Sharks!" my son calls out as he spots a swarm of pint-sized Jaws darting around a shallow pool. "Awesome." He immediately assesses the pecking order. "There's the daddy shark," he says, pointing out the largest. "He's in charge of all the others." To a kid obsessed with the biggest and baddest everything, seeing live sharks is a thrill.
The pool of baby sharks is our first stop at Coral World, a marine park and undersea observatory perched on Coki Point in St. Thomas. We've been snorkeling and beachcombing during our trip to the USVI, but a visit here will allow us to get up close and personal with some of the Caribbean's sea creatures that are either too rare or too shy -- like the sharks -- to find easily in the wild.
A small crowd gathers around the shark pool when the trainer appears. It's feeding time, and the kids, who are chastised frequently about their own table manners, think the loud slurping noises the sharks make are hilarious. Once the slinky little fish get a bellyful, the trainer gently pulls one of them, a nurse shark, out of the water so that we can all feel its sandpapery skin.
Coral World's main attraction is a three-level, dome-shaped observatory that plunges into the ocean. A spiral staircase leads us below water level and into a room that looks like it belongs in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Thick glass portholes provide 360-degree views of the surrounding coral ecosystem. The reef is not a controlled aquarium display; it's part of the local underwater neighborhood, open to the sea and teeming with fish. With our noses pressed to the windows, we're singing a constant chorus of oohs and aahs at the colorful show.
On another level of the observatory, we find ourselves surrounded by sharks, barracudas and moray eels. Some brave soul has donned scuba gear and a chain mail glove and entered the 50,000-gallon tank to give lunch to this surly school of predators. It's a feeding frenzy that holds the kids spellbound.
On the top floor, we take in the view of Coki Point and watch snorkelers splashing in the blue water just off the beach below. Our next stop is the Caribbean Reef Encounter, an 80,000-gallon tank with eight-foot-high glass walls and a viewing area right in the middle of the action. We sit in the cool blue darkness absorbed by the hypnotizing scene. Schools of silvery big eye jacks glide around us. Everywhere we look there's life: reef fish, sponges, starfish, urchins and lobsters. We're truly immersed in another world.
Visit www.coralworldvi.com or call 888-695-2073 for more information.
Posted online 04/02/04.
