Jumbie Bay

Great snorkeling here today. Jumbie Bay is between Hawksnest and Trunk Bay on the North Shore, both popular St. John beaches, and perhaps the beauty of Jumbie's reef life is in part attributable to the fact that these other two beaches get most of the traffic. There's nowhere good to park near the steps down to Jumbie (unless you drive a scooter :)). I arrived an hour before sunset and had the beach to myself once more. Swam through an enormous school of little neon silvery fish. Followed a smooth trunkfish

for a while before turning to find several enormous jacks (I think; some sort of jack-shaped fish with a yellow belly) noodling around for dinner. Then I swam with a school of blue tang

passing parrotfish, angelfish, and all sorts of other beauties until I got to the highlight of my snorkel today: Something reddish pink with long limbs was staring at me from the reef floor. At first I thought it was a ginormous starfish, and I was excited because despite islanders telling me "those huge starfish are everywhere!", I haven't seen one yet. But it had too many appendages, plus it was definitely staring -- and suddenly I realized I was face to face with an octopus!

Allow me to illustrate my excitement via this portion of a chat with my motorcycle-borrowing friend Dan.

me: Paradise is good! I saw an octopus today!
Dan: Octopus? That's awesome I was pretty thrilled with the sea turtle I saw... it had nothing on an octopus
me: The octopus had other thoughts on the matter, it appeared. I was regarded with a great deal of suspicion.
Dan: Smart critter ;-)
me: Haven't seen a sea turtle yet. Shaddup! :P
Dan: Did it socialize with you? or whatever it is that octopus-like creatures do...
me: Well, we didn't exactly have tea and watercress sandwiches. It seemed concerned that I might want to eat it, or perhaps take food from it. So after a couple of minutes, s/he retreated beneath a rock.
Dan: I don't know... I've never encountered one. Though. as far as finger sandwiches go, I would think cucumber....
me: Sea cucumber?!! Sigh.

As for the coral -- Jumbie has pillar coral, fire coral, brain coral, and gorgonians galore.

Photos nabbed from Wikipedia but are decent representations of what I saw today. Not having an underwater camera, I'm unable to personally document many of the island's most interesting sights.