We awoke to the sound of rain this morning and then noted the presence of an umbrella in the cupboard. It must rain here a lot then...
After breakfast we grabbed a set of mask, snorkel and fins and decided to snorkel around the island...literally. If it only takes 30 minutes to walk around it, it can't take too long to swim around.
The inner house reef is full of life and it is only 3 feet from the shore. I saw ghost pipefish, gobies, parrotfish, unicornfish, indian coral groupers, a honeycomb grouper, a tuna, a christmas tree worm, sea cucumbers (and one pooing!), regal angelfish, snappers, squirrelfish, picasso triggerfish, clown triggerfish, clams, titan triggerfish, one of which was 3 feet long, trumpetfish, moorish idols, squid, shrimp, batfish, starfish, powder blue surgeonfish, sailfin surgeonfish, emperor angelfish, very long nose butterflyfish, saddled pufferfish and we got within inches of one of the black tipped sharks who kept swimming around us. It was brilliant! We arrived back at our starting point 2 hours 30 minutes later, me with a distinct tan line on my arse!
After a 2 hour siesta, a cup of tea and a game of bao, we went back out to the jetty in search of sharkey. As predicted, within seconds of our arrival we had a sighting of sharkey, trumpetfish and snappers just at the shoreline. The sun was setting on the other side of the island so out came the crabs and ghost crabs. All four of the young black tipped sharks were swimming around the jetty. The beach was littered with crabs, it was magnificent. Then we strolled around the island again before dinner.
After dinner [Editors Note: how is it possible to make colourful jelly which has zero flavour to it?], we sat on the jetty again watching the four young sharks swimming around. They were becoming very addictive.
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.