Beef Island Lagoon Eco-Tour BVIs

Aragorn’s Studio is the focal point of the full moon parties during which the intricately sculpted steel fireballs (top and bottom left) are filled with combustible materials and set alight, rather like beautifully carved firepits

We had arranged to meet Alex, our guide for our afternoon’s tour, at the studio of his brother, Aragorn. Aragorn’s Studio is on the beach at Trellis Bay and all around it was plenty evidence of the hurricane, not least of which the boat parking! But the yacht wasn’t going to go anywhere in a hurry, so Aragorn had decided to make a feature of it.

The weather was foul! We met up with Alex as it bucketed down with rain but he was surprisingly upbeat, despite the fact that when he’d been over on the other side of the island sorting out the kit for our afternoon jaunt it had, he estimated, been blowing a good 40knots! But he knows the islands and the weather here and he reckoned that if we got going straight away, the wind and rain would be through by the time we were out on the lagoon and the next squall would likely only arrive as we finished. So, we all jumped in his jeep for the short drive to the nature reserve.

Alex, all paddle-boarding elegance on the way out to the lagoon (top).  Nicky, less elegant on a SUP (bottom left).  Lagoon view (bottom right)

Alex sorted us out with one stand up paddleboard (SUP) and one double kayak between the 3 of us. It seemed the best combination because Charlotte had never been on a SUP before and to get to the lagoon we first needed to negotiate a good stretch of pretty open sea. Had the weather been balmy and kind, Charlotte could have learned the SUPing technique en routeto the lagoon. Given the day’s weather, and the surprisingly large waves outside the lagoon, this was not the place to learn. We made our way off the beach, out through a gap in the reef, turned broadside onto the waves and watched Nicky fall off her SUP. After a quarter of a mile or so on the sea, we negotiated the entrance to the lagoon where it all became beautifully peaceful and calm.

We slowly paddled our way into a large but very shallow cul de sac where Alex stopped to show us some of the thousands of very special jellyfish that have made the lagoon their home. He called these jellyfish ‘upside-down jellyfish’ though they presumably have a formal name. When disturbed from their normal resting place on the bottom of the lagoon they turn over and swim, ‘standard’ jellyfish-style back to a suitable location, where, just before ‘landing’ they turn over so that they lie on the bottom on their smooth back. The reason for this is that the jellyfish are home to photosynthesising algae, which live in the innards of the jellyfish. Lying on their backs on the bottom of the very shallow, clear, calm lagoon the jellyfish offer a safe environment for the algae with the best access to illumination that they can provide. In return, the algae provide some of their photosynthetic products to the jellyfish.

Attractive ‘floral’ base to the lagoon – in reality, a coating of ‘upside-down jellyfish’

The jellyfish are a variety of different colours. We saw mostly greenish and brownish ones, thought the colour distribution varies depending on the algae distribution in the jellyfish. Alex explained that before Hurricane Irma there had been lots of blue upside-down jellyfish but that, for some reason, these blue ones (containing a blue-ish algae) were taking a lot longer to return. We stopped at several small open areas in the mangroves to look at the jellyfish. There seemed to be thousands of them, covering the bottom of the lagoon in all the shallowest areas but Alex said that numbers were still down compared to pre-Irma.

From one of the large open areas of the lagoon we worked our way through some of the narrow waterways between the mangrove roots. The channel was too narrow for paddling so we pulled ourselves along using the tree roots. In amongst the mangroves (as David Bellamy would have said) we saw a couple of hermit crabs but they moved to fast to get any photos.

The mangroves, particularly on the more seaward side of the lagoon, had been quite badly damaged in the hurricane but it was easy to see the regrowth which looked to be taking place quickly and strongly – nature’s cycle. Alex said that a mangrove swamp expert had recently visited the lagoon and had been very impressed by the way the jellyfish, the mangroves and the other flora and fauna were recovering.

The way ahead of us opened out into another section of the lagoon, this part protected from the sea by the reef rather than, as further west, by mangroves.

We spotted several conch on the bottom, a couple of them very large.

Here too the water was extremely clear, though it was a little deeper than where we had been previously. From his vantage point on his SUP, Alex spotted a baby reef shark but from the kayak Nicky and Charlotte were too low to see it.

However, we stepped ashore on a small beach covered in coral and shells and from here we all saw a couple of baby reef sharks and a baby nurse shark too. The sharks’ mothers come into the lagoon to give birth and then immediately leave again for the open sea. The young remain in the lagoon, teaching themselves the art of hunting and being the top, non-human predator in their environment. At some stage instinct tells them that they know enough and they leave the safety of the lagoon to mix it with the big boys in the open sea.

We swapped over again at the beach and Charlotte had her first go on a SUP whilst Nicky and I began our Olympic trials in the kayak.

Charlotte quickly got to grips with the SUP and we could all quite happily have stayed longer, just messing around on the toys. But time was pressing on and we started to make our way out of the lagoon. Just before we did leave, though, Alex found a sea urchin which he picked up and handed around. It was most peculiar feeling the spines moving on your hand as the creature made a slow bid for freedom.

Back at Aragorn’s Studio the wind picked up and the rain came down again – we had been so lucky with the weather for our outing on the lagoon. But Alex had one last thing to show us at the back of the studio…..

….the Gli Gli Carib canoe. The Carib Canoe Project took place in 1995, when Aragorn built this canoe, the largest Carib dugout canoe in the Caribbean, with a group of Carib Indians from Dominica. It was the focal point for a BBC filmed expedition down the Lesser Antilles chain to South America to reconnect all the surviving indigenous tribes of the region. The project had been a great success and at its end the canoe had returned to Trellis Bay to be displayed. Unfortunately, it too had been damaged in Hurricane Irma, but restoration work has started and hopefully it will soon be back in good display condition and, perhaps, even seaworthy condition too.

It had been a truly fabulous afternoon and we had learned so much from Alex, only a fraction of which, I am sure, we have remembered to post here. But, with another break in the rain squalls, it was now time to return to BV and to make plans for Charlotte’s final day on board.

Trellis Bay, Beef Island, BVIs