Our days in the Bahamas are filled with snorkeling and beach time. There is more coral reef here then any where else in the Caribbean. Bahamas is 95% underwater, and they say there’s nearly 1,000 miles of reef in these islands. We were able to do some cool snorkeling where the reef is still alive.

From the Out Islands all the way up to Florida we snorkeled. Rose Island is close to Nassau and we anchored there, jumped in the water and swam over to a reef patch next the boat. The reef had colorful parts, but it also had parts that were dead. I think this is because of all the tourists from Nassau. But I think that other things like pollution, over fishing and climate change are putting the reef in danger too.

Here at Rose Island, we saw common purple sea fans, wide mesh fans, and we saw blushing star coral and elliptical star coral. We also saw different types of brain coral—boulder brain corals are my favorites.

In the Berry Islands, we we entered through the channel and anchored between White Cay and Hoffmans’ Cay for a few days. We went snorkeling. We jumped over the side and drifted with the dinghy because we heard there were a lot of sharks in this area. Plus there was a lot of current. Underwater we saw lots and lots of jellyfish which is good because there are lots of turtles here too. There were dense concentrations of sea rods like black sea rods, bent sea rods, porous sea rods and shelf knob sea rods. We saw spiny sea fans, purple sea fans and a fire coral in the shape of a sea fan. And we saw lots of elkhorn coral which is mom’s favorite.

Everybody but mom saw the shark in the distance that was swimming with us. He was checking us out. We think the shark was a reef shark and he was about 6 feet long. We saw other colorful fish like parrot fish, French angel fish, queen trigger fish, wrasse and loads of sergeant majors.

I love the Bahamas and really enjoy the crystal clear waters. I’d like to dive the Andros reef after I get my dive certification. It’s the third largest barrier reef in the world.