St. Thomas & St. John Fish

[Alexa&Walt]

Our Family just returned from 7 days of snorkeling around St. Thomas and St. John.

If you get an opportunity, I would highly recommend it. We saw thousands of fish-and it really inspired us to appreciate our reef aquarium even more.

To name just a few, we saw:

o sea turtles
o blue tangs
o yellow tangs
o blue head wrasse
o sergeant major
o spotted eagle rays
o southern sting rays
o sea slugs
o sea urchins
o blue chromis
o cuttlefish (squid family)
o octopus

and probably 20-30 more varied species of fish and corals native to the area.

I'm disappointed that I didn't have an underwater camera-I shot over 200 photos of the trip, but all the best parts were underwater and i've got nothing to show for that....

Of the 12-16 trips, most were off the beach, but we did take a half day boat charter off of St. Thomas-by far the best money we spent.

If you find you're way down there, i'd recommend the following:

Off-beach snorkeling:

o Hull Bay/St. Thomas
o Secret Harbor / St. Thomas
o Cinnamon Bay / St. John

Charter / Off Shore:

o Hull Bay / i'd use Homer-he runs a dive shop/certification hut there....he'll take you to beaches and islands seldom visited...we never saw another person nor boat nearby. We even snorkeled two caves.

Take care and God Bless.

Alexa and Walt

 

[DaveG99]

did you do the underwater snorkeling trail at trunk bay in st. john? I used to go to the virgin islands all the time when I lived in Puert Rico. It was a cheap short flight to get over there. I love St. John!!!

 

[Alexa&Walt]

We didn't get to Truck Bay, but the trail is still there.

On St. John, we went to Francis Bay and Cinnamon...Trunk was on our list, but honestly, we were looking for places where the tourists 'weren't' (kinda funny eh, since we were tourists)

The Cruise ships dumped tons of folks every day...we tried to go where they weren't.

BTW...we read the writtings of the previous folks that rented the same villa we were in....and this one family was just going on and on about Coki Bay.

Well, you've got to drive through crack town to get there, the beaches were teeming with folks, etc....but the two most disappointing things:

1. The fish are 'tame'. Tourist feed them so much, they hover around you...looking for a handout...which we felt was sad.

2. The Current out is strong...I ended up pulling our 9-year old about 300m into the shallows....he couldn't fight the tide...even with fins.

Walt