Jocassee Lake Tours and Shuttle Service

09/05/2026

07/08/2026

07/07/2026

This is the kind of freedom we hope every child experiences.

Here’s to a future where every child knows joy, wonder, and hope.

Happy Fourth of July! ❤️🤍💙🇺🇸

Jocassee Lake Tours Jocassee Wild Outdoor Education

07/07/2026

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06/24/2026

05/19/2026

Do you get the Blue Wall Weekly, the weekly email newsletter from Jocassee Lake Tours and Shuttle Service? It's a great newsletter with lots of helpful information not only on the lake itself but also for the nature events it includes that are happening during the week.

In this week's email newsletter, Kay Wade writes this with the photo included:

"Six decades have passed since Duke Power announced plans to build nuclear and hydroelectric facilities to generate electricity for Oconee and Pickens Counties. Two lakes were to be created by containing Keowee River behind dams. Surveyors traversed Jocassee Gorges, marking a clean line through the hills. Timber companies followed, and bulldozers. Soon enough a belt of cleared land 100’ wide outlined the perimeter of a future Lake Jocassee. Six decades later, tree stumps remain around the lake’s edge, hidden just below the full pool surface. When state-wide drought forces water levels to drop, these stumps emerge like old friends, a silent reminder of what this place once was."

04/28/2026

WORLD’S OLDEST LOONS RETURN TO SENEY

On Saturday morning, April 25, a female loon on I Pool beheld a relatively frequent spring sight: two males battling, with beating wings and stabbings bills, for control of the breeding territory. The observer was Fe, who was first color-marked as an E Pool mother in 1990, and who will thus turn at least 40 this summer. The hostilities were brutal but brief, and after only a minute one of the combatants discerned that this was not his day, after which he shortly took flight for less perilous waters. With the challenger vanquished, Fe and the unbanded victor, who was likely but not certainly her mate from 2025, initiated a circling round of bill dipping and jerk diving, aspects of courtship involved in forming, or re-forming, a pair bond for the season.

Concurrently on nearby H Pool, Fe’s former partner of 25 years, ABJ, was engaged in scouting for potential nest sites with his current companion, Aye-Aye, with whom he bred unsuccessfully on H last year. Although ABJ, who will turn 39 this June, hatched a record 32 chicks with Fe, since their split in April 2022 he has failed to produce further offspring, and she remains the only mate with whom he has ever sired young. Along with the broader Seney loon population, which includes color-marked adults who are embarking upon their 24th, 27th and 33rd Refuge seasons, ABJ and Fe and their respective partners will spend the next few weeks engaged in territorial defense, habitat assessment, copulation and nest building ahead of 27-29 days of egg incubation that, with luck, will culminate in the emergence of one or two downy fluffballs in early-mid June.

Thanks to Dani Fegan for her extensive documentation of the migratory return of Seney loons.

Damon McCormick
Common Coast Research & Conservation

PHOTO: On April 25, Fe observes with alarmed but restrained interest as two male Common Loons battle to lay claim to Seney’s I Pool territory. Photos by Dani Fegan.

04/28/2026

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Jocassee Lake Tours gets you out on and exploring South Carolina's beautiful Lake Jocassee, part of the stunning 43,000-acre Jocassee Gorges ecosystem — home to temperate rainforests, waterfalls, and over 60 species of rare plants. Lake tours bring you to waterfalls only reachable by boat, and the...