SCUBA DIVING COKI BEACH 2023

Coming by cruise ship to St Thomas and we have went diving at Coki before and decided we would do it again.

We found an open air taxi from the cruise port and we were on our way to Coki.

Then we finally made it to Coki. The driver pulled up and was so close to the vehicle beside us that no one could even get out. So, she had to back up and move the bus...over to in front of Coral World. We paid her and started walking toward Coki Dive Center. In the background I hear "Ma'am, ma'am, excuse me!" only to look back and she is talking to me. She said "You only gave me $14"...uh yea, that's the price you told me. She replies "It's PER PERSON!" YIKES!! That is outrageous! That meant a shared ride with probably 25 other people and stopping at other stops now cost me $42 one way?!?  I had no idea the prices these days. I was now worried about bringing enough cash for our ride back, tip for the dive and cash to buy drinks and food at Coki (last time we were there, they only accepted cash). 

We checked in with the dive center and met our instructor, Trisket, as in the crackers just add cheese (he said). That's one dive instructors name I will probably never forget now. Trisket was super nice and super funny. I loved his personality and he made everything a great experience. 

Now Coki does things a little different than the other dive shops we've used in the past. They have you register with PADI and listen to video's and read instructions about diving. Then you take your test online and then submit your health questionnaire to them. Everything is ready to go when you arrive. 

We headed down to the beach after getting fitted with our fins where he would quickly go over a few instructions (required no matter how many times we have done this course but it was super fast) and then we suited up. 

The hubby asks me if I planned on trying to walk out into the water with my tank on and by golly yes I was! After proving to myself on our Grand Cayman vacation, not once but twice, that I could carry it into the water (although it was a ladder), I was definitely going to give it a shot this time around too. 

Then it was time to head out to do our skills. Trisket had told us that the water had been rough and we would need to swim out a ways and then go down a rope to about 10' of water to do our skills. Now this made me nervous because our very first dive with them in 2016 there was a VERY strong current that day and it was SO hard to make it around the bend...to the point that the hubby actually gave up that day and was pulled back to the beach. Although I had made it that day (with Kendra, Kolin and family) I'm in a different situation with my leg now and wondered if it was going to be hard on me. Trisket assured me it would be fine and the current wasn't too bad. He was also taking another person along with him to help out until we started the actual dive. So off we went.

 I took baby steps along the way, easing myself into the soft sand, until I hit the cold water. Once we were deep enough to float we put our fins on, made sure our BCD was inflated and rolled on our backs to swim out to where they wanted us (at the buoy). The water was definitely wavy and if you stopped for any given minute, you were floating in the wrong direction. I gave the hubby a side eye look of "I don't know" but continued on until he told us to stop. Then down we went. 

Once at the bottom, everything was a lot better. Still some waves, but the deeper you get, the less there is of course. 

Then we would do our skills and when he looked at Sakari and told her to remove her regulator, I guess she figured she had the mentality of "I'mma show'em what I got" and removed the regulator, threw it over her shoulder, retrieved it and put it back in her mouth.  Now what? Ok Sakari you over achiever, those were 2 skills you were supposed to do at different times, but let's be a show off why don't ya. Trisket looked at her, shrugged his shoulders, clapped his hands underwater and gave her the high-five. 

Then it was the hubby's turn and he decided to follow instructions and do them one by one. Here he is clearing his mask to perfection.

Thoughts swirled around in my head about what to do. Should I do the one skill? Should I be an overachiever like Sakari and do it all and get it over with? I figured I'd let her have the spotlight and do them one by one. 

Then we were off...(you all know it's going to be a picture overload with my scuba pictures now right??)

We came across a Red Stripped Goatfish immediately. 

Then some Christmas Tree worms. They are so pretty and come in multiple colors.

Some beautiful purple sponges

I love the baby blue sponges you'll see when diving. They are so pretty and rather large.

The water would be a little stirred up during this dive, so the pictures aren't as clear as some of my dive pictures in the past. But, I did what I could.

Aww, this parrot fish smiled at me as I went by. 😄 

A Four-Eyed Butterfly Fish off in the distance hiding out. 

Another Parrot Fish going by.

A Blue Bell Tunicate (which are actually purple and there's usually a lot here at Coki, including the snorkeling area).

A pretty pink branching sea sponge with a Feather Duster Worm under it.

Then I came across a couple of Flamingo Tongue Snails sitting on a sea fan.

Purple Tube Sponges:

Hubby was equipped with the GoPro, me a camera and Sakari a camera.

A rather large orange colored sea sponge. There were a bunch of these and some were very very large.  

Now I don't really consider St Thomas some of the best scuba diving that I've done (I much rather go to Roatan, which has had some of the best I've ever seen each time) but it was bursting with color...even on this day that was off and on clouds and stirred up water. At least we were diving and I was happy with that and we could mark it on our books.

At first I thought this yellow and white fluffy thing was a caterpillar (fire worm), but it wasn't. It was just flowing in the water back and forth.

We did come across just a few pieces of dead (or dying) coral along the way. I'm not sure if it just didn't make it after the dreadful two hurricanes that hit St Thomas back in 2017 or what. 

What a pretty rose color this was:

We would come across a couple different Lizard Fish today. I would get the pictures from a distance and Sakari, being the excellent photographer and fish whisperer she is, would get the close up pictures. 😄 

Lizard fish can grow up to 2 feet long and they resemble a lizard because of the shape of their head and pointed snout. They have a mouth full of sharp teeth and also a tongue. Most are found in shallow water and usually lie partly submerged in the sand to protect themselves from predators. They live around 7-9 years and there are around 57 species of lizardfish.

Do you see the Squirrel Fish peeking out at me?

Parrot Fish

Look at all these babies! I have no idea what they are. I can identify most fish, but babies=nope.

A dark purple Feather Duster Worm with more baby fish surrounding it:

This Feather Duster had made its home inside of an orange sponge

Sakari waved me down and pointed off in the distance:

There were a bunch of Tarpon swimming by. If you ever go to Coral World next door, there are TONS of these under the dock (which can be viewed if you go down into the observation tower there OR if you do the SeaTrek walk as well). 

Trisket had found a goody for us and handed it to Sakari.

It was an Arrow Crab. They are so cute with their odd looking bodies, skinny legs and blue pincher claws.

Squirrel Fish and Yellow Wrasse

 Can you spot all the clear Gobies on the sand? They blend in and they are always hard to spot due to their color and size.

There are different stages of the Blue Headed Wrasse (just like the parrot fish). Normally we see the ones with the blue head and yellow body. However, we seen a few of these at this stage (initial phase).

Then I spotted a Smooth Trunkfish fluttering around in the water. They swim so cute. They will hover in the water with their little fins flapping and then will spin 180 degrees around super quick like it's nothing. 

Off in the distance there was a Scrawled Cowfish. I had to zoom in on the picture, so it's a horrid picture for sure.

FIREWORM crawling on the branches. They have a terrible sting.

Trumpet Fish

Now it's hard to see (in the following picture) because of the color of the fish and the background but...out of the corner of my eye I spotted 2 rather large(r) puffer fish swimming together. Now we see these Sharp Nose Puffer fish everywhere we snorkel in the Caribbean...however...they are usually very small. These had to be the biggest I had ever seen before. They were maybe around 9" long. Now I know that's not really "big", but for me, it's the biggest I've seen of them before. I was truly amazed and hung out for awhile taking pictures. Trisket said "Oh yea, they get really big". I don't know, maybe this puffer isn't actually a sharp nose puffer, but it sure looked like it. 

Then I spotted a GROUPER! I love groupers and I didn't actually start seeing them until over the last couple of years. They fascinate me for some reason. This one would hide under the rocks and then come out. 

Also, notice what was hanging out under the rocks with it...

I went in for a close up. Now I was all of a sudden more interested in the 2 shrimp on the rocks with the grouper. They were a pair of Banded Coral Shrimps

At some point, I HEARD a "pop" when we were diving. I had no idea what it was but would later find out after the dive was over.

Ok, on with the review for a little longer.

Now it is time for Sakari's pictures.

At least she managed to get one of me to prove that I was actually on this dive right?

The hubby in action...

Here's one of the sharp nosed puffers...the kind we normally see that is really small. The coloring is a little different so maybe the other bigger ones are just a different kind. I don't really know my variety of puffers unless it's a porcupine puffer....my absolute favorite for their personality. 

A couple of Four-Eyed Butterfly fish.  

More Blue Headed Wrasse:

Feather Duster

Up close and personal with a Parrot Fish.

Feather Duster

Blue tunicates

Sakari loves her macro photography but I honestly didn't get much out of her this time around. There just wasn't as much to see as there normally is when we are diving a wall loaded with goodies. 

Trisket over there watching us do our thing. He knew going in that we were loaded down with photography equipment and made the comment "Well, I see you have that covered so I won't even take our camera" LOL (They use the same Olympus Tough camera I use anyhow). He had told us to go nice and slow and enjoy everything...there was no need to rush. Little did he know, that's EXACTLY what we like to do and we are usually going much slower than the instructor because we are busy taking pictures of everything we discover. We enjoyed this go-at-your-own-pace dive.

Trumpet fish

Now isn't that the saddest face you've ever seen?

Yellow Striped Grunt

Another one of those very small puffers and a Goby beneath it. 

Like I said, she gets up close and personal with fish and that's exactly what she did with this Lizard Fish. Kinda scary knowing they have razor sharp teeth.

Spotted Goatfish

Arrow Crab: See the little blue pinchers? So cute!

As I said before, she spotted the Tarpon out in the deep blue...she managed to get somewhat decent pictures of them I guess. At least better than mine turned out. There's one thing I've learned about photography in the ocean...you point the camera out and you don't get good pictures. You point it down or are close up to the object, you can get some amazing and colorful pictures. You do what you gotta do in order to get a picture though. This is one of those cases. 

Squirrel Fish

Fire worm:

 Flamingo Tongue Snail:

Then I noticed she must have seen another grouper that I didn't see and managed to get pretty close to it...along with a bunch of baby fish. 

Feather Duster and a nice close up of the Puffer Fish

Mr Crabby I didn't see but she did:

 As I was taking pictures, I noticed that Trisket had his "stick" out and had Sakari over by a rock. I swam over to see what was going on and what they might be looking at. He had her hold the stick and motioned for her to pull it out of the rock. She tried and tried and couldn't. Then he had the hubby pull on it. He didn't pull it out either. At this point I'm looking very puzzled as he handed me the stick and motioned for me to pull on it and gave me this water sign with his hand up to his chin and fingers pointed down and moving back and forth. I know a lot of the symbols for different fish, but for the life of me couldn't remember what that one was. 

As I grabbed the stick and pulled, it felt stuck. I looked over at him and he motioned to pull again. I pulled again and it started to come out only to be forcefully pulled back in. Wait...what just happened. I tried again. It came out some and then was pulled back in again. What is this force??? What is in there? I gave it one last try and the stick came out. I was left scratching my head at that point. I would later find out that we were playing tug of war with a decent sized octopus. Sakari managed to see it and said the arms and suckers on them were pretty large. 

In this picture, in the large hole, the brown area was one of it's arms.

I'm going to crop and zoom in on this portion of the picture and hopefully you'll be able to tell the size of that arm...it's pretty big. 

When we had first started our dive and got out to the reef part, Trisket had made that exact same hand signal (octopus) and pointed somewhere with his stick. Sakari went over and looked, but I did not get to see anything because at that point the hubby was in my way and I looked like I was doing somersaults in the water while trying not to get too close to any coral around me and I finally gave up trying to see what it was everyone was looking at. After the dive, he would tell me there was two different octopuses that they had seen. Darnit! I missed it. 

But...I did get to play tug of war with one of them (even if I didn't have a clue what it was at that time) and I won the game by getting the stick out after my third try. If that doesn't count for something I don't know what does. 😄 

Now whether or not the hubby managed to get any footage on the GoPro of it, I don't know yet. I haven't even looked at any of it and that is next on my list of things to work on tomorrow. 

We were at the end of our dive and you can always tell as the topography was changing from coral to sand...

I took a look at my watch to see what time it was and this is what I seen...

Whoopsy! I now know what that pop sound was during the dive. After going back to the beach, I would discover that the back of my watch popped off and that is why I now had a new watch face to sport around, filled with salt water. Oh well, it was a cheap waterproof (supposedly to 30m lol) and I had used to twice before several years ago for diving but kept forgetting to replace the battery in it until now. I will have to go back to my other watch I wore before it that held up pretty good. 

As we got to the beach, I seen the rest of my family standing in the water. I savor every last bit of the dive and go as far as I can before coming up. Then we started talking about the tug of war with the octopus and the other things we had seen under there. 

Then it was time to get out of the water. Ok, this is where the problem begins that I hadn't thought of before now. You know how it's hard to get up onto the beach with the water going in and out and the sand sinking? I hadn't taken into account for this when I tried to get out. I was on the struggle bus and struggling hard for sure. The hubby came back down into the water to grab my hand to help pull me out. It wasn't working. Trisket noticed what was going on and grabbed the other arm. Still not happening. I have a lot of problems getting out of the water at any beach without a tank and I just didn't see this happening. My foot does not bend that way to allow me to step forward to effectively get out. Before long, there were two other guys that had joined this circus of a show getting the crippled lady out of the water. Oh how embarrassing! But, eventually I was rescued and pulled to shore...or beach...or at least out of the water. 

I continued to hobble along, up the beach and over to our spot to take our equipment off. It's just easier for me to walk on the ball of my foot when this happens and that's how I managed to get back after that fiasco of a show. I mean seriously...four guys pulling me out of the water. LOL Yes, I can laugh now but at the time, I was probably about three shades of red in the face. 

Well, I've spent a lot of time trying to deal with this video of our dive. I struggle so much with underwater pictures and video's when diving. This time I even bought filters for my GoPro housing and had it on and it still came out the same as before. You'll get green tinges when pointing down, super blue when up and anything in between. UGH! I just don't know. Underwater photography is so hard!

You'll see in the video all the "floaties" going by and the cloudiness of the water when the camera is pointed straight ahead instead of down. So, that didn't help with the video either.

But, at least you'll get to see some of the things we were able to see. 

So after my fiasco of trying to get out of the water and back onto the beach, we headed back to the dive shop (up a flight of stairs) and had "Trisket" fill out our dive book for our records. 

This would make our 21st Discover Scuba Dive. Experts I tell ya! 😄