Fowl Cay Reef Park

Calm weather has come and we were able to head to Fowl Cay reef park to snorkel in the afternoon.  David and I had dinghied into Hope Town to drop off Rob so he could go diving in the reef park.  Since we would move the boat to be anchored outside Fowl Cay, the dive boat would just drop him at our boat on their way back to Hope Town. 

We set our anchor at Fowl Cay and got the kids ready to head over to the reef to snorkel just as Rob arrived back from diving.  He told us it was great.  The park is a large area with lots of different spots to dive or snorkel.  He told us he saw 3 sharks while diving in 2 different spots.  All 3 were larger than him and didn’t seem to care that there were divers around observing them.  Good to know.  He stayed on the boat while Matthew took his nap and the rest of us were off to snorkel.  There were lots of other snorkelers at different spots through out the area.  We stopped at 2 different spots.  They were both fairly similar in underwater scenery.  We were there at low tide, so it impossible to snorkel over the reef and coral heads so we had to circle around the outside watching the fish and coral.  Calvin, Isabel and Benjamin were done after the first stop, but I still wanted to check out another area of the park just for a little variety.  So we dingh’d over to the south end to pick up another mooring ball.  David stayed in the dinghy with the kids while Savannah, Susie, and I explored the area.  We saw lots of large fish in the 2 foot range and I saw one swimming on the bottom, blending in to the sand that was about 4 feet long. I wish our underwater camera hadn’t broken. 

Talking with rob later, the 2nd spot we went was near one of the spots he went diving.  We stayed on the west side of the reef and he dove on the east side, in that area is where they saw 2 sharks.  We didn’t see any on our side.  I had thought about swimming around the outer east side, but it was more exposed to the ocean waves and the current was running a little strong that day so we had opted to stay on the west side of the reef.  No sharks for us.