Go with the flow in Tobago

By Ty Sawyer

updated 1:40 p.m. ET June 29, 2007

All things move toward Tobago, sometimes at a heart-stopping pace, sometimes on the subtle glance of a warm breeze, but once to the island, this magical potpourri of stories, myths, people, cultures, food, flora and fauna becomes part of the ever-moving fabric of this quiet island’s deep soul.

The flow. It defines Tobago. Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes green; sometimes it rides along the sound waves of bird song, tumbles in a lovely rush over a waterfall or meanders silently on the humid caress of a breeze in the shadows of the deep forest. Everything moves in Tobago, and everything tells a story. If you listen hard, you will hear voices in the wind, in the creak of a tree, the water, the musical sound of the people as they speak and in the screech or hum or songs of birds brought unnaturally together by the flow. Movement has influenced every bit of Tobago, from sea to sand to the deep green folds of the world’s oldest protected park to the food you find in roadside stalls and the people cooking that food. Tobago has become a microcosm, where cultures have merged, united, come, gone and become part of a jumbled whole, fed constantly by wind, by current, by wanderlust.

I’m caught in the blue flow. I’m being carried in the cradle of the deep. Held in the wide arms of Neptune and poured over a seascape writhing with life. I hardly need to move and barely expend any energy except to try to pause against the current. Only then do I realize that I’m moving at a heart-jumping pace. This is the way it is in Tobago. Underwater, we drift, sometimes at a sprint, sometimes in the subtle movements of an eddy. But always conveyed along boundaryless pathways. It’s almost as if, when you dare lean over the gunwale of the boat to peer through the surface, the sea reaches into the boat, embraces you and takes you on a tour beneath the looking glass. Past giants of the deep. Massive, current-twisted sponges. And more than 300 species of coral, fed and fattened by the rush of nutrients brought all the way from South America, from the outflow of the Orinoco River, and picked up by the Guyana Current, which dashes around the island of Tobago like a massive, moving buffet. And of course, the reefs teem with marine life.

Seascape In Motion
On a dive at Black Jack Hole, off the sleepy village of Speyside, glassy sweepers form halos over the seascape. Fairy basslets and endless streams of Creole wrasse add royal touches of purple and gold. Bulky green morays peer out from their lairs. Stingrays and yellow-headed jawfish hide in the sand patches, and in every nook, cranny and shadow there seems to be a struggle for power and real estate. It’s like rushing past a circus on the express train with your face pressed against the window.

Related Links from Sport Diver Trinidad and Tobago The Beautiful Stepsister Flying Lessons Tobago Arches and Mantas A Current Affair: In Tobago, Divers Learn to go With the Flow

This exhilarating, vibrantly colored abundance is just part of the daily special off the north coast of Tobago, a small 73-square-mile island at the southern end of the eastern Caribbean. Five minutes out of the Speyside Harbor, off Goat Island (which has a house once owned by Ian Fleming, who dreamed up James Bond) and Little Tobago Island, you’ll find versions of this speed-pumped world repeated almost everywhere you could fall off a dive boat, and certainly at the 40 named sites, which should kick-start your underwater love affair with Speyside. And there’s a giant among giants at Kelliston Drain, a site that starts where Black Jack Hole ends. Here, an entire undersea universe has grown around the world’s largest known brain coral, the size of a minivan. I circled this spectacle several times trying to understand its size and put it in perspective, but it’s something that must be experienced. And the rush of abundance doesn’t stop at the reef. Manta rays are common off Speyside, especially in December and January, and they seem to have a special affinity for divers. And sea turtles like it better here than the East Australian Current of Nemo fame.

Slide show   A Mermaid’s Playground Presented by Sport Diver Magazine. more photos

For even more of a rush, we slip around the northeast tip of the island for what a divemaster called “ground zero for adventure-fueled diving.” Here, the flow includes adrenaline, as the Wild West of the Atlantic and the laid-back bliss of the Caribbean Sea meet in a swirling brew off the rocky, uninhabited St. Giles Islands. And it all comes together for a dance of abandon at a site called London Bridge. Beneath the massive rock arch that defines this site, I see tarpon prowling the edges of the white water; wonderfully rich aggregations of marine life, including French, queen and gray angelfish and schools of chromis; snappers that make electric and hungry lunges into clouds of silversides; and corpulent groupers lined up at cleaning stations. The motion of life here, like most of Tobago diving, revels in the cliché: Expect the unexpected. Especially in size, shape and color. Super-sized barracuda, barrel sponges big enough to hide in, small mountains of brain corals and enough vibrant orange elephant ear sponges to make the site seem radioactive.

After all that flurry and buzz, the flow changes instantly when I surface. Air, warm and humid, although much less dense, seems to bring all movement to a terrificly slow amble. A breeze that probably roused to life across the Atlantic swirls around in soft caresses. I can feel the rush of life undersea drip off, and I swear I can feel the hands of my watch begin to slow, trapped in a pace of life above water that lingers in the past. It’s almost as if I’ve been ripped from a thrill ride and put on a surrey to contemplate a life of tropical ease. As the boat returns to the dock, I can see crescents of golden sand framed by palms. In calm bays, small Old Man and the Sea fishing boats lull on the gentle swell. Hillsides conceal small villages. Each curve of the land looks as if it was stolen from images of the Caribbean of 30 years ago. Here, authentic Tobagan culture thrives, a deeply rooted African heritage of storytelling, drums and dancing. But for now, seabirds soar overhead on breezes that flow opposing the Guyana Current. Even while I can still feel the tug of the moving water on my feet and legs, I watch as a young osprey hovers overhead. Cocking its head to look down at me as I ascend the dive ladder into the boat, it banks off toward a more profitable hunting area. The ospreys, along with nearly 100 other bird species, ride the warm airways south each winter from North America to the sultry forests of Tobago.

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