USVI-On-Line

I'm sorry. My bad.

Gromit wrote:I am generally completely comfortable in the water and not a lot freaks me out except seeing a snake swimming in the water (never have seen this in the VI)

My husband could care less about sharks but he has a MAJOR paranoia of snakes. Last year we were snorkeling at Vie's on the left side and a snake just swam on by us. I, being the nice person I am, had to point it out to him....he was gone in 60 seconds

XOXO,
Bug

Hey Bug so nice to see ya here again! I have missed seeing your posts. I hope all is going well for you!

There are snakes on St. John?

Nice pics I'm guessing reef or lemon, hard to tell from those shots. I think this is a lemon I got a shot of. He came about 10 feet fom me in about four feet of water. By the time I could fumble around and get the shot he was almost gone. He was just a baby, about a 4 footer.

Here is a shot for comparison puposes that show the distinctive tail and fins of a nurse shark. This one was cruising around Cinnamon last June out in about 10-15 feet of water. I'd guess about 4 feet long.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/34283698@N03/3702645585/" title="STJ 2009 598 by KTinTX, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2602/370 ... c8bf_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="STJ 2009 598"></a>

That second dorsal fin and the tail make me think that the shark that I saw at Vie's was a lemon shark. Definitely not a nurse. A snake would scare me as bad as a shark...I never even thought about snakes! Sea snakes are supposed to be pretty aggressive, aren't they?

Minde, there are no sea snakes in the Caribbean. If you see a snake swimming it's a landsnake. I'm not sure, but I don't think there are snakes in the VI's that are a threat to humans. If someone know better, please correct me. At least there are no Fer de Lance snakes.

Maggy

Thanks, Maggy! One fewer thing to be nervous about!

STJ is historically known to be snake free thanks to the Mongoosedem that were originally introduced to get rid of the rat population.

Unfortunately for the genius who thought that was a good idea, they didn't realize that rats are nocturnal and the mongoosedem are diurnal.

The side benefit of course is no snakes on island.and plenty of rats.

That's not to say however that snakes can't swim to the island. I remember reading an NPS article about this once.

I think it's reasonable to say that snakes are extremely rare on island and we can thank our fuzzy butt mongoose population for that, even if they do like to raid our picnic lunches from time to time, it seems like a reasonable trade off for me.

I did come across this one pic of a giant snake eating an unsuspecting yellow labrador retriever at the Tourist Trap (freak incident though and I think the yellow lab survived!)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Touri ... 7914163369

I saw similar shark one morning near Waterlemon Cay, my husband saw it later and described it as a small 4-5 feet long reef shark (he studied marine biology). I've also seen a nurse shark on Dennis beach around old peer.

This thread has me curious, because 1) I'd love to see a shark while snorkeling on our trip in June and 2) I'd like to know the types better because my teen/preteen kids will likely be in the water with me.

So I did some searching and came up with the following link and picture that shows a Caribbean Reef Shark and has some basic information:

http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=49 ... l picture.