A Hawksbill Sea Turtle

The turtle I swam with at Chica Rocks was more vibrant than this picture depicts. His shell was stunningly pretty. I thought, “Now that’s tortoise shell,” when I saw him. His spots were of a lovely, chocolate brown, on a creamy yellow background. I’m sure it was a juvenile sea turtle as he was not as large as the mature turtles are described: up to three feet long and possibly weighing 300 pounds.

While it was nice to be free from having a camera on my wrist, it really would have been lovely to have captured photos of all the marine life I saw, up close and personal. You can bet I would have snapped photos of the shark! And I know I would’ve gotten some wonderful pictures of the turtle; and all of it. Still, having the camera would have made for a different snorkeling experience. Without it, I was free to just be…to swim about and fully enjoy the underwater experience. Jeannie + camera makes for a different dynamic. I wouldn’t have been able to stop taking photos; the impulse to simply photograph everything would have overtaken me. If you think I’m kidding let me tell you that I shot over 300 pictures of the school’s beach cross country race the other day. I was so enamored of what I saw on both snorkeling dives that I would have kept that camera whirring the entire time. So it was liberating, honestly, to just snorkel…but at the same time I can imagine the thrilling images I’d have been loading for you now. Well, thrilling for me, anyway.

I’m glad I snorkeled sans camera. As rhapsodic as I am about the experience, it’s likely that my pictures (except for possibly the shark) couldn’t convey the mood and would have been, to you, just someone else’s fish pictures.