There are many things that are better here than in the Bahamas, but one thing that the Bahamas is way ahead on is fishing limits. Everything bigger than a grunt here appear to have been eaten. No grouper, no big rays, no sharks, no big barracuda, no tarpon, and the only big parrot fish we have seen were in the Cousteau reserve.

Today we went out on a boat trip. Martinique looks lovely from the ocean, too.

First stop was a pod of dolphins who obligingly frolicked for the half dozen or so tourist boats who had come out to see them.

Then, after a failed attempted a whale watching, we tied up near a popular snorkeling reef.

The coral was very pretty, but there were not many fish there. I think the biggest thing we saw was a lion fish.

There were two full grown ones, quite close to where all the tour boats were moored. Lion fish are territorial and don’t move around a lot. They are also a dangerous invasive species. Those spines are loaded with an incredibly painful poison if you touch them. They also eat the young of a number of other species, and have no natural enemies in the Caribbean. I’m pretty sure most Bahamian guides who saw one of these would be right back with a spear to kill it. Here I suspect they are left as something cool for the tourists to see.

Then there was the fish trap.

Seriously? A fish trap on a reef that generates thousands of dollars in tourist revenue every day?