{"id":12205,"date":"2013-01-02T12:43:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T17:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=12205"},"modified":"2013-01-02T17:19:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T22:19:16","slug":"it-is-better-in-the-bahamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=12205","title":{"rendered":"It IS Better in the Bahamas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-001-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12207\" title=\"post bahamas 001 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-001-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"694\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-001-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-001-480-207x300.jpg 207w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Turtle Journal&#8217;s Sue Wieber Nourse Snorkels in Coco Cay<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Rising from the brilliant sunlit waters of the Bahamas, Sue Wieber Nourse\u00c2\u00a0slips through the warm sands of Barefoot Beach after a long snorkel dive in the channels off Coco Cay.\u00c2\u00a0 Morning temperatures hovered in the low 80s with a gentle easterly breeze swaying the palm trees shading our cabana lounge chairs.\u00c2\u00a0 The only cold thing on this beach was the iced Heineken.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-002-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12209\" title=\"post bahamas 002 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-002-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-002-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-002-480-300x251.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>Barefoot Beach in Coco Cay<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Patrolling clear, deep channels separating fields of turtle grass, Sue cruised by her near-namesake predator, a nurse shark, hovered over an enormous ray scouring the\u00c2\u00a0sandy bottom for grub,\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0observed conchs of all sizes crisscrossing the submerged flats like Great Plains tractors.\u00c2\u00a0 Experiencing that eerie, chill-down-the-back\u00c2\u00a0sense of being followed, Sue glimpsed a barracuda\u00c2\u00a0through the\u00c2\u00a0corner of her mask,\u00c2\u00a0as the fish tracked\u00c2\u00a0her every movement.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a juvenile no more than two feet long, but every inch a predator, and practicing what predators do best.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-003-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12211\" title=\"post bahamas 003 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-003-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-003-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-bahamas-003-480-300x175.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Barefoot Beach in Coco Cay<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Don Lewis dove north of Sue and tested the Journal&#8217;s underwater camera on a variety of tropical fish.\u00c2\u00a0 He discoverd a tiny live conch about 2 inches long gliding along the bottom of a shallow channel.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-tropical-fish-960.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12215\" title=\"post tropical fish 480\" src=\"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-tropical-fish-480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-tropical-fish-480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/post-tropical-fish-480-300x167.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>Minnow School in Coco Cay<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">While the Bahamas can&#8217;t match St. John USVI for abundance and variety of reef fish and colorful, healthy corals, for\u00c2\u00a0this brief winter interlude when ice storms are battering the Great White North, the Bahamas\u00c2\u00a0make a perfect refuge.\u00c2\u00a0 Yep, they&#8217;re right.\u00c2\u00a0 It is better in the Bahamas &#8230; and 70 degress warmer, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turtle Journal&#8217;s Sue Wieber Nourse Snorkels in Coco Cay Rising from the brilliant sunlit waters of the Bahamas, Sue Wieber Nourse\u00c2\u00a0slips through the warm sands of Barefoot Beach after a long snorkel dive in the channels off Coco Cay.\u00c2\u00a0 Morning temperatures hovered in the low 80s with a gentle easterly breeze swaying the palm trees [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[827],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12205"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12236,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12205\/revisions\/12236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}