Snorkeling Discoveries off Coki Beach on St. Thomas

Most people with a limited amount of time on St. Thomas head immediately to Magens Bay Beach. Cruise ship passengers by the hundreds include at least a short stop at the longest and, possibly, most beautiful beach on the island. While undeveloped and protected as a park, I've always understood that it's not known for its snorkeling, lacking easily swimmable coral reefs. As a result, on my recent visit to the Virgin Islands, I headed to Coki Bay at the northeastern end of the island. As the taxi driver reminded me in the cruise port about my favorite pastime, "I've lived on St. Thomas for forty years; believe me, it's the best!"

I actually had a list of several other snorkeling spots to consider: Secret Harbor, Lindquist, Brewers Bay, and Sapphire. Each was off of a sandy beach, and each had its own attractions. However I was familiar with Coki already, having snorkeled there just over six years ago. It was a pretty beach with the requisite Virgin Island sugary sand and crystal clear water reflecting an azure blue sky, and it had a reef at its rocky, eastern end. In fact, Coral World Ocean Park sat aside the reef, even offering a twenty-foot deep underwater observatory. And Coki Beach hosted bathrooms, fresh water showers, a lifeguard, restaurants, and lots of concessions including chair, umbrella, and snorkel gear rentals: a complete package of comforts that I'm pretty sure none of the other sites in contention matched.

My head was filled with the memories of stoplight parrotfish on the Coki reef six years ago, so I waded into the pleasant water with the colorful fish on my mind. Sergeant majors schooled around me, apparently accustomed to tourists feeding them petfood kibble. A needlefish was so large and so close to me that for a moment I feared it was a barracuda. At least two varieties of surgeonfish - ocean and Atlantic blue tang - populated the shore-hugging reef. A trumpetfish posed still in the calm water, its long, thick body suspended vertically. And a striped parrotfish darted around me. Another parrotfish, especially curious about me, might have been a stoplight but it was quite pale in color, almost gray, completely lacking the greens, pinks and yellows I recalled the fish wearing many years ago.

I swam close to the floating buoys marking the start of the Coral World property, tempted to trespass and impishly peer into the observatory's underwater windows. Instead, I studied the corals and the smaller animals inhabiting the reef and rocky shoreline, noticing living sea snails attached to fan corals and sorting through abandoned shells lying in crevices on the sea floor. A cobalt blue cluster of tubes turned out to be a blue tunicate, or sea squirt, a type of marine invertebrate that feeds on the plankton and detritus they filter out of the ocean.

As I paddled closer to the spot on the beach where I had entered the water, I observed a large school of tiny fish that might have been reef silversides. The shiny mass of fish undulated with the motion of the shallow surf.

Near shore, away from the rocks and reef, the glaring white of the sand emphasized the lack of color and marine life in the water, dramatically contrasting with the pinks and browns of the human swimmers' legs. However suddenly some quick motion in the sea drew my attention. Focusing through my mask, I barely discerned the school of translucent fish, each individual bread plate-sized and trailing long dorsal and ventral fins. The elegant formation of these fish, known as palometas, moved fast. As I tried to keep up with it to snap some photos, the silvery fish were almost invisible in the glaring seascape.

Thanks to the chase, I found myself snorkeling in the long, sandy expanse of Coki Bay, what's conventionally assumed to be a barren zone for underwater life. However I was fortunate to notice several swimmers and snorkelers gathered together and peering intently below. Resting below them was a large southern stingray, not twenty-five feet from shore!

I've seen this fascinating animal in the Caribbean before, but hundreds of miles to the west, off of Belize and the Cayman Islands. Witnessing this far-ranging ray in the Virgin Islands was a new thrill. I snapped some shots and then stood up as the water wasn't very deep. My head in the air, I realized I was pretty far down the beach, exactly where my husband and I had rented our chairs under the shade of a tree. In fact, I was so close to him that he easily heard me beckoning him to jump in and see the ray.

With all the attention, the stingray surely became annoyed because it started swimming into deeper water. But it soon stopped, affording more swimmers and snorkelers the chance to observe him.

Heading ashore from deeper water, I encountered a grey triggerfish, another species I'm familiar with from the Western Caribbean. However on this occasion, I was right on top of the critter, offering me some terrific shots of the luminescent striations and patterns in its mottled, pale scales. Like the other creatures in the sandy expanse of Coki, including the ray, the triggerfish was mostly in black and white with shades of gray.

After a short rest on land, I decided to try snorkeling at the west end of Coki Beach, something I'd never done. A rocky coastline guaranteed at least some coral growth, and the calm, clear water assured excellent visibility. Back in the bay, I soon witnessed several notable coral formations including an elkhorn.

Shortly after, I discovered a brand-new fish species, an orangespotted filefish, followed by a more familiar smooth trunkfish. I landed upon at least two butterflyfish: a foureye and a banded. There weren't many parrotfish of note except for at least one redband. I was intrigued for a moment by a tiny fish, half yellow, and half neon blue - a beaugregory - but was quickly distracted by a large eel peering from behind a rock. Pale yellow-colored, the goldentail moray let me snap quite a few pictures while it wriggled between the rocky crevices of its underwater domain.

Rather than swim too far along the coastline, away from other snorkelers, I decided to head closer to the beach and work my way across the sandy seascape back to the western edge of Coki Bay. After all, I'd seen the southern stingray, grey triggerfish, and palometas in this environment, maybe there'd be some sea turtles. There were even a few patches of grass or kelp; maybe the turtles would be nibbling there.

The nearby dive shop owner had told me there were indeed turtles in the area, but centuries of fishing, hunting and habitat exploitation in the Caribbean Sea had dramatically reduced their populations from historic levels. When I told her about my success finding them on Maui, she reminded me how isolated and protected the Hawaiian Islands were. Ultimately, however, I wasn't being naively wishful, because back on my ship, I later talked to a snorkeler who had seen several turtles at Magens Bay in a similar environment on that very day.

Alas, despite my optimism, I didn't encounter any turtles on St. Thomas. Or even a second stingray. However on my swim across Coki, I did discover a scrawled cowfish, a type of boxfish with hornlike appendages emanating from its head. Interestingly, like the palometas and the grey triggerfish, the cowfish was almost completely camouflaged, pale and hidden against the white, sandy sea floor. I was learning that unlike on the rocks and reefs, there was no technicolor menagerie of flora and fauna in this vast sandscape: no corals, algae, and seaweeds to blend in with.

I finished my morning's snorkel where it began, off the eastern end of Coki Beach. I appreciated the crowded schools of fish relentlessly begging the snorkelers for handouts. And again, just as when I had last departed the reef over six years ago, a brightly-colored stoplight parrotfish finally joined the kaleidoscopic fray.