ScienceFun!

In case I ever complain about my job, please remind me of the amazing week I had last week...

First, I went skin diving at Marker 2 and saw a bunch of hogfish, grouper, snapper, and porgies and queen angelfish and cowfish. Plus I collected some pretty amazing echinoderms like a verigated sea urchin and a sea biscuit.

Then the next day I went skin diving at Looe Key and I saw a nine foot nurse shark!! It was just hanging out on the bottom under a ledge. I was basically laying on the sand on the bottom so I could see the whole thing. It was huge, but I found out they get up to 14 feet. So then I'm super excited about all the different types of coral, and the blue tangs and some baby blue tangs (these are yellow. We have no yellow tangs in the Atlantic, so if you've seen one, you are wrong. It's a juvenile blue tang.) and a bunch of parrot fish, when I start swimming back to the boat and see something even sweeter: a goliath grouper! I'm all excited, pointing it out to my snorkel buddy, when I turn around and see two even bigger ones swimming behind me.  The biggest one was at least 350 lbs. It was pretty much the highlight of my life.

A few nights after that, a key deer doe came up to me and nudged me with her nose while I was sitting on the picnic tables eating Special K cereal. She left when she realized I wasn't feeding her though. I think she's the same one that waits for me between the banana trees when I'm trying to walk to the bathroom at night. She's so sneaky...

To summarize: My job is amazing.