Key Largo Snorkeling & Scuba

We rented a deck/pontoon style boat and went to the White Banks reef in Key Largo. The water was a gorgeous aqua blue, and warm but still refreshing and perfect. Weather perfect as well, and while the ocean was not flat, it was not too bad or too choppy. The boats GPS it came with was off by a mile, luckily Manny knows how to read a boat chart (master boat captain) so was able to figure out the correct GPS coordinates for White Banks, and he found it! Its within sight of Molasses Reef, and its more shallow and closer to shore. I love the buoy system they use. You know you are at the right spot because the buoys are white with a blue stripe, and the buoy is marked with the name of the reef (ie "WB"). Another sign you are at the right reef is there are other boats there.
Shayna and I snorkeled first and Manny stayed on the boat while Skyler napped. Shayna found this live baby conch and hermit crab. she threw them back after we took thier photo:

when we got back, Manny went for a scuba dive, and we (shayna and I) took skyler in the water. he insisted on snorkeling, and he actually put his head IN the water and looked down for about 30 seconds, while breathing through his snorkel! By the time we came up on the boat, went back in without his snorkel, and back up again, Manny came back towards the boat. Shayna went in and snorkeled by him as he dove, and then I snorkeled while he dove. we found a huge pretty pinkish purple lobster hiding in a hole in the reef and Manny almost grabbed it! Lobster season officially starts August 6th, so our lobster hunt will begin then. I love how when you look down into the water, a whole new world opens up. Its so gorgeous and the time flies. You can swim forever not even feeling the exertion- being so mesmerized by the world below. Its extremely colorful, alive, and beautiful. Its like going through Alice's looking glass, only the mirror is the ocean surface. Whoever said the real keys is underwater was not kidding!

Manny took a lot of underwater photos and videos, and once we got home we wore the hats of marine biologists and identified what we saw. In the following posts I will show what we saw and identified.

This is the first, a close up of some coral:

ABOVE: In the middle is SWOLLEN KNOB CANDELABRUM, a soft coral. To the left and right are POROUS SEA RODS, also soft coral. These were all over, along with a LOT of sea fans.