Land & Sea Park adventures (part 2)

The Exuma Land & Sea Park has so much to do and see; we absolutely love it! In my prior post (part 1), I told you about splashing around in Rachel’s Bubble Bath, visiting the Rocky Dundas Caves, and snorkeling and hosting a dinner guest at one of our favorite anchorages, Fowl Cay. In this post, as promised, I’ll tell you about (or rather show you) our amazing time snorkeling at The Aquarium, checking out the sunken plane, and swimming with the infamous nurse sharks.

Snorkeling The Aquarium

With a name like “The Aquarium,” it has to be good (did anyone else just see the Smucker’s commercial playing in their head?). Seriously, though – it is some really nice snorkeling. We heard a few people call it a dive site – they need to slow their role a bit. At 10-20 feet (or even shallower), it doesn’t really allow for diving, but it is gorgeous for snorkeling. The coral has great variety and is very healthy. Being in such shallow waters allows all the different bright colors to really pop – especially if the sun is shining overhead.

My favorite part of this site is probably the coral – it’s just so gorgeous. This site’s real claim to fame though is the hundreds of small aquarium fish, particularly a large school of sergeant generals (the black, white, and yellow striped ones) that come right up to you as you snorkel. We can quickly tell they are used to being fed by the hordes of people that come to admire them. We aren’t exactly onboard with feeding the wildlife – actually, that’s not true I guess. Matt just played a game of catch using bread with our favorite seagull dinner guest. Point being – we did not bring any food for the fish. The small tour boat that tied up to the second mooring ball shortly after we arrive did though.

Mostly we try to allow their guests some space to enjoy all the fish swarming around them. Luckily for us, the fish come swarm us once they are no longer being fed by that group. Of course, the fish are disappointed when we have nothing to offer, but we still get to enjoy the magic and capture some nice video. Matt also enjoys having his finger bitten by one of the small sergeant generals. Hey – give and take.

We take a silly amount of photos and videos at this site, given just how pretty it was. It does feel a bit like we dropped down into The Chicago Aquarium or a scene from Finding Nemo. Here is a slide show of some of my favorite photos. If you’re more of a video person, keep scrolling!

After about half an hour of kicking around, I decide to hop (or rather ungracefully crawl) back into the dinghy. As usual, Matt isn’t quite ready to go yet – he’s on the hunt to catch video of a large black and blue fish he spotted. I’m making sure to save plenty of warmth and energy to explore the sunken airplane though.

Tangent: I’ve gotten a few questions lately about how often I mention getting cold while in the water. It seems like I’m scaring people into thinking that the water is cold and not much fun to be in – not true! The short answer is that I’m just a wimp; I don’t do well with cold. The longer answer is that if the water temperature is cooler than your body temperature, then at some point the water will (theoretically) start to make you feel cold. Water consumes your body heat 25 times quicker than air. This helps explain why 75 degree air temperature rarely (if ever) feels cold, but 75 degree water can quickly become chilly. Here in the Exumas, the water temperature has been around 78 degrees, which is quite warm and a similar temperature to many swimming pools. It feels great when you jump in on a hot day, but after spending an hour in the water – I’m cold. Are most people? No. I almost always wear a 2mm neoprene jacket while snorkeling to help with warmth, but I have yet to see another person wear anything more than a rash guard. No one else seems to be getting cold. Which leads me back to the short answer – I’m a wimp.

While I’m catching some sun in the dingy, Matt manages to spot a sting ray completely buried in the sand. This is always a fun find, as you can just see two eyes popping up out of the sand and maybe a faint outline of the ray’s shape. Fortunately for all of us, he captures a great video of this – including as the ray uncovers itself and swims off! Check it out in the below video (about halfway through), along with some other great shots from our time snorkeling here.

The sunken plane

A short dinghy ride from The Aquarium, we find another small buoy marking where the sunken airplane lies. We tie up, put our gear back on, and back roll (in true diver fashion) off the dinghy. Immediately we are struck by a very strong current – unexpected. We each grab onto the mooring line so as not to waste too much energy fighting to not be pushed backwards by the current. This is probably an appropriate time to say that best practice is to always have one person get in to check the current, while the other stays in the dinghy. This way if the current is strong, one person is in a floating vessel with a motor and could help the person in the water if needed. We do this if we’re snorkeling freely, but when tied up to a mooring we often both just jump in since there’s lots to hang on to.

After Matt catches his breath, he swims down towards the plane to check it out closer and allow me to get some photos. Those goofy looking freediving fins are the best thing ever. They allow him to kick and displace so much more water than normal fins, which really help in instances like this to fight the current and get down to the plane. I don’t even try – the plane isn’t THAT impressive, and my fins are a very fashionable pink, but no match for freediving fins.

There are some impressive coral heads just off to the side of the wreck. I would love to go check them out, but again feel that the current is just too strong for it to be enjoyable. Matt decides to give it a short try, swimming over to the coral closest to us. He immediately spots a turtle and points it out to me. It’s a small, adorable turtle swimming up to the surface for air. Something about the sunlight streaming down onto it from above and the large coral heads below – it looks picture-perfect peaceful. I decide I want a photo. I place my arms to my side (hands don’t help much in these cases and this makes me more streamlined) and kick as hard as I can towards the turtle. I kick so hard. I feel out of breath – then I remember than I can breathe through my snorkel, but then I realize I’ve been breathing all along. I’m just that tired (and out of shape). You would think I was swimming a mile, not the few yards I was actually swimming. Anyways – I somewhat managed to capture the turtle. Then I let the current push me right back to the dinghy, where I hop in and swear I’m going to get in better shape (and get freediving fins).

Swimming with sharks

The nurse sharks of the Exumas are Instagram famous. You’ve probably seen one of the pictures – an influencer scantily clad in a bikini floating on top of the water while numerous nurse sharks swim below her. We couldn’t be in the Exumas and not pay a visit to the nurse sharks. Although, we had a pretty amazing encounter with nurse sharks (and a great hammerhead!) while in Bimini. Trusty Google tells us that the Exuma nurse sharks are located at the Compass Cay Marina. This initially seems a bit odd – many marinas have resident nurse sharks, but you typically don’t want to swim in a marina. We’re already close by though, at our Fowl Cay anchorage, so we hop in the dinghy and head over.

Upon arrival at the marina, we indeed spot a couple nurse sharks swimming around below. We also spot a half dozen tour boats and gobs of tourists standing around. It’s funny – we are tourists, but since we’re living here and exploring the area on our own, we never really consider ourselves one of “the tourists.” One of the dock hands collects our money (it’s $10 per person landing fee to bring a boat into the marina), and tells us to head around the docks to a small beach at the front of the marina. We beach the dinghy and begin heading towards where all the people are. Sure enough, that’s also where all the sharks are.

There’s a small dock platform that extends out into the shallow water with a swim ladder. We count at least a dozen nurse sharks swimming around underneath of it. There’s a large family off to one side of the dock, standing in the shallowest section. Marina staff are throwing fish scraps into the water near them so that the sharks will come up really close. We head in the opposite direction towards a deeper area with almost no other people. When the sharks aren’t being fed, this seems to be where they prefer to be (presumably because people can’t touch here and don’t pester them as much). We’re able to get up close with several of the sharks and even “pet” a couple of them. You can gently pet/touch the sharks on their back – they don’t mind, with some having even grown to like it. Their skin feels like sandpaper – which is not what we were expecting.

The best way to enjoy the sharks is (of course) to have a mask and snorkel, so that you can actually see them underwater. So many of the tourists here were just swimming with no mask – why? This also allowed us to swim down closer to them in the deeper water (by deeper, it’s still only 10+ feet or so). We did leave the flippers behind so that we don’t accidently kick one of the sharks and we won’t stir up sand, hurting the visibility for others. It should go without saying, but if you get the amazing opportunity to swim with these creatures – please, please don’t pull on their tail. We saw a guy do this and it is just maddening. He clearly didn’t have a cat as a kid or he would have known (the hard way) not to pull on an animal’s tail. Fortunately for him, the shark didn’t retaliate, but rather just swam away. So for all of those who are afraid of sharks – that idiot pulled (and shook) a shark’s tail and still didn’t get bit. You’ll be fine!

Check out our video of swimming with the sharks below! I may be biased, but it’s pretty cool.