Early in the morning, before the wind reaches the Bay of Vlora, the water near Radhimë can become so still that every stone appears fixed beneath a sheet of glass.

A child enters first, wearing a mask that seems slightly too large. For the first few minutes, there is nothing to report. He lifts his head twice and says that he cannot see any fish. Then a flash passes beneath him. He lowers his face again, follows it towards the rocks and suddenly raises one hand above the surface, pointing urgently at something nobody on shore can see.

The fish have not suddenly arrived. His eyes have learned how to find them.

A small sea bream separates from the pale stone. Several silver fish appear farther out, turning together above the seabed. Near the boundary between rock and sand, two red mullets move slowly with their heads lowered, leaving faint clouds of sediment behind them. They occupy the same stretch of water, but they are not living in the same landscape.

For one fish, the rock is shelter. For another, safety lies in the group. For the red mullet, apparently empty sand contains a hidden world of food. Light, depth, current, vegetation and the shape of the seabed divide the bay into territories that remain invisible from the beach.

This is the central idea of the fish beneath the Bay of Vlora:

Every species is reading a different version of the same sea.

A visitor sees blue water. A fish sees routes, borders, nurseries, feeding grounds and places where one wrong movement can decide whether the day continues.

The School with No Conductor

Few underwater sights feel more perfectly organised than a school of fish changing direction at the same instant.

One moment, dozens of bodies reflect the sun. Then their narrow profiles face the swimmer and the entire school nearly disappears. A second later, the silver returns as every fish turns again. The movement appears rehearsed, yet there is no permanent leader directing the group from the front.

The pattern emerges through many small decisions. Each fish adjusts its speed, distance and direction according to the animals closest to it. A change detected by one individual passes rapidly through the others, allowing the school to bend, narrow or move away without breaking apart.

For a predator, this creates confusion. Instead of one isolated target, there is a shifting field of bodies, reflections and sudden turns. For the fish themselves, the group offers access to information gathered by many eyes rather than one.

A snorkeller understands this in a single moment. Approach too quickly and the nearest fish turns. The reaction moves through the school like wind passing through fabric. No individual sees the complete shape from above, yet together they create something larger and more coordinated than any one fish could design.

One of the sea’s most precise performances takes place without a conductor.

The Fish That Reads the Sand

Red mullets offer a quieter discovery.

They move close to the bottom, their warm colours visible against pale sand and broken stone. Beneath the lower jaw, two slender barbels sweep repeatedly across the seabed. At first, they resemble whiskers. They are sensory instruments.

The fish use them while searching through the upper layer of sediment for small crustaceans, worms, molluscs and other concealed prey. Their heads dip, the sand rises in a soft cloud and the barbels continue examining a world the swimmer cannot see.

To human eyes, the red mullet appears to be searching almost blindly. In reality, the human is the one without access to the information.

Sometimes smaller fish follow nearby, waiting for the mullet to disturb the bottom and expose something edible. One animal searches beneath the sand; others read the movement and take advantage of what appears.

The scene may last less than a minute, but it changes the meaning of the seabed. What looked empty is suddenly understood as inhabited. The sand is no longer a blank space between interesting rocks.

It is a hidden table.

Follow the Edges

The most rewarding route through the shallows is rarely a straight line towards deeper water.

It follows change.

Swim along the boundary where rock becomes sand. Watch where a seagrass meadow ends and the open seabed begins. Pause beside a ledge where bright sunlight gives way to shade. These transitions offer fish both risk and opportunity, and movement becomes easier to detect when an animal crosses from one background to another.

A sea bream leaving dark vegetation becomes visible against pale sand. A wrasse crossing an exposed gap briefly loses the protection of colour and texture. Small fish venture out from crevices, feed for a few seconds and return to exactly the same opening.

Once these routes become familiar, the underwater world stops appearing random. A fish holding close to rock is making a different decision from one suspended in open water. A school facing the same direction may be responding to current. An animal returning repeatedly to one patch may be feeding, hiding or defending space.

The most active part of an underwater landscape is often not one habitat or another.

It is the point where one becomes the other.

Colours That Carry a Life Story

As the morning light strengthens, wrasses begin moving through the rocky shallows with a restless confidence. Some display green, reddish, blue or orange markings that can appear almost tropical against the pale underwater landscape.

Their colours are not merely decoration.

The Mediterranean rainbow wrasse, Coris julis, is a protogynous species. Individuals generally begin reproductive life as females, while some later transition to males. As this happens, biological and visible changes accompany the new reproductive role.

A swimmer sees a colourful fish.

Biology sees a life story.

This is one of the bay’s most unexpected revelations: the body passing between the rocks may not carry an identity fixed permanently at birth. Its appearance can reflect age, sex, social conditions and a transformation that has taken place during its lifetime.

The fish has not simply grown larger.

Its role within the underwater community has been rewritten.

The Bay as Childhood

Near the shore, many of the fish are small.

That can make the shallows seem less important than deeper water, where visitors imagine larger animals must live. Ecologically, the opposite may be true. Rocky edges, seagrass, sheltered coves and shallow coastal water provide feeding opportunities and refuge during the most vulnerable stages of a fish’s life.

A nursery beneath the sea does not resemble a room filled with young animals. It may be a narrow border between vegetation and sand, a small cavity beneath a rock or water shallow enough for an adult swimmer to stand. Tiny fish gather there because the structure around them improves their chance of surviving long enough to enter the wider sea.

This changes the meaning of the shoreline.

It is not merely where the sea becomes less deep. It is where part of the future sea is learning how to survive.

Years later, a fish moving through deeper water—or eventually reaching a coastal table—may have begun life hiding among leaves and stones within sight of the beach.

The distance between nursery and open sea is not only geographical.

It is an entire lifetime.

What the Fisherman Sees

Later in the day, a fisherman sitting beside a small boat looks towards the bay without appearing to search for anything.

Ask him where the fish are, and he may answer with another question. What has the wind been doing? Is the water warmer than yesterday? Which bottom are you asking about?

He does not carry one map of the bay. He carries many.

There is a map for rock, another for sand and another for deeper water. There is a spring map and a late-summer map. Some species are understood through depth, others through season, prey or the direction of the wind. The same stretch of sea can feel promising on one day and silent on another.

This knowledge is not romantic instinct. It is memory built through repetition: departures before sunrise, unsuccessful days, changes in temperature and the recollection of places that once produced a catch.

A visitor sees the fish that happens to appear.

A fisherman thinks about the fish that should be present and asks why it is not.

That may be one of the most valuable differences between casual observation and local knowledge. The experienced eye does not only recognise what is there.

It remembers what is missing.

The Fish That Belongs to One Rock

Some fish move constantly through the shallows. Others appear deeply connected to a particular place.

A grouper resting near a rocky cavity does not behave like a nervous school crossing open water. It moves with greater deliberation and often remains closely associated with shelter. Research on dusky groupers has documented site fidelity and homing behaviour, showing that familiar rocky areas can form part of a fish’s long-term territory.

A large grouper therefore represents more than size. It may embody years of survival, knowledge of one section of coast and an important reproductive role within the population. Because the species grows slowly and can change sex later in life, the loss of large individuals affects more than the number of fish remaining.

To the swimmer, the cavity may look unchanged after the grouper disappears.

Ecologically, it is not the same place.

The empty opening retains its shape, but part of its living history has gone.

A Beautiful Sea Is Not an Invulnerable Sea

The clarity of the Bay of Vlora creates a comforting illusion.

Because the seabed remains visible, the system can appear complete. But transparent water does not prove that every fish population is healthy. A coast may retain beautiful rock, algae and blue water while losing some of the larger, slower-growing or more heavily targeted species that once gave those habitats their full ecological meaning.

The bay contains environments of high natural value, particularly around Karaburun–Sazan, but it also faces pressure from fishing, coastal activity, pollution, habitat degradation and invasive species.

Both truths must be held together.

The underwater world remains rich enough to surprise a child within minutes of entering the sea. It is not invulnerable.

The absence of a large fish is difficult to recognise because absence has no colour and makes no movement. This is why memory matters. Scientific observation records habitats and species. Fishermen remember frequency, size and season. Visitors contribute attention when they understand that the beauty before them is a living condition, not a permanent guarantee.

Wonder becomes deeper when it includes responsibility.

The Fish You See When You Stop Chasing Them

The easiest way to observe more fish is to become less important.

Fast swimming, repeated diving and direct pursuit make every animal respond to the swimmer. Fish disappear into cracks, tighten into schools or move towards deeper water. The encounter becomes a record of escape rather than ordinary life.

Float quietly instead.

Let the first minute pass without attempting to reach anything. Keep movements small and allow the habitat to settle after your arrival. Gradually, fish return to the edges, continue grazing and cross openings they had briefly abandoned.

This is when behaviour becomes visible. A sea bream inspects the same section of rock several times. A wrasse disappears beneath a ledge and emerges from the opposite side. Red mullets resume their slow search across the sand. A school that had moved away reforms at a comfortable distance.

The sea does not become fuller.

It becomes less interrupted.

Do Not Ask the Fish to Perform

Feeding fish can produce an immediate spectacle. Within seconds, animals gather around the swimmer and the water appears suddenly abundant.

Yet the behaviour is no longer entirely natural.

The fish begin responding to human food rather than to the landscape. Competition intensifies around the visitor, and the scene reflects an artificial opportunity rather than the ordinary rhythm of the coast.

The more valuable encounter is quieter. Watch the mullet search where food is naturally present. See the wrasse examine the rocks and the school turn according to information passing through the group.

The purpose of snorkelling is not to become the centre of the underwater scene.

It is to witness a scene that would have continued without you.

A Child Learns the First Name

Back near the shore, the child lifts his mask and tries to describe the fish he followed.

“It was silver,” he says.

There were many silver fish.

“It had stripes.”

That narrows the possibilities, but not enough.

“It came out of this rock and went back to the same place.”

Now the behaviour begins to identify it more clearly than colour alone.

An adult may eventually provide the name. But the name is not the most important part of what has happened. The child has already noticed habitat, repetition and choice. He has begun connecting the animal to the landscape.

This is how natural knowledge often begins: not with memorising a list of species, but with caring enough to describe one fish accurately.

The name comes later.

Attention comes first.

The Sea Has More Than One Language

Science reads fish through anatomy, reproduction and collective behaviour. Fishermen read them through weather, season and memory. Swimmers read them through colour, movement and surprise.

None of these ways of knowing is complete alone.

Science explains why a school turns without a leader, why a red mullet searches with sensory barbels and why a wrasse can change sex during its lifetime. Local knowledge connects species to particular grounds and conditions. Direct experience gives those facts a place, a light and an emotional memory.

Together, they turn a fish from an object into a participant in the landscape.

The silver school is no longer simply beautiful. It is a moving system of shared information. The red mullet is no longer disturbing the sand without purpose. The wrasse’s colours are no longer merely decorative. The shallow water is no longer the least important part of the sea.

Understanding does not remove wonder.

It gives wonder more to hold.

Conclusion

From the surface, the Bay of Vlora appears to be one continuous body of water.

Beneath it, every fish lives inside a different map.

The red mullet follows information hidden in sand. The wrasse carries a changing biography in its colours. Juvenile fish use the shallows as the beginning of a much larger life. A school turns without a conductor, while a grouper may remain connected to one familiar section of rock.

The bay is not simply full of fish.

It is full of different ways of understanding the sea.

Once a swimmer recognises this, every position begins to suggest a decision. A fish close to the rock is choosing shelter. A school facing one direction may be reading the current. An animal returning to the same opening is showing that the seabed contains routes and territories invisible to us.

At the end of the morning, the child returns to the beach and the water becomes blue again.

But it is no longer empty blue.

He now knows where the silver fish turn, where the red mullets search and which rock deserves another look tomorrow. The bay has given him no souvenir he can carry in his hand.

It has given him a map.

And perhaps that is the deepest lesson of the fish beneath Vlora: they are not moving randomly through a beautiful landscape. They are reading it continuously.

For a few quiet minutes beneath the surface, they teach us how to begin.

Editorial Note

This article is part of the MAREOGRAPH Editorial Project, an independent editorial initiative founded and developed by Valza Boutique Hotel to document the landscapes, history, biodiversity, culture and living systems of Vlora and the Albanian Mediterranean through research-based storytelling.

Experience the Place

The rocky shallows, seagrass edges and transparent coastal waters around Uji i Ftohtë, Radhimë and the southern Bay of Vlora allow patient swimmers to observe how fish use different parts of the underwater landscape. Valza Boutique Hotel offers a thoughtful base near these shores, while Eden by Valza provides another perspective on the same relationship between sea, season and Mediterranean life.

www.valza.al