocs of course. How you doing? I am back from the cave! Errolito is a fascinating cenote. It doesn't really have any beautiful formations, but its location and conditions are just right for it to have unique marine life found nowhere else in the world. And, at the moment at least, it's the only cave in the world known to contain cave-adapted sea stars. You never know what you might find, just exploring the depths of a small, algae-filled pond. It's another incredible wonder of the Blue World.