Exploring Coral Reefs at Norman Island

     It's strange to sink back into a routine while living such a transient lifestyle. But the day that our visitors headed home things began to feel "back to normal," though with the added bonus of now having Jamie with us. That day we sailed briefly to "The Indians" where the others snorkeled while Dad and I went diving. There is so much life beneath the water here that it's mind boggling to swim among it. Bright blue creole wrasse swarmed in schools, sparkling in beams of sunlight. Spotted goatfish combed the sandy bottom, probing with their whiskers, while black and yellow rock beauties darted among clumps of coral. Browns and beiges, purples and reds, fish and coral of all shapes and sizes surrounded us in a chaos of colour. Although we got a bit lost and confused and ended up surfacing near the busy mooring balls, every dive here presents some new colourful creature to marvel at.

     A short hop brought us back to Norman Island, completing a loop of the entire BVIs for the first time. Anchored in the busy bay called the Bight we settled down for a night of movie-watching and constant snacking. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I spend most days in the fresh air or am more active than back home, but I seem to be in a constant state of hunger since arriving here. Cookies do not last long on this boat, that's for sure.

     Wednesday, we snorkeled the caves at Norman Island, where it is commonly believed that a pirate- the island's namesake-once hid a treasure of Spanish gold. Entering the oval cavern of the southernmost cave it is easy to imagine piles of gold glimmering alongside the smooth colourful rocks and green, purple and orange walls that glint in the filtered light. In another cave that has walls spattered with orange cup coral a huge school of tiny silver fish moved as one, expanding and parting as a large grouper passed among them. A striped lizardfish snapped alert from the bottom to prey on the school's outer edges before settling back down convincingly camouflaged. Exploring the reef outside the caves we found a small sea turtle surfacing for gulps of air before trundling down to feed off a clump of coral. They seem to be able to hold their breath a long time.

     In the pulsing heat of the next day, a hike on the island took us past a low open restaurant with the word "Pirates" written in bold white letters on the red roof. Jamie waited to start his scuba diving lessons on the porch of the dive shack for Sail Caribbean Divers at Norman Island, which has dive gear tacked haphazard on its walls and doors. While Jamie began his solo lessons with his friendly dread locked Scottish instructor, Mom, Sarah and I plodded along a muddy red trail-like road to take in the view from a nearby hill. As we hiked upwards on questionable footing, small brown lizards skittered off into the tangling green underbrush. The top of the old road overlooked the Bight, a busy anchorage for charters on their first days out due to its proximity to Tortola, which lies just across the Sir Francis Drake Channel.

     Jamie continued to excel in his dive lessons on Friday while the rest of us set off to nearby dive sites. Sarah and I explored the "Sandy Ledges" in Privateer Bay. Mom and Dad navigated "Kelly's Cove" near Water Point. After returning to the boat to retrieve our forgotten weight belts, Sarah and I tied to a mooring in Privateer Bay and descended to a disorienting bottom covered in turtle grass. Following our compasses we eventually found the long reef ledge and swam a slow, comfortable pace, watching fish in their aquatic playground. It's amazing how at first on a dive you can be completely overwhelmed by all there is to see, shimmering scales grabbing your attention every few seconds, but when you settle down and focus on one patch of reef, one coral, one fish, you notice so much more that wasn't obvious at first glance. In any section of a reef you can watch a creature reveal a telling detail about its once-elusive character: a fish with a piece of coral in its mouth, a sea mollusk with a spotted pattern latched onto a soft coral, a juvenile filefish circling a rock with near-transparent fins swirling like the tiniest fan.

     A reef really is the most diverse and magical place imaginable, each crack and crevice of rock positively crammed with life. You could come back to these sites again and again and see something new every single time. On every dive, as I observe the creatures around me and make sure to leave the reef completely untouched, I feel incredibly privileged to have this opportunity to explore such intriguing places. It's obvious that this is an exhilarating sport when we all return from each dive eager to share what we saw with each other and ready to plan out the next day's dive.

     Today we continued diving and switched locations. Sarah and I explored "Kelly's Cove" with Jamie snorkeling at the surface following our meandering bubbles, and later in the day Mom and Dad discovered a nurse shark and an impossibly large crab hiding beneath the rocks of the "Sandy Ledges." That makes our second nurse shark sighting, the first being caught on Brooke's camera while snorkeling on a reef in Eustatia Sound.

     Tomorrow we will explore a site called Angelfish Reef at the edge of Privateer Bay while Jamie completes his first day of open water dives. Unfortunately there's no internet here, so pictures will have to wait.

All the best,
Nicole.
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