Whales Ho

This past week has been one some of us will never forget. Every season humpback whales migrate south to birth their babies in the warm tropical waters of the Caribbean. On their way they pass St. Croix and give those who are watching lively shows and close encounters.

Finfolk Caribbean Swimmers of which i'm a member organizes open water swims all around the island on Saturdays, but during the week there is a regular Mon., Wed., Fri. group that swims at Cane Bay. For years we have been hearing whales, seeing them from shore, but never actually swimming with them until this past Friday.

It was one of those barely a ripple on the surface and relatively clear days swimming at Cane Bay. We were heading east along the edge coming back from North Star when we heard all this yelling. i looked up and saw the back of a humpback whale breaching up ahead. Immediately i yelled as loud as i could WHALES to the other swimmers. He was coming towards us and i managed to fumble about and get my GoPro out of my suit and turned on. The video is not the best but if you watch the white spot in the middle which is one of his flippers you will see it grow into the whole whale as he passes underneath us.

Swiming with Humpback Whale at Cane Bay, St. Croix

We were ecstatic and couldn't believe we actually captured our experience on video. That experience was one of those touched by nature days you couldn't stop thinking about. As if that wasn't enough the next day the Finfolk walked out to the tip of Sandy Point and got in the water to swim back to Sandcastles. Not five minutes in we were visited by a pod of six dolphins. One frisky member of the pod seemed to like us and stayed around long enough to again give me time to get the Go Pro out and film. This video is actually better than the whales.

Regularly when we are swimming we encounter turtles. i had been filming them at Cane Bay and other places where we swim. A good friend took my raw video and edited it then put it to music by the Reggae band Pressure. She did a really good job. i can't post it here but check out the link.
VI Sea Turtles

i'm not sure why the whale and turtle video are on and off here on Blogger, they work fine on Facebook.
i put them up on the Finfolk Caribbean Swimmers page which is public so if you have a Facebook account you can watch them there and like us if you want to keep informed about our swims. The whale one is about 2 minutes and the dolphin one is 1 minute. You can hear our exclamations and the dolphins clicks.

This is enough excitement for one week...so see ya next week.