Snorkeling at Bolongo Bay Beach

The beach at Bolongo Bay is pretty good for snorkeling. I wish we would have had more time to to swim there, but some days of our vacation were spent elsewhere.

We saw some pretty cool fish in the water while snorkeling including a barracuda, some squid, and pretty yellow and blue fish. There are supposed to be some sea turtles in the area too, but we didn't see them while we were there.

We bought an underwater camera housing for one of our cameras and took quite a few pictures and videos underwater while in the Virgin Islands. It was too bright to be able to see the LED screen on the camera very well so we had to just guess if we had the camera pointed in the right direction and if what we saw was in focus. But nevertheless we still got some pretty good pictures. Here are some of the ones we took at Bolongo Bay beach:

(You can click on the pictures to see them bigger and somewhat more clearly)

The last day we were there my husband got this picture of a barracuda. He had seen what was probably this same barracuda another day when we were there. I believe both times were late in the afternoon.



Also the last day we were there I saw a group of pretty fish over by the small group of rocks to the left of the beach. I don't know what they are (does anyone out there know?) but I think the striped ones are seargent majors.











One day we saw a whole group of squid - probably a couple dozen of them! We had the camera on movie at the time, so to get still pictures we had to edit them out. They didn't turn out as well - but it was really cool seeing all the squid. We swam over them and followed them for quite a while. I wish I knew what species they were.



For some reason one of the squid was a kind of blue color:



Here is a video of the squid:



We were told the only thing dangerous in the water around there were sea urchins. But apparently even then you have to touch them with a fair amount of pressure to be stung by them. There are some in this picture - they are the dark spiky things:



We saw another type of sea urchin there also - it was dark in the middle and the ends of the spikes were white. We don't know what kind it is or how dangerous they are - but we didn't take any chances!



We also got a picture of a pretty yellow fish:



And some blue ones that I think are tangs. I wish we could have gotten better pictures of these - they were my favorites!



There were also quite a few schools of tiny fish that were fun to swim through. We saw these at Bolongo Bay as well as at some other beaches like Coki Beach and Trunk Bay.















Over all I'd say the snorkeling at Bolongo Beach was pretty good - but if you stay there you should try snorkeling at other beaches also!