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.

More Pictures!

I'm finally catching up on everything, so here's some pictures from my birthday. I know the cupcakes are the only thing you are really concerned about...

Here's Jack eating a cupcake. Clearly, he loved them.

Aren't they so pretty?! You can kind of tell near the bottom of this picture how they sparkled. This just doesn't do them justice though. They shimmered all over, but in a pretty, non-obnoxious way.

Here's a picture of me on the phone with Grandma. I miss you, Grandma!  

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. Tanya came down to see me, which was awesome. I wish I could go home and see everyone more often, so it's great to have visitors. We spent Saturday hanging out in Key West and Tan found some tea shop that she really liked. We also went to the Toy Factory which was amazing!! It's not that they necessarily have the widest selection of toys or anything, but it's decorated in a really cool underwater theme with ginormous fish and a pirate ship. If you come down to Key West ever, you should check it out. We also ate at this delicious Mexican restaurant called Salsa Loco. It was a relaxing weekend filled with some sisterly bonding, which was exactly what I needed.

Oh, and just in case you live in a cave, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I just came out on DVD last week. Go buy it if you haven't already!

Dry Tortugas

Remember like 2 months ago when I mentioned in passing that I went to the Dry Tortugas? Well, I finally am putting pictures up from it! 

Basically the Tortugas are a small cluster of islands 70 miles directly west of Key West. They were named for the turtles (Tortugas is spanish for turtle) that used to mate all along them and for their lack of fresh water.

The islands are right in the middle of the natural channel that all large sea vessels have to take if they want to leave the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic Ocean. In the 1800's, the United States decided it was necessary to have protection there and so they built Fort Jefferson.

During the Civil War the Union kept it from the Confederacy and used it as a prison for Confederate soldiers. One of the inmates was actually Dr. Mudd, the doctor that set John Wilkes Booth's leg when he broke it after shooting Lincoln, even though the doctor claimed to have no knowledge of what his patient had done. He was eventually released after he had to treat many of the soldiers and inmates during an outbreak of yellow fever.

I can't even imagine how many of the soldiers ended up getting heat stroke from those uniforms they had to wear all the time. But the Dry Tortugas is definitely one the most beautiful places I've ever been.

ABC

Nothing too exciting has been happening down here in the Keys, but I do have a couple of recommended readings for everyone...

• One for the Money. Janet Evonavich's Stephanie Plum novels are hands down the best bounty hunter books I've ever read. Are they the only bounty hunter books I've read? Possibly, but they are still amazing. I've only read the first five books so far, but I've loved all of them.
• Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb.  If you are a single woman, you need to read this book. It's a nonfiction that talks about everything that no one wants to hear, but still makes you feel better after you read it.

Right now I'm reading Hilary Duff's book, Elixir. It's definitely cheesy, but I'm starting to get into the story, so hopefully Hilary will pull through with a solid ending.

Maybe I'll be able to start up the Awesome Book Club again soon. I know everyone is probably missing our monthly discussions as much as I am. Plus it's on my resume and at some point I'm going to need to get another job. Which reminds me that I also recommend reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's way better than Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Fishing

It's been awhile...

My vacation went really well. Tanya and I went up to visit Tiffany and her new baby Lillian Mabel in Georgia. She is so precious, and Lillian is pretty cute too! The good news is that Lilli and I already have a lot in common:




My birthday was a few days ago and I had a great time! I had to work that day so I missed everyone's phone calls, but I appreciated them all the same. My school group all sang to me in the morning, and then at lunch one of the instructors presented me with a tiara and a wand and told everyone they had to stop me and say "Happy birthday." After work, a bunch of us went to Milledge's for homemade chicken and dumplins and cupcakes. The chicken and dumplins were absolutely amazing. The cupcakes were gorgeous. The literally sparkled. Plus they had vanilla icing on the inside. I'll have to post pictures of them soon, but I forgot my camera cord today... Sorry!

On Monday, I had the afternoon off, so I went with Jack and Liz on her row boat, The White Whale. First, someone had borrowed Liz's boat and messed up the oars, so we couldn't row properly. It was really windy and we were basically drifting off to sea. We stopped to fix the oars, but when we dropped anchor, they hadn't attached the anchor properly and it fell off, lost forever in the channel. We had to go back in to get a new anchor, and finally ended up going fishing about 500 feet away.
 Jack ended up catching a small nurse shark:

Then yesterday Liz and I went on Milledge's boat with him. Look at all the fish we caught!!

OH, Did you not see any fish?? That's because we didn't catch any. But at least we didn't have any problems with our anchor.