Whale-Skate Snorkel Trip

Yesterday 6 of us in 2 boats left Tern Island about 1:30 p.m. for a trip to Whale-skate Island. It is an island in name only as it disappeared about 9 years ago. The trip took about an hour with much of it at low speed winding our way through coral heads and reefs. The nautical chart for this area describes it as: "coral heads, sunken and awash with deep sink holes, breakers show over the entire area." In a small boat it can be navigated carefully but it would be an impossible trip for a boat of any size. What is left at Whale-Skate is a coral sand platform the size of a couple of football fields about 18 inches under water. We pulled the boats onto this shallow platform and anchored. We started snorkeling right at the boat and swam, crawled through the shallows to the edge of the platform where it drops off quickly to 25 or 30 feet deep. The area in which we snorkeled was composed of steep, vertical walled, under water canyons. The walls are coral heads and there were lots of brightly colored reef fish to observe and the twisting canyons to swim through. The water and coral are pristine. It was a spectacular afternoon!