March 29, 2008

We’re on a mooring ball in Warderick Wells which is the headquarters of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. We arrived right at closing time last night so this morning we went up to the office to officially check in.

After that, we spent the better part of the day in the water. There are 2 major spots that we enjoy snorkeling here. The first is about the size of a football field and has a 2 knot current running down it lengthwise. The preferred technique here is pretty much the same as we used in drifting the Cave Cay Cut. Fasten yourself to the dink and just drift along.


The Park is a No Take zone, which means no fishing, no shelling, no conch, no nothing. As a result, the underwater wildlife is spectacular. This particular spot has a couple of small reefs scattered about with fields of underwater plants strewn in between. We saw 3 lobsters walking about in broad daylight. There were groupers, rays and sharks mixed in with colorful reef fish. After repeating the drift several times we retired to the boat for lunch.

After lunch we brought Tom & Deb from Hearts Desire with us to a spot that in the past, has been a great reef to snorkel. Whenever you take someone to a place that’s one of your “favorites” you inwardly hope that it will live up to their expectations. Last time we were here we saw 2 large lobsters and a multitude of fish.

This time it was as if we had walked into the local Lobsterama. They were everywhere, sometimes we were watching 4 at once as they roamed the bottom. We probably saw 10 or more different lobsters while we were on the reef. There were 2 pounders along with several cow sized specimens walking about. The schools of fish were so thick that you literally couldn’t see through them.

When I’m hunting, the fish are usually very leery about me being in the water. There is no hunting here and as a result these fish were practically tame, they were largely unconcerned with our presence. I could float along 15 feet above a school and dive down into their midst and instead of scattering they would just part enough for me to join them and swim in their school.

In the past, grouper have proved to be skittish and look to find a hiding place as soon as they think you’ve seen them. Christy pointed out a 2 foot grouper sitting on the bottom under a sea fan. I swam down fully expecting him to bolt and he just sat there, even as I got to within arms length of him.

There were also hundreds of mature conch roaming the bottom. This reef starts in 4 feet of water and drops off into depths of about 35 feet. The reef is thick with life at every level. So the diversity and overall numbers of fish here proved to be more than any of us could have hoped for.