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Snorkeling for Crabs by the Sailfish Marina

Hi Everybody,

Welcome back! We just finished up the first day of another new adventure session, and as usual, what a great day it was! AdventureJason and Jordyn from a couple weeks back returned for another fun filled week of adventure and I just love it! After a weekly session full of adventure and sharing discoveries you almost feel like you become part of the family! It doesn’t get any better than this! AdventureChaz from last week came back again to give me a hand with the boat, helping out with the group and looking for critters, and we had a blast! We were joined by 5 new adventurers today, AdventureMichael, Trevor, Christopher, Gunner and Jagger, and let me tell you this bunch can swim too. Just like fish, and they seemed to love the water as much as me! Once we got in, we didn’t get out for 3 hours. It was great! My kind of adventurers! Mini me’s! RIGHT ON!

Group Photo

We loaded up the boat and left straight for the Rock Garden. The tide was incoming and the water crystal clear and full of fish! Absolutely Beautiful!!! As soon as AdventureChaz dropped anchor we were in the water. There were large schools of fish everywhere, starting right underneath the boat and all the way to the beach. We didn’t know which way to go first! We decided to head to the rocks and the shallows to get up close and personal with some really big snook feeding on the menhaden. They let us get withing 3 feet before slowly swimming away. We felt like we could reach out and grab one and a few of us tried but no luck. They were faster than they looked! There were so many large schools of fish all along the rocks that it made the snorkeling just unbelievable. Parrotfish, sergeant majors, porkfish, menhaden, grunts, snappers, angelfish, barracudas, needlefish, Bermuda chub, surgeonfish, etc., everywhere was fish! and I mean EVERYWHERE!!! There were all sorts of tropical fish within inches of our nose! We were swimming in our very own underwater paradise, sea world it was, and again, we had the “pool” to ourselves. Nobody else around. I just love it when things come together like this! And I was sharing it all with a great group of adventurers too!!!

Checking the Shallows

We found another nice chocolate chip sea cucumber and you guessed it! Yep, We took another photo op. of my new adventurers with “sea cucumber head hairdo” and I think in some cases it was quite appealing! I just love having fun like this and so did they!!! We stopped in the shallows and collected hundreds of the tiny hermit crabs with the little blue legs. They were under every rock by the dozens, and the last I saw AdventureJordyn she had a handful of them in a dozen different types of shells. It was just great! The rest of the gang caught every different type of crab you could find around here. It was like show and tell for all of us for 3 non stop hours! We caught arrow crabs, stone crabs, rock crabs, spider crabs, shame faced crabs, porcelain crabs, blue crabs, sally lightfoot crabs and an assortment of different types of sand crabs I hadn’t seen before. If it was a crab, we caught it, checked it out, let it go and went looking for another species. We found plenty of nice size queen conchs with their beautiful pink interiors and bright blue eyes too. The way they would stick their eyes way out and look at us was just magnificent to see. We all felt they were checking us out too! Just Great! It was like this all day, non stop action like I said. Everybody was catching something different and we were loving it!!! It was nothing but smiles all day!!! Everybody was having fun and I felt great!!! I think I had the biggest smile of all watching everybody else smiling, laughing and finding “treasures”! Just love it like this…. Thank you!

A Net Full of Crabs

With 40 minutes left we headed back to the boat, had some quick snacks and drinks and went swimming in the Deep Hole with a million menhaden all around us. We took turns chasing them around and when someone jumped in, the menhaden would jump out of the water and land on our backs and flip all around before swimming off! Talk about having fun, WE WERE HAVING IT!!! Right up to our gills! It just doesn’t get any better than this! And as usual, when it was time to go, nobody wanted to head back. We were having too much fun with too many smiles to go along!

On the way back we talked about what we were going to do tomorrow and where we wanted to go first. Everyone of us was looking forward to it and I could hear the excitement in their voices. I can guarantee you everybody is going to be early again! After the very first day on an AdventureMike adventure session, nobody ever arrives late! Not once this whole summer! They are ready and raring to go and full of excitement. The way I love it! Thanks to the parents too!

And guess what’s going to happen tomorrow? That’s Right!!! WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SOME FUN!!!

Stay tuned for the next adventure! Cause we’re going to live it! Wish you were along cause we’re going to have a story to tell… another adventure of our own to share!

See you on the return,

AdventureMike