Last seen in Grand Anse

A classmate once described Grand Anse beach as “Peanut butter and jelly” type of beach. Even though it’s the most well-known and most frequented, it’s still my favourite. No other beach I’ve been to can beat it’s clear waters!

I’ve been swimming there since coming to the island, but this last week I saw some pretty cool things.

 

Like a Moray Eel, sticking it’s head out from a hollow rock. It’s jaws were open and it looked freaky. Those eyes! Leah dove down for a closer look and I was scared it would chomp on her. But it just shut it’s mouth and tucked back into the rock.

National Geographic

 

A tiny jellyfish, clear but outlined in purple-pink. I couldn’t find a similar picture so here’s my artists’ rendition. It was jiggling away, the mushroom top part of it fattening and flattening as it squiggled through the water. I looked up to tell Leah but when I looked back down I couldn’t find it.

Caribbean sea cucumber (NOAA PHOTO BY BECKY A. DAYHUFF)

 

When I learned how to scuba dive, my instructor Ricardo picked one of these up off the seafloor to show me. It felt firmer than I expected, and the size and shape of it made me want to throw it like a football through the water. They’re basically just a gut tube!

Levera beach and two mother turtles.

 

 

 

On the full moon, a bus of us went 2 hours up to the north point of the island, to Levera Beach.  Under red lights we watched a leatherback turtle carefully dig out a hole with her hind flippers and in a trance, she laid 100 eggs, yolk and yolkless.  She covered them up with sand, and whipped sand back behind her with her front flippers.  Exhausting, she rested once in a while.  Sand whipped at our ankles as she adjusted position again and again.  Swinging her hind flippers side to side, then stamping down on the sand with them.  Again and again.

Further down the beach another turtle had finished her camouflage.  She flopped and slid slowly and awkwardly forward in the sand, making a large arc toward us, then past us toward the water.  She rested.  She continued, and the waves lapped up onto her.  They hit her face and flew up around her.  She continued to head home toward the water and the moonlight shining off the waves.  The waves flew at her again and again, and she must have known she was almost there.  Finally the beach bottom gave way and she was floating.  We saw the top of  her leathery shell bob at the surface, and another wave crashed over her.  She slid peacefully through the wave, smooth and graceful, then she was gone.

Maybe we’ll see her again in West Africa, maybe in Newfoundland.