Snorkeling at Buck Island, St. Croix

I’m scared to scuba dive. There, I said it. I thought about doing a resort course once, but when I learned that you had to be able to take the air tube out of your mouth and share it with someone else and that there is actually a chance that you could run out of air that many feet below the surface… I’m actually in awe of those who do dive, I mean, the pictures I’ve seen of their underwater world are stunning.

Anyway…John, the other half of this team likes to dive, but thankfully he also likes to snorkel – and I LOVE snorkeling.

Here we are, foggy lenses and all!

So we’ve been talking lately a lot about our awesome recent trip to St. Croix. On the list for this trip was a visit to Buck Island, an island just off of St. Croix that has been designated a national monument. Snorkeling there was purported to be amazing, and at the easternmost part of the reef there is an underwater trail – similar to the underwater trail found in Trunk Bay on St. John.

We’d snorkeled Trunk Bay several times – way back before it got so darned popular and crowded and so we were mildly interested in comparing the two trails, although we were more interested in seeing the vibrant coral and fish.

We found a charter recommended by Fodors and Frommers tour guides and booked a tour to sail, snorkel and explore on Teroro II the following day. The Teroro II is a trimaran and we boarded with about 12 other guests.

Teroro II

Carl was our Captain for the day. He was full of information and stories about Buck Island and St. Croix and did his best to make sure everyone was having a good time.

Captain Carl

We had a great sail out to the island and attached to a mooring ball offshore. We donned our gear and quickly jumped in.

The Buck Island Underwater Snorkel Trail consists of a series of underwater plaques indicating some of the flora and fauna found around the reef. After diving in, we soon found one of the plaques in the underwater trail showing the beginning of the trail.

We saw a rather large fish just a few feet away and began swimming after him to get a picture.

Then saw this plaque…

Thankfully he wasn’t interested in us.

We followed the trail for a while and then veered off on our own. The sun was out and the water was warm clear – although a tad choppy. Fish were abundant and the coral was colorful.

An hour flew by and we were signaled to come back to the boat for our short sail to the other side of the island for some beach time!

Find Buck Island on our St. Croix Map

To see more posts on St. Croix and other islands, check out our Island Blog Directory

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