Beautiful pictures! How often do you go out?
Thanks for the kind words. My wife takes hundreds of pics every time we snorkel.
We try to get to the Keys 3 to 5 long weekends a year.
It's a 2 to 3 hour drive from home to Marathon in the Keys (depending on stops for various reasons). Typically, we drive down on Fri and do a short 'water temp test swim/snorkel' and then do a couple of snorkels on Sat and Sun if the weather is good (wind is the big issue as it makes waves which stirs up 'stuff' and reduces visiblity). Then we drive home on Mon.
Pics from this trip:
We saw quite a few larger stars and this harlequin brittle star really caught my attention.
Condy anemones are now protected from collection due to decreasing numbers. In the area NE from the Horseshoe we saw evidence that their numbers may be coming back. At one spot I could reach out and touch 6 of them. This was the most colorful one.
This is the view ENE from the Horseshoe. The area we spent most of our time at was out from the sea wall over toward the bridge. Google Earth can be helpful seeing the more interesting spots.
It seemed like every piece of rubble we picked up would have an Emerald or Rudy crab on it. Half the time they would run up my arm! This Ruby seemed particularly fond of my hand so he is now living in our 180g reef tank.
I've long been a fan of spaghetti worms, from the very small to the very big. Before I had a Wrasse I had some little ones in the 180g, but the Wrasse ate them. This one came out of it's 'parchment' tube (toward the lower left) and hung around for pics. Some day I'll give one of these a try in either our 65g shallow reef tank or our 65g hexagon Gorgonian tank.
I mentioned above some improvements Parks & Rec have made from the Horseshoe around the NE end of the island and over to the other side. This is a shot on the new foot bridge that stats at the parking lot and ends up at the sea wall we were snorkeling near.
This is the improvement around the other side, after walking along the sea wall under the US-1 and Flagler bridges.
If you walk along the asphalt path and then down to the water's edge, this is the view backe to the ENE. The rocky flats change with the tides and can become covered with sea weed. But this day it was totally clean. On calmer days the area out from shore here is interesting. Last time we snorkeled here (14 months ago) we saw lots of Gorgonians, but the walk over the rocky flats was a little more difficult as it was 3" to 6" deep in sea weed and we were unsure what was underneath.
The tidal pools were loaded with thousands of these tiny cerith snails. It was almost hard to avoid them when you walked.
Just a bit further SW and the rocky flats ends and a short course sand beach starts. But in just 50' the beach ends and a long sea wall starts.
