Today was cloudy and rainy. But first thing in the morning – before breakfast! – Rob took us over to The Indians to snorkel. We didn’t want to wait any longer and miss the sort-of break in the weather.
The Indians is one of our favorite snorkel spots. It has a lot of fish and coral. One negative is that it’s a rather small area. But the biggest negative is that it is VERY popular. You really need to get there first thing in the morning or you’ll be snorkeling in a crowd. It’s definitely worth a stop if you are in the area. But, there are other larger and less crowded snorkel spots in BVI.
Here is a view back from the dinghy as we made our way to The Indians. Yes, it’s a stormy day!
Given how cloudy it was, it’s lucky there was enough to get good photos and videos underwater. But, as you will see, it worked out fine for us.
Here is a video of our morning snorkeling at The Indians, starting with Jeff next to the dinghy as Rob waves at me.
We snorkeled the “back” side of the Indians, which is better than the other side. They have ropes set up for folks to tie off their dinghies on both sides. When we started, no one else was there. But as you’ll see near the end of this video, by the time we left, there were some boats moored on the front side.
In the video, I caught some groupers swimming around, which is unusual. Near the beginning (about 30 sec in) is the Graysby. A bit later in the video, you see a darker grouper swimming away. Also cool is the grey and yellow Spanish Hogfish. Of course, there were many Tangs, Parrotfish and Wrasse, as usual.
Jeff got some good photos, even with the cloudy conditions. Although, some photos are a bit fuzzy because of that.
I’m not sure what fish this is, but I like the coral next to it.
This butterfly fish was swimming down, so it’s not a great full-on body shot. But you can see its colors, so I figured it was worth sharing.
A school of Blue Tangs swam by…
Oh! We saw a pair of Banded Butterflyfish here. We only saw them in one other place over this trip. So it’s great Jeff got a picture and I got video of them.
This pic made me laugh! It looks like the Parrotfish is smiling at us!
Oh, I thought this was such a pretty picture! It looks like it was staged in an aquarium. 😄
This isn’t a great photo, but it shows a Needlefish near the surface. It’s difficult to catch them on camera, so this is lucky!
Jeff really has keen eyes! He saw this tiny snail on the sea fan. If you recall, he got an amazing photo of this Flamingo Tongue Snail a few days ago, at Diamond Reef. This is the one I told you about that has a mantle it extends to cover its shell. That’s where the few spots of color come from in the photo. I don’t know how he sees these less than 1″ snails.
Of course, we’ve seen plenty of the Bluehead Wrasse on this trip!
This dark green sponge is really interesting. Like a pipe organ with so many pipes!
Aha! Jeff popped his head above the water to see what Rob was doing while waiting for us on the dinghy. You can see how dark it is from the clouds.
A beautiful shot of a Queen Parrotfish.
And this is a juvenile Queen Parrotfish. They look so different when they are young.
This Squirrelfish was hanging out near the sea urchins. It’s lucky it came out a bit to get a good photo of it.
It was finally time to head back to Rob on the dinghy. As we motored away, Jeff got a picture of the front side of The Indians, where we didn’t really snorkel this time.
Back on board, we cleaned up and then had breakfast. We were very hungry by then! Julia made this caramel apple “pancake” for us this morning.
After breakfast, we moved on to Little Harbour. This is because, sadly, we are leaving tomorrow. So Rob needed to move us closer to our final destination.