Snorkeling

People frequently ask me what I do on my days off. "You must get sick of doing stuff in the water," they'll say. False. Maybe during the winter I need some extra motivation to get in the cold ocean on my days off. Maybe sometimes my body needs to recover from being outside in the blazing sun for 10 hours every day. I always love being in the ocean though, and so Thursday on our day off, Leigh, Kerri, Christine and I went to Looe Key. Looe Key is a barrier reef right off of Big Pine Key.

At first we had a little bit of trouble getting the boat ready to go. Here's Leigh paddling us through the harbor when the boat stopped working...

But then things were fixed, and we decided to continue our journey to Looe and hope for the best.

We made it out to the Reef easily after that. We basically jumped in the water immediately once we moored up. We saw some gorgeous and big angel fish. (I'm really bad at taking underwater pictures though. And thanks to Liz for letting us use her camera!)

I think that might have been Cheerio coral in the bottom right hand corner. I just found out that it's not actually a coral. It's a colonial anemone!! Isn't science fun? We saw so much other stuff too. There were schools of yellowtail snappers.

 And several barracuda. This one was just a little guy that was probably about 2 feet.

That's me in my $11 bathing suit... What a steal!

And here's Leigh on her last snorkeling trip to Looe before she leaves me on Sunday after her last day of work.

I'm not sure what I'll do without her. The spring staff that isn't staying for summer camp is leaving Sunday and Monday. It's going to be quite the depressing week around here for me. I'm going to miss most of them quite a lot. If I call you crying soon, don't be too scared. First of all, I'm sick so my nose is stuffy and it sounds like I'm crying pretty much all of the time. Second, nothing is extremely wrong, I'm probably just upset about having to say goodbye to so many people. It's weird living at the place you work because you get much closer to all your co-workers than you ever thought you would be. I'll miss you, Leigh!!!!

The Lionfish Sleeps Tonight

I caught and killed my first lionfish on Thursday!!! He was just hanging out in a hard bottom area with his spines out not moving. It was very easy to catch, but that's completely beside the point.

Catching a lionfish is important for a couple reasons, but one of the campers put it best when someone asked him what he saw on the boat and he said, "We saved the reef today." Ok, so we didn't really save the whole reef by just catching one, but it's still important to kill them because they are an invasive exotic and shouldn't be in the Atlantic. They are basically destroying our reef ecosystems because they have no natural predators over here. For example, they grow to 8 inches in the Pacific and up to 20 inches in the Bahamas where they are spreading out of control. In case you are confused as to what a lionfish is, here is a picture:

If you want more information on the lionfish invasion you can check out the REEF website, which is where I got this beautiful picture.

Plus, there is a competition to see who of the instructors can capture the most lionfish by the end of the season (next week). I know I'm not going to win because Nick has caught a myriad of lionfish, but at least I won't have a zero when they tally the numbers. Plus, I'm saving the reef.

Remembering the Alamo

I was snorkeling the other day and found a stone crab. I've caught them before with nets and I've picked them up just fine. However this particular crab I found was pretty sneaky and decided to go into a hole in the ground. It was hard to see him in there, and I couldn't get him out with the little net I had. I figured if I grabbed one of the claws I could pull the crab out without him pinching me. I was correct... Almost. I put my hand in there and grabbed his claw and I practically had him out, when he pinched my pointer finger. Sadly, I panicked and let go of the crab. My finger felt bruised for a couple days, and was just a little scraped up. After all of this happened and I was complaining about how I lost the crab, I was told that I was a typical "South Florida kid" and that I should never do anything that stupid again. Psh.

Since that happened, I feel like crabs have been out to get me. The ones I catch are now trying to attack me whenever I pick them up, instead of being semi-calm like they usually are. For example, tonight during a Nocturnal Adaptations class, I caught a big clinging crab and it would not let go of the net forever. Then about 5 minutes later, I caught a blue crab with my hands and it would not stop rapidly moving it's swimmerettes, trying to get away from me while I was holding it.

Also tonight during Nocturnal Adaptations, one of the other instructors found a live cowry. You've probably seen a lot of these shells being sold with names engraved on them, but not a lot of people have seen the living animal:

The cowry isn't like a normal snail that just hides in its shell until it wants to move and then brings it's body out. This animal actually wraps part of its body around the shell, so that you can't even see the shell anymore. In this picture, it looks extra slimy, because it's completely covered its shell.

April 30 was a very sad night in Key West.

El Alamo bar closed its doors for the last time. The Alamo is a really cool bar in Key West that is down an alley way off of Duval Street. It's mainly a bar for locals because of how it's tucked away and how cheap everything is. One dollar Pabst Blue Ribbons, anyone?

The bar is all open and has this huge tree in the middle of the patio. There's almost always a band playing, and you can play corn hole, beer pong, and pool anytime you want. It's just generally a great place to hang out, which is why I'm so upset that it's closing. We'll never forget you, El Alamo.