 Little Tobago (left) and Great Tobago (right), as seen from St. Thomas | |
  Little Tobago The location of Little Tobago within the British Virgin Islands  Little Tobago Little Tobago (Caribbean) | |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Caribbean Sea |
| Coordinates | 18°25′39.29″N64°50′51.03″W / 18.4275806°N 64.8475083°W Coordinates: 18°25′39.29″N64°50′51.03″W / 18.4275806°N 64.8475083°W |
| Archipelago | Virgin Islands |
| Administration | |
United Kingdom | |
| British Overseas Territory | British Virgin Islands |
| Additional information | |
| Time zone | |
| ISO code | VG |
Little Tobago is an uninhabited island of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, located, along with sister island Great Tobago, approximately six miles west of Jost Van Dyke. The Tobagos are the westernmost of the British Virgin Islands. [1]
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, such as the Philippines.
The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially simply the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles.
The Caribbean is a region of The Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.
At 55 acres (22 ha) in size, it is surrounded by steep cliffs that also extend below the water. Since the 1990s, Great Tobago, Little Tobago islands, and nearby Mercurious and Watson Rocks are protected as part of the National Parks Trust. [2]
There are over fifteen scuba diving sites. Though it's legal to snorkel and dive around the island, it is illegal to anchor because all potential anchoring locations are coral reefs that would be destroyed by an anchor. [3] Large fines can occur if you violate this no-anchor zone, which is frequently patrolled by the BVI Marine Police.
Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving where the diver uses a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba), which is completely independent of surface supply, to breathe underwater. Scuba divers carry their own source of breathing gas, usually compressed air, allowing them greater independence and freedom of movement than surface-supplied divers, and longer underwater endurance than breath-hold divers. Although the use of compressed air is common, a new mixture called enriched air (Nitrox) has been gaining popularity due to its benefit of reduced nitrogen intake during repetitive dives. Open circuit scuba systems discharge the breathing gas into the environment as it is exhaled, and consist of one or more diving cylinders containing breathing gas at high pressure which is supplied to the diver through a regulator. They may include additional cylinders for range extension, decompression gas or emergency breathing gas. Closed-circuit or semi-closed circuit rebreather scuba systems allow recycling of exhaled gases. The volume of gas used is reduced compared to that of open circuit, so a smaller cylinder or cylinders may be used for an equivalent dive duration. Rebreathers extend the time spent underwater compared to open circuit for the same gas consumption; they produce fewer bubbles and less noise than open circuit scuba which makes them attractive to covert military divers to avoid detection, scientific divers to avoid disturbing marine animals, and media divers to avoid bubble interference.
Snorkeling is the practice of swimming on or through a body of water while equipped with a diving mask, a shaped breathing tube called a snorkel, and usually swimfins. In cooler waters, a wetsuit may also be worn. Use of this equipment allows the snorkeler to observe underwater attractions for extended periods with relatively little effort and to breathe while face-down at the surface.
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups.
