When traveling, I consider myself fortunate to come across a destination that’s fun as well as a learning experience.

Coral World Ocean Park, located on a peninsula on St. Thomas’ northeastern coast adjacent to Coki Beach, certainly fits the bill on both counts.

I spent an enjoyable three hours touring this center dedicated to Caribbean marine life, but could easily have spent the entire day by signing on to some of its daily activities such as SNUBA or a sea lion, shark or turtle encounter. There’s even a sea lion painting program that has visitors hold an 8-by-10-inch canvas while a South American sea lion creates a masterpiece using two colors of choice.

With amiable Kitty Edwards, the park’s marketing assistant as my guide, I began my visit by stepping inside the 80,000 gallon, air-conditioned Caribbean Reef Encounter, a circular glass aquarium that encloses the patrons rather than the sea life.

“The aquarium is open to the elements like rain, sunshine and moonlight and gets its unfiltered water directly from the ocean,” said Edwards as we gazed at the animals in the recreated coral reef. “Here, we’re able to satisfy the corals’ requirements for nutrition and relatively constant temperature and salinity.”

The Encounter features 20 species of fish including two sting rays and multiple species of angel fish as well as sea anemones, lobsters, conch, local corals and sponges. Twice daily, divers hand feed the fish in narrated feeding sessions.

In the nearby Marine Gardens, a gallery of 21 jewel tanks, I saw seahorses and wonderfully camouflaged scorpion fish and peacock flounder, jawfish standing vertically in their sandy burrows and ominous moray eels that looked like formidable underwater snakes.

On our way to the Touch Pool, we walked by a dozen or so iguanas, diligently chewing on a feast of lettuce leaves strewn purposely by staff along the pathway.

“While the iguanas will bite to defend themselves, they’re more likely to whip their assailants with their tails,” said Edwards, as she invited me to feel the textures of a sea star and sea cucumber.

Later we passed by the bayside home of the park’s sea turtles, four behemoths, three of which are from a single nest on St. Croix, each weighing somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds.

“They’re huge already, but they’ll get much bigger,” said Edwards, adding that people can actually enter the pools with the turtles, touch their shells and otherwise interact with them during park’s daily Turtle Encounters.

Something I really enjoyed, was the walk down the stairway of the Undersea Observatory that stands 100-feet offshore and is the only one of its kind in the Caribbean. The three story building descends 15-feet below the sea surface and allows visitors a view of undersea life — everything from barracuda and turtles to large schools of horse-eye jacks — that swim by observation portals. Twice daily, a diver enters the water to feed the fish almost at eye-level of the spectators.

At one point, I could see through the Observatory portals a line of Sea Trek adventurers wearing diving helmets and walking along the floor of the Caribbean. The experience begins on a deck just off the Observatory and lets patrons spend about a half hour in near zero gravity watching sea life swim right up to their visor as they’re led on a guided undersea trail.

Those not quite ready for Sea Trek might want to try SNUBA, which allows patrons to explore underwater via a 20-foot long air hose without donning cumbersome diving gear.

I ended my day in the Lorikeet Garden holding a cup of nectar, while the brilliantly colored tropical birds flew down and dined on the sweet liquor right out of my hand. In my book, it sure beats joining in on one of the Shark Encounters, which has you enter a pool with a variety of sharks. Juveniles though they might be, sharks are a bit too off-putting for a landlubber like me.



IF YOU’RE GOING ...

Coral World



•For more information on Coral World Ocean Park, call (340) 775-1555 or visit www.coralworldvi.com.

•For more information on the U.S. Virgin Islands, call (800) 372-8784 or visit www.usvitourism.vi.

•For a place to dine, the Agave Terrace is considered one of the Virgin Islands’ premier seafood restaurants. Located high on a bluff at 4 Smith Bay St. overlooking St. John Island, the restaurant sports an open air patio and some spectacular sunsets.

The bartender, Desmond, has been serving cocktails in the bar for 25 years and is quite a conversationalist. The restaurant’s wine list has earned the Wine Spectators Award of Excellence for the past 18 years.

I particularly like the choices Agave Terrace diners can make for their fish and seafood entrees as to preparation (char-grilled, pan-seared, Island spiced or butter poached) and sauce (eight different selections including mango teriyaki, ginger buerre blanc, brandied lobster cream and grilled pineapple glaze).

The restaurant gets its name from the agave plant, Latin for century plant. Mistakenly thought to bloom once every 100 years, the local Virgin Islands agave usually blooms at 25 years, producing an up to 30-feet-tall spike of golden yellow flowers. After blooming, the plant leaves behind a tall dried stalk often used in the West Indies as a Christmas tree.

•Call (340) 775-4142 or visit www.agaveterrace.com.



Dave Zuchowski writes for the New Castle, Pa., News.