I realized when creating this post that we did so much today, the entire post just covers one day! We saw more and more nurse sharks, until finally we saw a literal pile of them! Don’t believe me? Read on!

3.21 – Saturday

We snorkeled Thunderball Grotto before, about three weeks ago, but it was such a good time that I wanted to go back!

We made plans to snorkel around slack tide today which we think might be around 2pm. It’s really hard to tell, since it’s probably later amongst these islands than it is on the Sound shore, and also we’ve heard Navionics doesn’t account for daylight savings but we haven’t been able to verify that. I feel like we are playing guessing games with the tide here, even the way the boats float in the anchorage hasn’t necessarily confirmed when slack is.

At any rate, we expected slack to be around 2pm, we went over to the Grotto at 1pm and it was clearly still a little high for entering the grotto. In the photo below, the dark hole under where the rocks have sheared off is the entrance to the interior cave. At low tide there’s a minimum of 1 ft of clearance.

The fish outside the grotto are super interesting and varied, so we started snorkeling out there.

We started to round the island a little bit but the current was quite strong out there. Kyle pushed through it anyway because we saw a sea turtle! The thing about this sea turtle is that it’s the first one we’ve ever swam with, the rest have all been photographed from the dinghy. Naturally he wanted nothing to do with us. I couldn’t swim against the current very well so I headed back.

We saw a bunch of new varieties this time, including a trumpet fish and rock beauty!

We were in the water for so long that I started getting cold, but I wanted to go inside the grotto so I headed in. The current inside was quite strong, and between the other people, the rocks, the current and the fish I had too much to pay attention to. It was too mentally and physically taxing to be enjoyable, so I gave up and went back out.

When I got out I realized just how exhausted I was after fighting the current, so I hauled myself back into the dinghy and flopped down on the floor. I stayed there until Kyle made me move to go pull up the anchor.

We got back to the boat and suddenly I felt a little queasy. So I didn’t eat very much even though I should have been starving. Instead of taking a nap, like a reasonable person, we wanted to go to shore again and explore the island.

We started wandering along the coastline. When we got to the government dock we found some people cleaning fish and tossing scraps to nurse sharks! There were about ten of them so we stood and watched for a while.

They were swimming on the surface in swimming-pool-colored water, it was incredible to watch. Look at the different colors on these nurses!

We kept walking along the road along shore, and when we ran out of road we started following the beach. Even from a distance I spotted a few sea stars in ankle deep water. Sea stars! We had just been remarking that we hardly have seen any, so I was stoked! Do you see the one in the shallows here?

I’ve never held one before so I decided to pick one up and see what it feels like. They feel hollow! It was super interesting.

While playing with the sea stars we saw a couple more nurse sharks swimming along the shallows. They are everywhere here! I can’t believe we didn’t see any while snorkeling at the grotto.

We took a different road back towards the marina and happened upon a laundry/liquor store. Cold beer sounded amazing, so we picked up a couple Kaliks and found a shady spot on the beach to enjoy them. Beer tastes better after wandering around in the hot sun for a while, trust me, I’ve done a lot of research!

Then back to Staniel Cay marina, I was determined to get in the water with the sharks this time. The kids had done it yesterday, surely I could find it within myself to put my feet in the water and not panic!

However, as we walked up to the shark area we found a shocking development. They were cleaning mahi-mahi and tossing the scraps, which had caused a literal pile of nurse sharks to gather!

They looked like they were gently resting in the sun, until a scrap was thrown in and then it was a frothy frenzy!

However, I did something new – I pet a wild shark!

Kyle got in the water a little bit, he was trying to get a good underwater shot of the sergeant majors feasting on the mahi spine, but it turns out the best shot of that was from above.

It ended up being a huge day, between snorkeling and spending time in the sun we were exhausted. We spent the next two days on the boat, relaxing and getting work done. I made a huge pile of tortillas from scratch, since supplies are harder to find we’re often doing things from scratch lately.

Little did we know those were the last restful days we’d have for quite a while!