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Cruz Bay, VI → Haulover Bea → Cruz Bay, VI 23.0 mi (37.0 km) |
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Glub glub, everyone!
I woke up in a salty sweat—yes, beavers sweat—because today was going to be a real challenge! I was going to have one, and only one, chance today to see a completely underwater national monument, Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument. All tours had been booked full well in advance, so I was completely on my own. I needed my dive suit and my GoPro to do all the things right that they did wrong yesterday at Trunk Bay!
My first challenge was getting there. Most of the monument is far out at sea, but there are beaches along Hurricane Hole where someone can snorkel out into the monument. It’s on the far eastern end of the island, and none of the taxi drivers wanted to take me. After about half an hour, the dispatcher bullied a lady into taking me, but first, she needed to up-charge me and bring a companion to keep her company on the long, arduous, nearly 40-minute journey back. But she did it, and we passed wild donkeys and breathtaking views of Hurricane Hole, so named because it was safer for ships to be there during a hurricane! We went up and down super-steep roads in the rain, and I wondered if I would have to walk back down this road later to hail another taxi. As I got out, she backed her car into a tree, smashing the tail light! I felt super bad about that, but she said it was fine and drove off, leaving me to face the unknown of Haulover Bay!
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As soon as I stepped onto the pebbly beach, the sun came out, and the air turned still! I looked out over the water, and it was calm, clear, and very inviting as that sunshine heated things up! I could not have asked for a more perfect day to dabble in a very imperfect approach to taking photos!
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Systems check! Buoyancy seemed good! Oxygen seemed stable! Propulsion got me out on the water and away from the beach! I was surrounded on all sides by rolling, green hills and friendly skies and started to work my way along the upper shore of the bay!
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Down below, the water was clear, and the suit was keeping the wet stuff out and the dry stuff in. So long as I steered clear of the drop-off, I wouldn’t have to worry about any big critters taking an interest in me. I was fine with needlefish, but a big barracuda? No thanks!
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I pulled a valve, and down I went! What I saw was pretty shocking: there was hardly any coral! It was mostly a boulder field with a few token clusters of dark orange pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus), but hey, pillar coral’s an endangered species, so what a find!
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And waving in the gentle current was a lonely purple sea fan (Gorgonia ventalina), a kind of soft coral that doesn’t form a limestone shell as it grows. It was dainty and delicate, and so much smaller than the photos I’d seen before coming here. I mean, this reef has been hit hard in the last two decades between bleaching events, when the water warms so much it kills off coral polyps, and the devastating duo of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease and White Band Disease, which have wiped out 90% of the shallow water corals in the U.S. Virgin Islands!
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So while there were fish here, including a humongous, 2-foot pufferfish out in the deeper water, I was just flabbergasted at how little coral there was in south Haulover Bay! I couldn’t help but remember that barely three days ago, the EPA rescinded the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which confirmed that pollution caused by burning fossil fuels was responsible for climate change. Now polluters have the freedom to pollute more, and who can say how long these reefs, and the life they nourish, have left?
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What’s left here is called a reef in transition. As the corals die, and the water warms, algae, like this sargassum and turbinaria, moves in. So the lushest and most vibrant part of my dive in the Coral Reef National Monument wasn’t made up of coral at all!
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Well, maybe that’s not completely true. I did spot a huge brain coral topped with two Christmas tree worms and a bristle worm! Brain coral is unique in that all its polyps are closely connected—they share tissue! While this makes them vulnerable to sickness, a healthy brain coral can live up to 900 years! It was hard to know if this one was healthy or not, but this was definitely the most spectacular coral I saw in south Haulover Bay. Across the road, there was also a north Haulover Bay, which was technically in Virgin Islands National Park, but I figured it would be worth a look!
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So I strolled over to the north side, where the waves were really rolling! I was pretty iffy on whether I should chance it, but at last, I decided to make the most of my dive suit. Gosh, right away, it was a huge difference! Visibility was really poor because the waves were stirring up all the sediment, and I had to dodge through some huge, old reefs to avoid smashing my helmet! Plus, there were lots of jellyfish, tiny and harmless, but unnerving because they were so unavoidable!
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I did at least see more numerous corals on this side, though! Maybe it was because the water was deeper? Maybe it was because the currents flowed differently? But here, at least, was some of the color and texture I’d been hoping for in south Haulover Bay!
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Some of the reefs were huge! I couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead, but here at least, they were still housing fish! Compared to south, there were way more fish over on this turbulent side, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend a lot of time over here. It was just too hard to keep control in the current while taking photos, so I decided to spend just a little more time in south Haulover Bay.
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My second dip in south Haulover focused on looking for sea turtles! I’d spotted three or four from the beach, but I couldn’t see any of them once I swam out a way. As herbivores, they probably didn’t mind the coral being replaced by more plants, but they also seemed happiest grazing out in the deeper parts of the bay where I couldn’t say hello. So, I drifted around the opposite shore from where I’d started, which was much rockier, then figured I’d seen about all I’d be able to see and got out to dry out. My diving day, as far as circumstances allowed, had been a success!
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Getting back to Cruz Bay, on the other hand, took a lot of luck and the rest of the afternoon! Since all of the taxis were based in Cruz Bay, where I’d had a tough enough time hiring one in person, it was going to be even tougher getting back remotely! I was lucky enough to catch a ride back to Coral Bay with a nice older couple, who dropped me at Johnny Lime for a Venezuelan arepa. After lunch, I learned that Coral Bay was mostly populated by folks living or staying in Coral Bay, which wasn’t going to get me where I needed to go, so I hiked to where there’d be more potential drivers: Skinny Legs Bar, next to the dock where boats took tourists to and from the floating taco bar, Lime Out.
Along the way, I was joined by a former realtor named George, who moved here from the mainland when the regime changed last year! He told me that hitchhiking on St. John was common but that, rather than sticking out a thumb, a hitchhiker had to point with their index finger in the direction they wanted to go. So after watching some Winter Olympic curling on the bar’s tv, while seated in the hot tropics, I tried my hand—literally—at hitchhiking, and it felt super awkward and vulnerable! I was awfully small to be seen from the road, though, and I might not have gotten back to Cruz Bay at all if a taxi hadn’t arrived to pick up a crew of tipsy tourists from Lime Out! Anyway, I made it back, counted my last day on St. John a success, and passed the evening down at Cruz Bay Landing, chatting with Ron the bartender about his impending move to San Diego and his chances of success with an empanada restaurant!
I too am off to California!
P.S. Only a few ferries run from Cruz Bay to Charlotte-Amalie each day, and I booked the earliest one at 8:45 AM for my flight at 1:00. Originally, I planned to explore the capital of the Virgin Islands a bit before my flight, but after my experience with taxis on St. John, I didn’t want to risk missing my flight. So I ended up in an empty terminal, four hours early on the day of a partial government shutdown over civil rights violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and passed the time watching folks hop from dead outlet to dead outlet with their phone cables. Otherwise, my trip home went off without a hitch!
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Total Ground Covered: 46.0 mi (74.0 km) |
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