Whale Bone Bay

Went snorkeling for my first time here Friday over at Whale Bone Bay, about 2km away from the station. It's a nice, small bay that nobody really knows about because of its location at the far end of St. George.
The bay doesn't really have a beach, mostly just rocky and right now its completely covered in algae, about 10 ft out into the water as well. It's kind of gross, but apparently its only there for a few months. The snorkeling was very good though and I'm very pleased with my new equipment.

I went out for the swim around 5:00pm or so and I got freaking tired quickly. Swimming for 30 minutes wore me out especially after not doing anything since my defeat to Mr. Green in the Joshua Buddies 5k. That was in June. It's now late October. I've got some abnormal growth going on between my hips and neck, I'm not sure what it is but hopefully it will go away soon.

Lookin at the picture above, I followed the right shoreline looking out to the ocean; the tide was coming in. There were a few schools of smaller fish, not really sure what they were. Some parrotfish and long slender brown and white banded fish. Depth was about 8-15ft mostly. Then I saw something pretty ridiculous.

I swam back into the middle near to the "beach" and saw pretty large school of fish, probably about 20 ft in length with each fish about an inch or so. That was cool to see, so I swam toward it to break it up and to see the movement. But fish schooling like that typically do it for one reason - predator avoidance. As soon as I hit the fish and they started breaking and a MASSIVE fish swam behind them. The fish was about 5-6 ft in length, a large Tarpon. A second came right after.


I was honestly freaked out a little, swimming by myself and then seeing these two huge fish, thicker and larger than myself, I decided to observe from far away. Unfortunately the bay was pretty turbid and I couldn't see more than 10 ft in front of me, so I swam back looking for the tarpon. The day before, I was informed that there was a school of tarpon, so I was kind hoping I'd run into a few. I didn't last much longer swimming around and called it quits. Fairly large Barracuda hang out in Whale Bone so I expect to make frequent visits.

It will take me a while to make the rounds of all the beaches/bays and snorkeling locales. Next on my list is Tobacco Bay and Clearwater Beach.