Wednesday was as advertised, the wind was up and the chop on the Oceanside of the Keys was awful. So my great idea was to use the boat ramp at the eastern end of Spanish Harbor Key and go NNW to Big Mangrove Key (1.3 miles offshore) and Refuse Key (another 0.7 miles out) which are between No Name Key (that’s really it’s name) and Spanish Harbor Key. The trip started OK but half way there the water got significantly rougher as we were more and more open water. Discretion won out and we returned to Spanish Harbor Key and explored the just off shore area between the boat ramp and the “Horseshoe”. What we call the Horseshoe is an old flooded quarry at the NE end of the island. If you use Google Earth and look at the NE end of Spanish Harbor Key you can’t miss it. Being on the lee side of a long island gave us very calm water.
We stopped near the middle of the island because we could see lots of big vase sponges and ball sponges on the bottom in 3’ to 5’ of water. Near shore, in 3’ of water the bottom was all turtle grass and a top coat of a loose yellow algae and it wasn’t very nice. But almost as soon as we started swimming toward shore we found 3 full size Spotted Seahares that were all white with black rings all over them. They were very cool looking. If one had been a much smaller juvenile I’d have considered collecting it (I have an algae issue).
From the mucky shoreline out for 100’ or more was pretty yucky. After that, in 3’to 5’ of water was a mostly sandy bottom with lots of big sponges and not much else, although we did find a big orange hermit crab living in a full size Queen Conch shell. It was busy digging in the sand, I assume looking for food.
Elaine also got a few good photos of a mantis shrimp that we can’t ID.
And I consider us lucky to get a photo of a small mantis shrimp because I usually see them when they see me and run for cover at extreme high speed. We watched for awhile and headed back to the Zodiac. While swimming over some turtle grass I noticed small white snails with a flat spiral shell that have pointed edges called long spined star shells (Astralium phoebium).
While collecting our limit of 10 (5 for me and 5 for Elaine) in water just deep enough that I had to get a good lung full of air and go down so my snorkel would be under water in order to reach the snail. In doing so, I spooked a small nurse shark that must have been resting (or hiding) under the algae. It was only about 2 feet away from my hand and as it darted up and swam away, I have to admit, it startled me. I only saw it for 2 or 3 seconds before it was out of sight and whenever anything big and under water moves fast, it puts a scare down my spine.
From there we moved over near the west side of the Horseshoe. It was near low tide and the water was only 2’ to 3’ deep. There are a couple of small mangrove clusters and some big rocks near shore that we explored. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many variegated urchins in one place.
I saw spines that were white, black and green and urchins that were as small as a dime to as big as a softball. Seeing them use bits of shells, grass, sponges and more as camouflage is always entertaining to see.
The same urchin uncovered.
I collected a small one (the size of a quarter) and a bigger one (roughly 2” in diameter). The bigger one is in my display refugium with Hannibal the Red Hawaiian Reef Lobster and the smaller one is in my 65g shallow local reef tank.