The Animal Flower Cave lies under the cliffs at North Point, St Lucy, and it is the only accessible sea cave on Barbados. Two English explorers found it in 1780, from the sea.
It is named for what lives in it. Sea anemones survive in the pools inside, known locally as animal flowers. The tentacles can sting and, in the larger species, paralyse a passing fish; touch one with something it does not recognise, a stick for instance, and it retracts into its stalk and waits a while before venturing out again.
The cave records the island rising out of the sea. It formed at sea level and now stands six feet above the high water mark, because Barbados is lifting at about an inch every thousand years. You go in from above rather than from the water: coral steps, built in 1912, lead down through an opening in the roof that is called the blowhole.
The floor is dated. The German Geological Institute put the main coral floor at roughly 400,000 to 500,000 years old, with a younger coral section above it at about 126,000 years.
One chamber holds what the guides call the swimming pool. The water is so clear and so still that it gives no sense of its own depth and looks far shallower than it is.
Because the entrance faces the Atlantic, the sea decides whether you get in. Rough water closes the cave, so it is worth checking before making the drive to the northern tip of the island.
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