Texas Coral Reefs, Jesse Cancelmo
Jesse Cancelmo grew up in Philadelphia. He learned to surf and liked it, but during the summer of 1971, he accompanied his parents to their summer home on the island of Bermuda. Because Bermuda is encircled by a coral reef, it didn’t have any good surf spots. Unable to surf, Jesse looked for other entertainment. “I saw several people scuba diving. I took a course at a local resort. After my first dive, I was hooked.” The same reef that prevented surfing made for great diving. “When I saw the fascinating life on the reefs, all the colors, all the variety of fish, I knew I could never describe them well enough to people. I knew I’d have to take pictures.”
So off he went to The Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California. It was 1973. “I took a three month, intensive course in underwater photography”, Jesse said. And that was his start. Several years later, after accumulating lots of underwater photos, he happened to bump into a gentleman who was starting a diving guidebook company. “No one had written a dive guide for Bermuda. I already had the photographs, so I wrote one and that was my first book, ‘Diving Bermuda’.”
Later, Jesse wrote “Diving the Cayman Islands”, and articles for scuba diving magazines. He moved to Houston and first dove the Flower Gardens in 1977. He accumulated thousands of pictures of the Flower Banks and other northern Gulf reefs and thought he should pull them together for a book. “I went to Texas A&M Press first, and showed them my idea, which at the time had the title ‘Secret Reefs of the Gulf of Mexico’. They turned me down, saying they didn’t see a large target audience. A couple of years passed, and I was in a bookstore in the ‘Texas’ section, and it dawned on me. I needed to retitle the book to get a specific audience. I took the same book and idea back to Texas A&M Press but with the new title, ‘Texas Reefs’, and they loved it. I dealt with the same lady on both visits. Putting Texas in the title was all it took!”
The allure of the Flower Gardens keeps Jesse coming back. What is different about them? He explains, “First time Gardens divers will notice that the coral covers far more of the reef than in other areas like the Bahamas or Florida Keys. It’s more dense, like a meadow of coral. They will also notice it is all hard coral, no soft coral like sea fans or sea whips. It’s predominantly boulder star coral and brain coral. No staghorn or elkhorn corals, either. There are lots of large coral head formations, with lots of colorful sponges on the undersides.”
According to Jesse, the water quality is comparable to some of the best diving areas in the world, such as the Bahamas and Aruba. “In the warm months, visibility is 150 feet plus. It drops to 50-70 feet in the winter months.”
One of the most unique features of the Flower Gardens is the annual coral spawn. Each year, the coral there start their spawning at roughly the same time on the same day. This is unique. In other parts of the world, the corals spawn over a much longer period of time. The Flower Garden coral do all theirs in a night or two. Cancelmo explained, “Scientists have calculated the start of the spawn down to a few hours. It is usually seven to ten days after the last full moon in August, and starts around 9 p.m.”
Why is the spawn such a big deal? “The individual coral polyps release their spawn material in a few short hours. During that time, the water is filled with BB sized white and yellow dots. It’s like a blizzard underwater, except the little dots are floating upward, not down.” Divers from around the world make annual trips to the Flower Gardens to view this incredible, rare event.
The Gardens are home to many different species of marine life. “We see a lot of brown chromas, Bermuda chubb, jackfish, parrotfish, grouper, creolefish, squirrelfish and barracudas. Occasionally we see large turtles and manta rays. If you’re lucky, a whale shark may make an appearance,” Jesse said. He went on, “We also see schools of scalloped hammerhead sharks, and schools of spotted eagle rays.” Sounds a little scary, but Cancelmo assures that they aren’t aggressive.
In “Texas Coral Reefs”, Jesse also covers other reef areas off the Texas coast, as well as one Louisiana reef, and artificial reefs like oil platforms. He also covers the Freeport Liberty Ship Reef, a man-made reef with a couple of shipwrecks as its core. New artificial reefs are still being added, with one project off Brownsville being completed late last year, when the old Texas A&M training ship “Texas Clipper” was sunk 17 miles offshore to become a reef. The “Texas Clipper” can be dived now. How long will it take for marine life to grow on and around the reef? Jesse offered an example, “I dove the U.S.S. Oriskany reef off Florida three weeks after the ship was sunk. It was an old aircraft carrier and is now the largest artificial reef in the world. After only three weeks, I was amazed at the number of fish already surrounding it. I went back a year later and it was transformed. It really doesn’t take long.”
Jesse has had the privilege of diving on other shipwrecks. “In 1998, I got an opportunity to dive the U.S.S. Monitor, a civil war shipwreck. It was in 230 feet of water, which required advanced diving techniques. I had to go get training in and certification for Trimix, a mix of gases that lets you dive to deeper depths than normal. On the day of the dive, the water was beautiful. Until I hit the 150 foot mark. Then visibility went to zero. I couldn’t see anything and couldn’t photograph anything. I followed the anchor line down, touched the ship, then started back up. Very disappointing. I had better luck on the Andrea Doria, a famous shipwreck off Nantucket, Massachusetts. It was a deep dive also. I made two dives and got some nice pictures. Both the Monitor and the Andrea Doria were extremely challenging dives. The depth wasn’t as much of a problem as the cold. At the bottom, the water temperature was 40 degrees. It was freezing. My hands started going numb. That was a little scary. When I got back up to the 20 foot decompression stop, the water was 52 degrees. It felt like I was in a sauna.”
Jesse plans to continue diving in the Gulf reefs. He finds a new adventure each dive. But over the last few years, coral reefs around the world have been damaged from a variety of different causes. Has Jesse seen any changes to the Flower Gardens over the years? “Not really. They are so isolated that pollution runoff hasn’t gotten to them. And since they are a National Marine Sanctuary, ships can’t moor near them, which used to cause damage. The most damage I’ve seen was after Hurricane Rita. The wave action actually toppled several large coral heads. And it kicked sand up on top of the coral, which damaged it, but I’ve seen an ongoing recovery from that.”
If we’re lucky, the reefs will continue to be healthy, and will only have to worry about damage from hurricanes. In other parts of the Gulf closer to shore, runoff of fertilizers and other products have damaged large areas of the sea, killing off lots of marine life. By writing “Texas Coral Reefs”, Jesse has enlightened us about what a rare treasure we have just a few miles off our beaches. Hopefully, we are enlightened enough to continue to protect it.
