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A whale shark, biggest of fishes, hangs out with small fry off the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula.
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A view from 12,000 feet, off the coast of Belize, shows the parts of the system that make the whole. The outer reef breaks the force of the ocean swells. Next comes the white line of coral rubble along the reef crest, then the sandy back reef, and, finally, the lagoon: a maze of sand islets, mangrove cays, and sea grass beds.
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A loggerhead turtle grazes. Sea grass is not the typical meal for the primarily carnivorous species, which feeds on jellyfish, crabs, and conchs.
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A school of chubs swims over the coral reef of Cordelia Banks near the island of Roatán in Honduras. Cordelia Banks, at the southeastern end of the Mesoamerican Reef, has the greatest abundance of corals known in the Caribbean. Researchers believe the banks, not fully protected, are a crucial nursery from which larval coral-reef organisms seed other regions of the Caribbean.
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Mangroves contribute to the system by trapping reef-bound sediment, filtering out pollution, and serving as nursery for many reef fish and invertebrates. The arched roots of mangroves like these form gateways through which multitudes of juveniles swim toward adulthood on the reef.
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Whale sharks gather at the surface off the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. Here, at the upper end of the Mesoamerican Reef, convene the largest known assemblies of whale sharks. The giant fish seem to come for the eggs of spawning bonito. Farther south, off the coast of Belize, whale sharks are drawn to the white clouds of eggs released by huge aggregations of spawning dog snappers, mutton snappers, and cubera snappers.
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A Caribbean reef shark samples a Pacific lionfish at Cordelia Banks in Honduras. A few spiny lionfish escaped from an aquarium 20 years ago, and today they’re a plague, preying on the reef’s fish population. Scientists are helping sharks acquire a taste for the invaders by feeding them speared lionfish.
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A manatee mother with her calf in tow grazes on turtle grass at Swallow Cay in Belize. The West Indian manatee divides its time between sea grass pastures and the waterways of the mangrove forest.
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Three-foot-long cubera snappers, drawn to Gladden Spit in Belize by a full moon in spring, produce clouds of eggs and sperm in a thunderhead of fertility that rises to envelop divers. Snappers of several species gather here by the thousands, releasing hundreds of billions of eggs.
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A male rainbow parrotfish patrols a bed of turtle grass in Hol Chan Marine Reserve. Scarus guacamaia, the largest herbivorous fish in the Atlantic, uses all three provinces of the Mesoamerican Reef in the course of its life. As a juvenile it seeks the protection of the submerged roots at the fringe of the mangrove forest, from which it makes foraging runs to adjacent sea grass beds. As an adult it makes a home on the reef, with occasional visits to its old haunts.
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Schoolmaster snappers seek the protection of a sea whip in Hol Chan Marine Reserve. In the 1980s Belizean biologist Janet Gibson campaigned successfully for the establishment of Hol Chan, insisting that the marine protected area contain slices of all three crucial Mesoamerican Reef provinces: mangrove, sea grass, and coral reef.
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A school of black margates hangs, a living mobile of fish, off the reef at Hol Chan Marine Reserve. Hol Chan, created in 1987, is the oldest marine reserve in Belize.
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The rich underwater world of Mesoamerican mangroves is mirrored at the surface on Funk Cay, near Gladden Spit in Belize. These schoolmaster snappers and assorted small fry live as hatchlings and juveniles in the protection of the mangroves, venturing out only as adults to the reef.
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A trumpetfish hangs in the coral gardens of Lighthouse Reef atoll off Belize.
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Lighthouse Reef atoll off Belize is one of the most seaward outliers of the Mesoamerican Reef.
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Corals build the rampart that shelters the landward provinces of mangrove and sea grass. The reef’s calcium carbonate city teems with species, among them this spiny-headed blenny.
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A banded coral shrimp, Stenopus hispidus, works at its station in a tube sponge off Long Cay on Belize’s Lighthouse Reef atoll. With its three sets of claws—one heavy-duty, the other two delicate and surgical—it removes dead tissue, parasites, and fungi from the fish that queue up at the cleaning station.
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A nine-foot American crocodile, an endangered species, hunts in turtle grass at the edge of a bed of mangroves on Banco Chinchorro, off the Yucatán Peninsula. “Just make sure, whatever happens, that my body comes back home,” muttered Jeff Wildermuth, photographer Brian Skerry’s assistant, as he and Skerry entered the water. “I don’t want to be stuffed under a mangrove log somewhere.”
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