October 28, 2004

Meredith in Puerto Rico

On Tuesday night I got to experience something many paddlers will never see, even though they live just a few hours away from this astonishing phenomenon. I am referring to the bioluminescent bays of Puerto Rico, which are full of microscopic organisms that light up when touched.

My partner and I had a reservation with Robert Schill of Island Kayaking Adventure, whose brochure I had seen in a bookstore near our hotel in the Condado district of San Juan. After a long bus ride to Fajardo, the city on the east coast where one of these bays is found, we received the standard brief instruction given by guides to new kayakers who will be paddling calm waters. We were outfitted with PFDs and put on bug repellent (no sunscreen was needed as this was during the day), then assisted into our Mainstream sit-on-tops. My partner is not a kayaker, so I sat in back and did nearly all of the paddling; she was willing to help but her pace would have been slower than mine so I told her to just enjoy the ride.

After paddling between the boats docked at the Las Croabas marina, we entered a mangrove channel. One last fishing boat was docked just inside the channel, and after that it was just our three kayaks slipping through the water. The full moon made navigation slightly easier, but we still ran into a few trees because we had brought no forward-facing lights. The mangroves' roots extend into the water further than their branches reach over it, so we had no way of seeing the roots and instead crashed into them a few times. The channel turned multiple times and I had to concentrate hard on the glow stick in the back of our guide's boat. We passed another group of kayakers headed in the opposite direction without saying much more then "hello," and suddenly we emerged into Laguna Grande.

We rafted up in the center of the lagoon for our guide to give his talk about the Cabezas de San Juan nature reserve, and then he pulled out a tarp before his talk about the organisms in the water all around us. There are spectacular photographs taken at Vieques, another bio bay in Puerto Rico, but unfortunately we were not treated to such wonderful visuals. I'd known before going that the full moon would diminish some of the effect, but it was almost invisible. With the tarp spread out and held over our heads, we were able to block out some of the moonlight and see the creatures lighting up as we fluttered our hands in the water. We were so focused on the water beneath us that we didn't notice we'd drifted back toward the mangroves - the guide said it's very rare for the wind to come so strongly from the west.

We paddled back out into the middle of the lagoon, and our guide invited us to go for a swim. I was the only person in our group who jumped in, and I quickly realized how important it has to have a well-fitting PFD if you're going for a swim! This was not a paddling vacation, so I had left my own PFD at home, and I was using one provided by the company. It made swimming very difficult, so after I enjoyed splashing around a bit my partner had to paddle over so I could grab on. I didn't see any phosphorescent effect deep in the water when I moved my feet, but I stayed in a little longer just because the Caribbean-area waters are so comfortable. Eventually the guide said we had to go back, and he came over to brace my boat so my partner wouldn't fall out as I climbed back on board!

Our trip back through the mangrove channel involved a bit more stress, caused mostly by my own mistake. For some reason I'd unfeathered my paddle when I went for a swim (I had clipped it to my PFD as I jumped in), and when I went to set it back I turned the offset the wrong way. Not realizing what I had done, I found the paddle completely useless, and we crashed into several trees while I attempted to fix it. Once it was back to the correct offset, I paddled the rest of the way through the mangrove and back through the marina to the take-out.

Our timing was poor for this trip, as the effect is much greater at a new moon or even something less than a full moon. But we were able to see some of the impressive bioluminescence these bays are known for, and I count myself lucky for having paddled in that region of Puerto Rico.

Meredith Peruzzi