Georgetown Sea Life

The sea life in the Georgetown area is amazing!  The stingrays come to shore near the conch salad shack on Volleyball Beach where we feed them with the leftover parts of the conch.  They rub against you when you stop feeding them to let you know they are still waiting for more food.  If you have never touched a stingray, their underside feels like velvet and their top is a bit rough.  Their mouths are on the bottom and they suction their food.  Caution: don’t touch their tail!  We have stayed in the same anchorage since we arrived and were told that there are four dolphins in the harbor.  One of the dolphins decided she wanted to play near our boat.  She swam around our boats, twirled, came out of the water and even went down to the bottom to pick up a shell in her mouth to play with it.  Several of us went in the water with her and she played with us for about two hours.  She did keep her distance, but still got very close to most of us.  I have heard that people pay as much as $300 to swim with a dolphin and here it is free!  We took a walk over the ridge to the Atlantic Ocean side of Stocking Island where the beach is pristine and empty – except for the two dead giant squid we found about 100 feet apart from each other.  They were about three feet long without the tentacles.  We don’t know why they died and or how they washed up on the beach.  The next day they were gone!  We took a long dinghy ride with our boat buddies, Jack and Penny, to an area where we heard there were hawksbill turtles.  These are the most endangered species of turtles in the world.  As soon as we arrived in our dinghies, two turtles came over and were very friendly as we fed them shrimp and bread.  We were not sure what they would eat, and one turtle ate the shrimp and the other one ate the bread. The hawksbill turtle shells are exquisite in design and color and to see and feed them was well worth the long dinghy ride.  We have also been snorkeling around reefs, cave and a blue hole with numerous fish and other sea life.  We don’t have a waterproof camera, but I can see that will be our next purchase.  Sea life is absolutely amazing here in the Bahamas!