Beautiful clear water today southwest of Key West.  What a joy to be able to see so far.  There had to be eighty feet of vis.  Curiously, not many big fish around, just small reef fish like these.  The one with the dot is a butterfly fish.

A Bicycle Which is Becoming an Artificial Reef

This bicycle was way out, not at all near shore, so it must have fallen off a boat.  It was only in about 35 feet of water but the boat that dropped it must have traveled too far and lost the spot before they could go in and look for it.  There are some baby pillar coral growing, anchored to the spokes of the wheel.

A Sea Turtle

Sea turtles are everywhere near the reef in Key West – most of them are Green Sea Turtles, not to be confused with similar-looking Loggerhead turtles.  The spring we’ve seen lots of baby turtles in the water, as well as curious adult turtles surprising us as we swim and dive on and around the main reef and patch reef areas of Key West.  Green Sea turtles can be distinguished from Loggerheads by the two front scales above the eyes.   Greens have two, whereas loggerheads have four.

Jewfish or Goliath Grouper on Stargazer

Stargazer Reef is not a reef – it’s an underwater sculpture that looks like a series of metal saw horses.  A thin layer of coral has grown to cover the table tops and legs, so there is a small neighborhood of fish living there.  You can always bet on finding mangrove snappers, angel fish, and one huge resident Goliath Grouper, A.K.A jewfish.  The jewfish really stands out, since Stargazer Reef is located on a desert of sand.  The poor thing tries to hide under the “tables” but you can always spot him a million miles away!

Here you can see the one small colony of Elkhorn Coral, which sadly has some rope tangled on it.  The Glass Bottom Boat likes to take its passengers out to see it, so it gets a lot of attention.  There are colorful parrot fish in this area, as well as barracuda, grouper, snapper, lobster, jacks, and lots of other marine life.

At Rock Key, snorkelers will encounter parrot fish, barracuda, angel fish, snapper, lazy nurse sharks, chubs, butterfly fish, lots of tiny colorful species of wrasses, gobies, file fish, puffer fish, and more.  You might also see rays, eels, sea turtles, and other creatures of the marine world who exist on and near the main reef system.

Most of the snorkel boats take their passengers out to Sand Key, which is right on the reef, about six miles out.  The lighthouse was built in the 1800s and marks the reef where it becomes so shallow it’s even a danger for smaller boats to navigate.  Living on the reef at Sand Key are barracuda, sting rays, sargeant majors, angel fish, snapper, grunts, the occasional moray eel hiding under the rocks, gentle nurse sharks sleeping in the sand, and thousands of small reef fish like blennies, wrasses, butterflyfish, and porkfish.  Also cruising through you’ll see bar jacks, and if you’re lucky other types of jacks as well.

The conch itself is like a crab, and sits way inside the shell.  you can see his claw if you look closely at the crevice in the shell.  It’s a mollusk, also the second most well-known snail in the world, after escargot from France.

The shells are sold in tourist shops in Key West, but since harvesting Conchs is illegal, these shells come from Haiti.  So, if you’re in town doing some Key West snorkeling and you come across a Queen Conch, admire it but leave it there.

That’s a Gag grouper there under that rock.  You don’t see them every day in Key West.  They look kind of like snappers from the surface. There’s also a picture of a hogfish.