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With stripes that evoke their military

namesake’s insignia, sergeant major fish

are a familiar sight to Caribbean snorkelers.

our favorite caribbean

snorkeldestinations

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you still grab your snorkel and head for the water. At Leinster Bay, you’ll hit belly-scrapingly shallow water just yards away from the path to Water-lemon Cay, where the skinny water is packed with millions of sardine-size silverside. The baitfish ebb and flow around you as you move, so don’t be surprised to find yourself dive-bombed by a pelican looking to fill its bill. In deeper water, vast schools of French grunts and goatfish move amid fields of Venus sea fans. On a recent four-hour masked marathon in Leinster Bay, Simonsen tailed a sea turtle as it grazed on grass and then tried to crack open a small conch, and he spied healthy young stands of endangered elkhorn corals five to eight feet in diameter.

Leinster Bay and Waterlemon Cay lie inside the boundaries of the Virgin Islands National Park — which isn’t surprising, since about 60 percent of St. John lies inside the

park’s boundaries. Other favorite spots include the island’s number-one snor-kel destination, Trunk Bay, with its famed underwater nature trail. Trunk, of course, shouts out from every visitor map and package-tour brochure, but early in the morning before the crowds begin to arrive, it is a magical place. Stingrays forage in the sand, turtles in the grass, and in the summer, an

explosion of baitfish attracts schools of huge tarpon. Once the maddening crowds arrive, head off the beaten path to Haulover Bay, on the northeast coast, to visit its healthy corals. Or for a combo day of great beach and great snorkeling, head to Hawksnest Beach, with its beautiful backdrops of elkhorn for-est populated by schools of grunts and blue tangs. For a professional underwater photog-rapher like Simonsen, snorkeling on a day off may seem like a busman’s holiday, but when you live on St. John, it’s a magic bus.

When you spend the bulk of your professional life snorkeling the reefs of St. John, aiming your underwater camera at a succession of bikini-clad babes and creating

images for clients such as Kodak, National Geographic and Playboy, a day off seems like a wasted opportunity. But if you’re CT+L contributor Steve Simonsen,

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The Virgin Islands Coral Reef National

Monument, created in 2001, includes 12,708

acres of submerged land within a three-

mile belt off St. John.

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one that’s actively working the seaward side of the reef crest — the start of the drop-off that’s a short swim across calm water from any westside shore-line or resort dock. As you fin over the reef, you may not see any trumpetfish at first, but they’re there, using both color and motion as camouflage. As you stare at a soft coral’s long, vertical lines, you notice that one of the branches sways just a bit slower than the rest. That’s the trumpet-fish, close relative of the seahorse, waiting in ambush for an unsuspecting fish. If nothing comes along, the trumpet glides out from among the frilly stems and changes from the coral-like shade to a cruising color, a brown or orange. When it spots a herbivorous fish — often an algae-crunching parrotfish — the trumpet drafts along, molding its body to the shape of the parrot and changing its color to a similar hue. Small fish don’t shy away when a parrot approaches to graze on living rock, so it must be a shock to them when sud-

denly it splits in two and opens a large, trumpetlike mouth to vacuum up one of their schoolmates.

With a trumpetfish as your guide to Bonaire’s reefs, you’ll learn the many strategies creatures use to survive in that vibrant world. Once it has taught you to look for camouflage, mimicry

and ambush, you’ll begin to pick out the other exotics that famously flood Bonaire’s warm seas: the frogfish, scorpionfish, floun-der, octopi and seahorses. Bonaire’s reputa-tion was made on such encounters. Its lush reefs, lying within easy swims from the lee coast, make it the world’s top shore-diving destination. What’s sometimes overlooked about this scuba-crazy island is that, from the moment you step into the water all the way to when you reach the far end of that reef crest — the most life-packed environ-ment on earth — you’re in some of the world’s best snorkeling territory. And it’s even better if you pick the right guide.

As guides go, you can’t do much better than a trumpetfish. It’s not a shark or a grouper or a ’cuda, not a tiptop predator, but this slender hunter

has evolved into one of the reef’s wiliest. Trumpets live throughout Bonaire’s waters, but the most fascinating show comes from observing

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Bonaire Marine Park encircles the island to a depth of 200 feet, with a dazzling array of sites accessible to snorkelers — some right off the beach.

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Tobago Cays, a lush green of the aptly named turtle grass spreads out like an underwater field of dreams. The govern-ment of St. Vincent and the Grenadines made this section of the Tobago Cays marine sanctuary a no-anchor zone. Where once cruisers’ Danforths plowed the bottom into lifeless furrows, the unmolested grass now grows like, well, weeds — and the shell games go on.

Bobbing above a sea turtle offers one of the most relaxing snorkeling encounters to be had. In a sea of eat-or-be-eaten para-noia, turtles exude a calm that comes only from being practically tooth-proof. They pose on the bottom and do slow push-ups with their flippers as they graze, every so often remembering that they need air and lazily flapping to the surface. If you’re in the right spot and remain motionless, you’ll often come eye to eye with one and witness the slow dawning come over your new friend that … you’re … not … another … turtle, and it will leisurely spin away, Zen on the half shell.

Baradel exists as just one star in the stellar collection of islands known as the Tobago Cays, which in turn are but one constellation in what’s univer-sally considered among the very best cruising grounds, the Grenadines. The Cays — Petit Rameau, Petit Bateau, Jamesby, Petit Tabac and Baradel — remain uninhabited, a national park so elemental that Petit Tabac was the island where Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack

Sparrow suffered a marooning with Keira Knightley. And while other Grenadines offer their own excellent underwater sites, it’s only in the Cays that you can create a perfect snorkeler’s day by combining a calm, crunchy commune among the turtles, stingrays and eagle rays of Baradel with a ramble amid the riot of life on display atop Horseshoe Reef, the coral bulwark that arcs around the Cays. Add surface idylls on fantasy beaches and a day-topping sunset barbecue of fresh lobster prepared on the sand by a local fisherman, and you’re living in le monde du magnifique.

Jacques Cousteau once called the underwater environment “le monde du silence,” the silent world. Apparently, he’d yet to snorkel a few feet away from

a hungry green sea turtle chomping its way through a meadow of sea grass. On the gently sloping bottom in front of Baradel, one of the idyllic

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reach into the rock fissures, and your hand enters the earth’s molten womb, which very recently gave birth to Domi-nica and isn’t quite sure it’s done with its offspring yet — as evidenced by the island’s nine active volcanoes. It’s easy to become intoxicated by Champagne’s fizz — you’ll finally empathize with the fishbowl guppy’s eternal gape at a bubbling plastic treasure chest — but this extensive snorkel site offers a lot more than hot air.

Out beyond the moonscape rocks and the startling-yellow sponges that surround Cham-pagne’s thermal vents, the marine life grows to almost absurd proportions and in dizzying diversity. You’ll find that Dominica under-water is as much a Jurassic Park experience as Dominica topside. Sea urchins — still rare throughout much of the Caribbean after a dev-astating die-off — live plentifully here, which keeps the reef much healthier than many other sites. Local snorkel guides will point out life-list all-stars like frogfish and enough seahorses to run the Derby. Pay attention, and you’ll be rewarded with both the largest and

the smallest specimens of marine life you’ve ever seen, including tiny, jewel-like juvenile fish of every kind. Rock and reef crevices sprout armies of thick-tentacled sea anemones, and gaudy red-and-white shrimp stand guard at innumerable fish-cleaning stations.

Champagne is a large area with snor-keling out to at least 100 yards — though you need to go only as far as you’re comfortable to see amazing sights — and there’s a wreck with cannons in 25 feet of water. It’s a spot worth more than one day’s swim, and you could spend a week here finding still more wonders. Dominica, though, does have another large area, south of Champagne, that snorkelers will find edgy and fascinating. The crater of an ancient volcano forms Scotts Head Bay, and inside the bay — following the coastline of prominent Scotts Head — you’ll find an under-water landscape of life-dripping walls teeming with reef fish and of shoals spiked with yellow tube sponges. As with exploring other areas of this largely untouched island, you’ll feel you’ve stumbled across a land that time forgot.

Snorkeling has a wild side, and in the Caribbean, there’s nothing wilder than theisland of Dominica. When you swim out from smooth-stoned Champagne Beach,

passing through iridescent schools of diminutive fish, you soon reachthe bizarre sight of bubbles streaming up from the seafloor. Duck under and

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Protected from the open Atlantic by Horseshoe

Reef, the Grenadines’ Tobago Cays are a dream come true for snorkelers

(and green sea turtles).

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hair-removal-associated torture. Lucki - ly, the harassment happens only to those harboring tasty treats. Jump into any of the island’s famed snorkeling spots, and the sergeants will swarm, but if they don’t smell squid or ballyhoo or snack cakes or whatever else you might have put in your bathing-suit pocket, they’ll move on. If you did decide to carry some Scooby Snacks, though, they’ll dog you until you deliver or leave the water. For those wanting to come away from their snorkeling vaca-tion with a YouTube comedy video, this offers an ideal photo op. Just secretly fill your friend’s pockets with food, and then swim off to a safe distance and start the camera rolling.

These hungry hordes of reef fish are a tes-tament to the popularity of Cayman’s snorkel-ing. Awash in ideal conditions — calm, clear, warm water — the westside reefs draw nearly as many snorkelers as fish. Aside from the fish feeders’ masochistic mustering of sergeants major at places like Cemetery Reef, Coral Gar-

dens and Cheeseburger Reef, snorkelers can see giant tarpon cruising the caves and splitting vast clouds of silverside at Eden Rock and Devil’s Grotto, experi-ence close encounters with barracuda and morays at Sunset House Reef, and play seek and find for interesting inver-tebrates like octopi and arrow crabs along Turtle Reef’s rocky walls. And on the north end, of course, there’s Grand Cayman’s most celebrated snorkeling spot, Stingray City. Friendly southern stingrays are actually found at two adja-cent spots, Stingray City and Sandbar. Snorkelers primarily go to Sandbar, where they can stand and snorkel in just a few feet of water, surrounded by the silky smooth and sociable rays.

Guides control the fish food here — and thus they’re the ones pestered by yellowtail and sergeants major — but they dole out the squid and fish bits so you can hand-feed the rays without feeling like you’re the unlucky explorer in every 1940s jungle movie, the one who slipped and fell into the Amazon. ✸

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Men — even macho dive instructors — are the snorkelers most likely to be seen weeping after an attack by the Caribbean piranha: the fish-food addicted

Grand Cayman sergeant major. These stubby, striped terrors gang up for assault, plucking out leg hairs bunch by bunch. Women, fortunately, are used to

At Grand Cayman’s Stingray City (and at nearby shallows known as Sandbar), docile Atlantic southern stingrays create what’s been called the world’s best 12-foot dive.