Snorkelling with Turtles in San Juan: Near-Certain Turtles, Unlikely Manatees

Most people arriving in San Juan assume the good snorkelling is somewhere else — Culebra, Icacos, a boat, a whole day. It is not. There is a protected marine reserve with resident green turtles about ten minutes from the cruise pier, and you walk into it from the sand.

Our 24 snorkelling tours start at €34.63 and carry 5,332 reviews between them, and a large share of them never leave the city.

Escambrón, and why the water is calm there

Balneario El Escambrón sits on the strip of coast between Old San Juan and Condado. The bay is sheltered by a reef and an old sea wall, which is what makes it snorkellable on a coast that is otherwise open Atlantic.

Underwater it is a mix of natural reef, seagrass and a surprising amount of deliberate structure — artificial reef modules, a submerged wall, and assorted sunken shapes that the local dive community has put down over the years. You will see parrotfish, sergeant majors, blue tangs and snappers within a few minutes of getting wet.

The turtles are the reason to come. Green turtles graze the seagrass beds along the sandy floor, and hawksbills turn up on the reef. They are resident rather than migratory visitors, which is why the tours can talk about them with some confidence.

You can snorkel here without booking anything. It is a public beach, the water is free, and if you have your own mask you do not need us or anyone else.

So what does the tour buy you

Three things, and it is worth being clear about which ones you need.

A guide who knows where they were this morning. Seagrass beds are large and turtles move. The difference between an hour of swimming and twenty minutes of watching a turtle is somebody who was in the water yesterday.

Gear that fits. A leaking mask ruins the only thing you came for, and hire kit on a busy morning is the worst-fitting equipment you will ever wear.

The video. Nearly every listing here advertises complimentary underwater video, which tells you what the market has decided people want. It is a genuine argument: your phone in a pouch will not do this well, and you cannot both watch a turtle and film it.

The beginner snorkelling tour with turtles and videos is the volume option — €36.26, 90 minutes, 4.7 stars from 1,136 reviews, and explicitly built for people who have never done this. There is a second turtle snorkel with videos at similar length, and for anyone who wants to go under rather than float, a beginner scuba trip on the same reef.

The manatee question

The sea turtles and manatees snorkelling tour costs €65.84 for 90 minutes and holds 4.6 stars from 639 reviews. It is roughly twice the price of the turtle-only trips, and the difference in the title is one word.

Here is what that word is worth.

The animal is the Antillean manatee, and the population in the whole of Puerto Rico is estimated in the low hundreds — an aerial-survey study put the island-wide figure at about 386, and roughly 250 was the number cited when the endangered listing was proposed. They are protected under the US Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed listing this subspecies as endangered in its own right, with tens of thousands of acres of proposed critical habitat around the island.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits “take”, and that word covers harassment — which is what pursuing, touching or feeding a manatee amounts to in law. So even on the day you see one, the correct behaviour is to stop, stay still and let it decide. A guide who swims a group towards a manatee is breaking federal law, not giving you your money’s worth.

Manatees are seen in and around the Condado Lagoon, which is calm, shallow and full of the seagrass they eat. Sightings happen. They are not schedulable.

Our reading: book this tour for the turtles and treat a manatee as a windfall. If the extra €30 is being paid for a manatee, it is being paid for a lottery ticket, and a reputable operator will tell you the same thing before you get in the water. The reviews that mention manatees are a minority of a large number — read them as the exception they describe.

Rules that are not suggestions

Both the turtles and the manatees here are protected animals, and Escambrón is a reserve.

• Do not touch. A turtle’s shell carries a protective surface layer that a hand damages, and an animal cornered by six snorkellers cannot tell you it wants to leave.
• Do not feed anything, and do not book with anyone who does. Fed animals learn to approach boats.
• Give a surfacing turtle a clear line up. It has to breathe, and people floating above it are in the way.
• Reef-safe sunscreen, put on well before you get in — or better, a rash vest instead of sunscreen.
• Stand on sand, never on coral. In a shallow bay it is easy to forget you are allowed to put your feet down only in some places.

Practical

Go in the morning. The trade wind builds through the day, and the water is clearest and flattest early. Nearly every tour here starts before ten for exactly this reason.

Winter brings north swell. Between roughly December and March, Atlantic swell reaches this coast and the sheltered bays get churned up. Escambrón handles it better than anywhere else in the city, but a cancelled snorkel in January is a weather problem, not a badly run tour.

Ninety minutes is the standard, and it is enough. These are short tours by design; the reef is small and you are not far from where you started.

Bring your own mask if you own one. Everything else can be hired.

If the sea is up or you want the bigger reefs, the boat trips out to the cays are the alternative — that is Cayo Icacos by catamaran, about an hour east of here. And if you would rather be on the water than in it, the 36 water sports offers from €26.34 cover the clear kayaks and paddleboards on the Condado Lagoon, which is where the manatees actually are.