Happy Birthday Dad! I woke up to notice that we didn't get Internet way out here in the Out Islands. Nothing - not a phone signal. Very stressful. After thinking of all the ways I could possibly call home to wish him happy birthday, I had to give up and just send good vibes..... :)
Kevin, Pat, Connor and Kerry jumped in the dinghy to do a bit of dinghy exploration and would take me back to the best one they saw. There are a lot of reefs that encircle the island so they were hopeful that they would find something good.
Unfortunately (or I suppose fortunately), one of the other boaters came over, as they were in the water, to inform them that they had just noticed a large shark in the area. Yikes. Later, we learned that he thought it was a bull shark - double yikes. They quickly ditched their plans for finding the perfect snorkeling ground and headed back to the boat - snorkeling would have to wait another day. We had another adventure planned anyway. On the island there are mangroves that you can access from the outside by dinghy at high tide. We had heard that there were lots of turtles and sea birds to find. There were another few boats that were wanting to do the same thing. As we approached the entrance two of the dads from the other boats were in their dinghy just outside to do a bit of spear fishing before going through the mangroves (this was later found to be against the sea park law...but, at the time they didn't know).
Kerry quickly talked me into their boat so that I could do a bit of snorkeling with them, while they spear fished (as I didn't have a chance today). Reluctantly, I jumped in. Now, I was still a bit nervous about the previous shark siting so I stuck near the anchored dinghy, snorkeling out to the reef and back while they hunted for dinner. I was also keeping in mind that when a fish is caught the fish needs to come straight out of the water or we could quickly be in the company of sharks. So, he caught the fish, spear went straight out of the water, I swam 'briskly' and all was well. We joined up with the other boats but they had changed their minds about doing the mangroves. We knew that we would be leaving in the morning so we ventured out on our own. The mangroves have meandering paths of water in between the trees - very pretty. We ventured off of the main path and all of a sudden shadows streaked in the water below, zipping in and out. What were they? Turtles! It was so cool. These are Green Sea Turtles and they go unbelievably fast. Connor and I jumped in with them and we managed to capture a few on 'film'. We had never seen turtles like this. I was quite the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment