This had to be the most amazing animal encounter I've had on St. John, and I've had many over the years. My 2 daughters and I discovered a large Hawksbill turtle in the shallows near Lilly Maho beach on the North shore. I thought for sure we'd have maybe a couple of seconds with him before he would disappear from sight, the way all turtles do. The turtles here have a shy nature usually, and if they do let you swim along with them, it's usually at a distance, and you have to swim hard to keep up with them after they discover that you're watching them. This guy was different. He was large, about 2 and half feet across his shell, and the barnacles covering his back and the weathered look on his skin made him appear like he'd traveled these warm waters for decades. What amazed us was that he didn't leave us in a rush. He hung out with us! When I first came closer, he spun around quickly to face me, then seemed to relax as though he trusted me. The three of us stood in the shallow water around him, leaving him an open space to swim away if he wanted to, as if he were a tamed animal. Maybe he felt safe with my youngest daughter (age 8) since she found him first, then let us all get closer to him since he sensed our love. He slowly swam into deeper water, but stayed on the surface the whole time with us circled around him, still leaving him room to swim away if he desired. We made our way with him to about 50 yards off shore, then he began to slowly move deeper, and come back up to the surface where we were waiting. We felt he must have nowhere important to go, probably had just eaten and had a full belly, so he didn't mind taking time out of his daily routine to be with us. We hope he even enjoyed our company, perhaps a nice break from his lonely travels from cay to cove to grass bed searching for food. My watch told me that he kept company with us for 20 minutes, before he took his last dive into the deep and out of sight while we yelled our thank yous and goodbyes to our old sweet friend. We were sad to see him go at last, but we felt so lucky, blessed even, to have had this magical, amazing, once in a lifetime experience! (Hawksbill photo from Wikipedia)
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