It’s choppy in Grenada’s Moliniere Bay, and as I try to summon the courage to slip off the side of the boat, I’m thinking the dark water looks nothing like the turquoise blue I saw from the window of the plane that brought me here. Snorkel in mouth, I splash over the edge and glance down through misty goggles. There’s a female figure standing 15 feet below me on the ocean floor.

Her name is Sienna, and she is one of 75 submerged sculptures placed in this bay by a British sculptor and scuba diver. Jason de Caires Taylor blended twin passions for diving and sculpture to create unusual underwater art galleries, the first of which was established in Moliniere Bay in 2006 and is listed as one of National Geographic’s 25 Wonders of the World.

Snorkel, scuba dive, or take a glass bottomed boat around the bay, and you move over these fascinating life-size artworks, placed at depths ranging from 15 to 25 feet. The pieces of art are a canvas through which Taylor explores Caribbean legends. One sculpture, La Diablesse, depicts a devil woman with a skull-like face. Grenadian folklore has it that she lures men to follow her in the night, eventually leading them to a cliff where they jump to their deaths. The Lost Correspondent is a sculpture of a local dive master sitting at a desk, while Grace Reef features 16 casts of a Grenadian woman lying down. In another installation, 26 life-size children stand in a circle, holding hands.

I don hiking shoes and head for the Grand Etang Forest Reserve, located in the steep roads of the island’s interior. My trail wends its way through lush rainforest laced with the glint of red balisier plants and towering bamboo. I pass trees heavy with nutmeg, one of the island’s foremost spices, and fields of callalou, a nutrient rich plant easily mistaken for spinach at dinner later that night. A half hour later, at the Seven Sisters Waterfall, I gladly shed my clothes and plunge into the cool water, grateful for the respite from the heat.

The breeze is welcome in the late afternoon as my car climbs to a precipice on the island known as Leapers Hill. As history tells it, Frenchmen from Martinique tried to buy land on Grenada from the Caribs, who inhabited the island at the time. The Caribs refused to sell, and battles ensued, killing all but 40 Caribs. Faced with slavery to the French, they jumped to their deaths from a cliff at Grenada’s northern end, now known as Morne des Sauteurs or Leapers Hill.

That’s the history book version, at any rate. As the sunlight shimmers off the water some 100 feet above the ocean, my tour guide tells a different, but no less tragic story. “The Caribs had two choices: massacre by cannon or jumping to their deaths,” he says. “When the site was excavated, portable cannons were found that suggest the only alternative to death by cannon was a suicide jump off the cliff.”

With the Grenadine Islands in the distance and the turquoise water below, it’s hard to imagine the brutality and bloodshed that occurred here a few hundred years ago. Today, the only possible trouble brewing is Kick ’em Jenny, one of the most active Caribbean volcanoes. Situated 615 feet beneath the sea surface, it has erupted 13 times since 1939, most recently in 2017.

The Seismic Research Unit at the University of the West Indies monitors its activity carefully, but the Grenadians don’t seem worried. Being in the hurricane belt, they’ve seen their share of natural disasters. With each adversity, though, Grenada and its people recover, building resilience and stronger infrastructure.

A highlight of my visit is heading to Levera Beach in the pitch darkness of night, where I watch critically endangered leatherback turtles during nesting season.

I hear her first, a soft snorting sound coming from the sand five feet from where I am sitting. As my eyes gradually acclimate to the dark, I make out the movement of flippers gently thudding on the sand. A massive leatherback mama is preparing a nest three feet into the moist sand, deftly using her hind flippers to excavate an egg chamber.

It takes two hours on winding, stomach-lurching roads to reach Levera Beach, on Grenada’s northernmost point. But if you get the opportunity to experience it, don’t hesitate. This is the only place in the country where you can watch a leatherback turtle deposit a basketful of eggs into the sand, and the sight will fill you with awe, leave you with deep respect for the turtle, and awaken a commitment to its preservation against odds that seem insurmountable.

In the 20th century, leatherbacks declined in number by 20 percent, with man being their greatest predator. It doesn’t help that although the turtles are prolific egg-layers, the odds of a hatchling’s survival are incredibly slim. The night before my visit, nine turtles clambered up the shore, laying more than 1,000 eggs. Of those, only one hatchling is likely to reach adulthood.

This mother turtle must be aware on some level of the low survival rate, for her nest is meticulously crafted, and she stops only when she is certain that the moist crevice is free of roots, shells, or any other debris that might harm her hatchlings. Perched on the edge, she starts to lay eggs, depositing up to five simultaneously and dropping them with a soft plod into the chamber. “She is deep in concentration, and her hormone levels are at their highest right now,” whispers our guide. I’m filled with wonder at this amazing creature who, in the coming months, will swim halfway around the world and plunge to depths of up to 3,900 feet.

Within 15 minutes, there are 123 eggs in the nest, and after a flipper-full of sand hits my face, I retreat to watch the turtle cover her nest and camouflage the hole. This is all she can do to protect her hatchlings, for she will not see them again, and no time or effort is spared for this process.

Our special red flashlights are off now, and the night envelops us and the turtle. In a dance-like motion, she begins compacting the sand around her hole, using her tail and all four flippers. When there is no trace of the hole or the eggs, she begins a slow, clumsy walk back to the ocean. Soundlessly, she enters the surf, and as the waves splash the sand from her shell, she is quickly swallowed by the water and on her way.

What she doesn’t know is that, as carefully as she constructed her nest, poachers continue to emerge in the daylight, prodding the sand with long, thin sticks to find evidence of the hole. If they are not reported to the police by one of the fishermen on Levera Beach, they can easily ruin the night’s labors by finding the newly formed nests, unearthing their contents and selling the eggs on the black market as a delicacy long before the hatchlings even emerge.

Environmental organizations like Ocean Spirits are working to prevent this from happening, and by patrolling the beach at night and educating Grenadian schoolgoers, they’ve reduced poaching by 90 percent since their inception in 1999. Grenada is now recognized as one of the most important leatherback nesting sites in the region.

On other Caribbean islands, hotels and tourism have significant impacts on turtle nesting grounds, which are encroached by couples walking in the moonlight, by bright hotel lights that disorient the turtles, and by loud music. But Levera National Park envelops this 765-yard stretch of conch-strewn sand, and in the gentle darkness of night, it is peaceful, except for the sound of the crashing surf. Across the bay, a lone light shines from Sugarloaf Island, an uninhabited isle that rises like a perfect triangle from the ocean. And buried a few feet beneath the sand’s surface, thousands of embryonic turtles are nestled in sealed cocoons, awaiting just the right moment when they will hatch from their eggs, cooperatively dig their way to the surface, and begin their epic ocean journey.

Where to Stay in Grenada