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Maho Bay

Want an easy shallow benign snorkel, then Maho Bay is a safe bet. It’s easy to get to, shallow, calm and although I wouldn’t classify it as spectacular, it’s just about guaranteed to be interesting. Snorkel the reef on the east or just snorkel over the grass just off the beach. The following photos were taken during the course of a fifteen minute easy snorkel.

Barracuda	Featherduster Worm	French Grunts
Queen Angelfish	Red Hind

Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis

How Breadfruit Arrived in the Caribbean
British planters in the Caribbean during the slave driven sugar days were interested in finding low-cost high-energy foods to feed their slaves. When captain James Cook sailed to Tahiti in 1769 on the famous ship “Endeavour” one of his officers, Sir Joseph Banks, realized that breadfruit which turns out to be one of the highest-yielding food plants in the world, would serve this purpose well.

In 1887, Banks had Captain William Bligh commissioned to sail to Tahiti on the ship “Bounty” and bring breadfruit to the Caribbean. Bligh collected a thousand small potted trees for the voyage. It was a voyage that never took place, however, as the crew mutinied and cast off Captain Bligh and his loyal officers in a longboat on the high seas. Bligh and company miraculously survived and landed on East Timor some 11,000 miles away in 1789.

In 1791, Bligh made a second attempt to bring breadfruit to the Caribbean and this time he was successful delivering breadfruit slips to planters on St. Vincent and Jamaica.

Lind Point Battery Overlook

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I took a walk on the Lind Point Trail. It looked like a good day for sunset photos and it was. It has been raining lately so all the trees and plants were green and lush. I walked down to the beach at Salomon and over to the Lind Point Battery Overlook and was able to get some pretty nice photos.

The bad news was the mosquitoes. They were fierce. The day before I battled them at Maho Bay after a late afternoon swim and they were bad, but this was something else. A friendly couple came while I was photographing and offered me some mosquito repellent, which I gladly accepted, but I was afraid to put my camera down for fear that the mosquito dem would carry it off.

Lind Point Trail Photos

Salomon Bay

View of Cruz Bay from the overlook

Coconut Flower at Salomon Bay

Malay Gooseberry

Some years back Mr. Small, best known on St. John for his work with honeybees brought over a slip of a gooseberry tree. This is the first year that the berries matured. On previous years the tree flowered, but as soon as it began to fruit the berries fell off. I believe the key here is that the tree needs a lot of water and where it’s plated here on the west coast of Chocolate Hole tends to be dry, but with all of this season’s rains the tree has fruited nicely.

The tree, a Malay Gooseberry, Phyllanthus acidus, is also called West India Gooseberry and in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, grosella.

The Malay Gooseberry is thought to have first grown in Madagascar and then spread through the east Indies. It was brought to Jamaica in 1793 and now can be found throughout the Caribbean and the Bahamas.

Here on St. John it is mostly used to make jam. When the gooseberries are cooked up with sugar they turn a ruby-red.

Malay Gooseberry

Nanny Point, St. John - Google Maps Satellite Image

Nanny Point

Nanny Point, located on St. John’s southeastern coast has recently been acquired by the Virgin Islands National Park Service. The 2.2-acre parcel, donated by Stanley Selengut, commands some outstanding views of Coral Bay and out towards the British Virgin islands. Mr. Selelengut, the owner of Maho Bay Camps and Estate Concordia, donated the land to the Trust for Public Lands, which then donated the Nanny Point headland to the V.I. National Park.

Nanny Point could easily have fallen into the hands of developers. The acquisition of the land by the National Park through the generosity of Mr. Selengut will ensure that Nanny Point will be available for the enjoyment and benefit of the public at large.

Thank you, Mr. Selengut!

Nanny Point, St. John US Virgin Islands (USVI)

Nanny Point	cactus covered headland	View of the British Virgin Islands
View of Ram Head Point	View of Salt Pond Bay	tide pool
View North from Nanny Point

Nanny Point also happens to be the habitat of a rare plant species, Solanum conocarpum, native only to the island of St. John.

Solanum Conocarpum

“Solanum conocarpum is a thornless, flowering shrub that may reach more than nine feet in height and is found in dry, deciduous forest on the island of St. John.

Initially, the plants lost their dry scrub thicket habitat in the intense deforestation for cotton and sugar cane cultivation on both islands. Now, the additional threats of residential and tourism-related development, grazing by feral goats and the practice of burning off vegetation.
There are only about 220 S. conocarpum plants left in the wild in two areas on St. John – 156 plants at Nanny Point on land recently donated to the Virgin Islands National Park and 60 plants on private land.

Funded by the National Park Service, a project to propagate and reintroduce S. conocarpum into areas within the park was begun in 2003. But the plants are threatened by park management practices such as trail and facility maintenance, in addition to the feral pigs, feral goats, Key deer, and donkeys. The plants on private land are at risk from residential and tourism development.”

Environment News Service

Small Spiny Caribbean Lobster

The beach at Leinster Bay can only be reached by hiking from Annaberg or by boat. Although most snorkelers make their way to the colorful reef surrounding Waterlemon Cay, there are things to see right off the beach. The sea floor is mainly seagrass and sand. The following photos show were taken just off the beach in the late afternoon yesterday.

Leinster Bay Snorkel

Sea Cucumber	Starfish	darker colored starfish
Southern Stingray	Seed Conch

Caribbean Spiny Lobster (Panulirus argus)

Snorkeling the waters of St. John back in the days, these lobsters could be found in just about any hole or under any ledge on the reef. Now they’re a lot more scarce.

During the day, the lobsters hide out in the dark recesses of the coral reef and may be difficult to find. However, at night the lobsters come out of their hiding places and forage the reef, and if you snorkel at night, you’re very likely to see them out in the open.

Although Caribbean Spiny Lobsters look (and taste) very much like the clawed lobsters found in the waters of the northeastern United States, they are not closely related biologically.

Once upon a time, when I first came to St. John some 40 years ago, the reefs were extremely colorful. Much has changed since then and the abundant hard corals that provided so much of the color have been severely depleted and those that remain are often unhealthy. Now it seems that most of the vibrant colors of the reef come from sponges, which can be seen in a multitude of varying colors, shapes and sizes.

Sponges, in case you weren’t aware, are animals, as are most of the creatures that make up the coral reef such as all the hard corals, the so called soft corals or gorgonians like sea fans and sea rods, and the sponge-like tunicates that often encrust rocks dead coral. As a matter of fact, the only plants on the reef that come to mind are algae and sea grasses.

Sponges are the simplest of the multicellular animals. Lacking any real organs, they survive by taking in water through small pores, filtering out the nutrients and oxygen and expelling the rest through the more visible larger openings.

Caribbean Reef Squid

My friend, Paul, and I were snorkeling, looking for some conch over a turtle grass bed, when I noticed several schools of squid in the area. I was able to capture a fairly good photo, but I think that i approached them to aggressively and they would move away rapidly. Next time, I’ll try to be really slow and non threatening and see if I can get a good steady close up shot.

By the way, my squid research tells me that the Caribbean reef squid pictured above are the squid commonly encountered over Caribbean reefs.

View of Europa Bay from the White Cliffs Trail

If you’re in decent physical shape and enjoy hiking on St. John and you’re looking for a good hike recommendation, I have one for you: the Lameshur Bay to Reef Bay loop.

This loop will not only provide you with access to the Reef Bay Sugar Mill ruins on the Reef Bay Trail, the waterfall fed pool where Taino Indians made carvings in the rocks called the the petroglyphs and the Par Force Great House where wealthy plantation owners made their home, but it will also lead you on an adventurous journey along a dramatic cliffside trail with breathtaking views, a coastal scramble along a coral rubble beach and access to a remote salt pond and reef protected shallow water lagoon.

Note: The White Cliffs portion of the loop is not an official National Park trail and consequently no official maintenance is being done. My point is, check out this outstanding trail sooner rather than later while it is still in such good condition Experience tells me it won’t be this good forever.

Although there are several modifications and alternative options the basic hike would go something like this:

1) Lameshur Bay Trail from Lameshur Bay to the Europa Spur Trail
2) Europa Spur to the beach at Europa Bay
3) Walk along the beach towards the point (White Point)
4) Pick up the Trail that goes inland and climbs steeply up to the White Cliffs Trail that runs on top of a ridge above the White Cliffs on St. John’s the southern coast between Europa and Reef Bay.
5) Follow the White Cliffs Trail until it ends on the beach at the eastern end of Reef Bay
6) Walk west along the beach as far as you can without getting wet and then walk through the mangrove forest to the Reef Bay Sugar Mill Ruins.
7) Take the Reef Bay Trail to the Lameshur Bay Trail and then hike back to Lameshur Bay.

Bring water! A camera, snacks and bug repellent might also be good ideas.

Highlights

Lameshur Bay Trail from Lameshur Bay to the Europa Spur Trail
The beginning of the Lameshur Bay Trail passes through some dry forest lowlands. It’s an easy flat and shady walk – a good beginning. Check out the large tamarind tree by the side of the trail. Looks like it was split in half by lightening once upon a time.

If you have plenty of energy, you can check out the Europa Point Trail for some outstanding overlooks and photo ops, but remember the loop is rather long so perhaps the exploration of Europa Point should be left to the end of the adventure, just to see if you really do have that extra energy.

If you’re in luck like I often am, you’ll see a deer or two on this section of the hike. They seem to like it around here.

Europa Bay
The Europa Bay Trail will take you to the beach at Europa Bay. Walk south towards the point to the end of the beach where you’ll find the entrance to the White Cliffs Trail.

Entrance to Europa Bay Beach from the Europa Bay Spur Trail

Europa bay Salt Pond

Me at Europa Bay - photo by Ezius Ashley

Native Orchids

White Cliffs Trail
At the end of the beach you should find a narrow but well defined trail that heads inland and then runs steeple up the hillside to the ridge above. It’s a bit tough going because of the steepness, but before you know it you’ll have reached the top. You’ll pass by some beautiful rock formations after which you should start seeing countless native orchids which seem to be everywhere along this trail and along the ridge top.

Near the top of the trail there are some great overlooks down towards Europa Bay. At the top of the steep trail, there are some more great vantage points. The White Cliffs Trail heads west from here, but you can go east for a little while and enjoy a great view towards the southeastern coastline, Kiddle, Grootpan and Salt Pond Bays.

The trail is presently in great condition and you shouldn’t have a problem following it. Once you get the section above the White Cliffs, there will be plenty of opportunities for great photographs as the trail follows the edge of a steep cliff side that descends from the ridge down to the sea.

To Reef Bay and back to Lameshur
After passing over the White Cliffs, the White Cliff Trail descends down to the beach at the eastern end of Reef Bay. A barrier reef, which forms a long semi circle around the bay comes ashore nearby. Behind the reef is a shallow lagoon, which may or may not be under water depending on the tide and time of year. This lagoon provides protection for many varieties of sea life and is an integral part of island and ocean environments.

Walk east along the beach as long as you can and then enter the mangrove forest proceeding in the same general direction until you get to the sugar mill ruins.

From there take the Reef Bay Trail to the Lameshur Bay Trail.

Note: This was not the first time that I hiked the White Cliff Trail, but this is the first time that I had my good camera with me. Read about my previous White Cliffs trail hike.