There's a first time for everything, including swimming with sharks!

Dater: June 11th, 2016
Location: Tevernier ( Spankies reef & Sharks Ledge reef) 

Running so we weren't the last one to get on the van, me and my roommate Justin woke up a little bit late but we were more than ready to start the day and get out to the reefs and start assessing the life out there. Today we got a charter from Captain Slate's Dive Company, to go out to the local reefs and dive to take a survey of the life found on our one air tank dive. I knew this was going to be a great day since the last time I went SCUBA diving was a little over a year ago. As soon as we got to the docks, we loaded up our vessel and started to set up our dive gear (BCD, Regulators, and dive computers). Then we were off on our way to the reef!

The first reef we were diving was Spankie's reef, this reef was about 30 minutes away from shore and mainly composed of Brain corals, Sea rods, and stag horn coral. Of course there is also fish swimming around this reef including but not limited to; red band parrot fish, scrawled file fish, blue tang, spot fin butterfly fish, and yellow tail snapper. Towards the end of this survey, my dive partner got my attention to show me something. located to our right was a hawksbill sea turtle resting in the middle of a coral patch! This was the first time i've ever seen any type of sea turtle in the wild! we got as close as we could to Mr. Hawks bill until he had enough of us and then swam away. After that we had almost ran through all of our air tanks and had to begin our ascent to our boat and onto the next reef.

The next reef is the Shark's Ledge Reef, which ironically is not inhabited by sharks and does not have any change in the sea floor depth. This reef was about 15 minutes away from Spankies reef and contained a lot of life that was also observed at the previous reef. Once we switched our used air tanks with fresh ones we headed back into the water with our dive partners. The first thing I noticed about this reef was the amount of turtle grass that was living in this reef, usually turtle grass grows in a empty sand field with no coral structures in the direct area. Some new life that we witnessed were some pork fish, hog fish, french angel fish, Christmas tree worms, and some fire coral as well.
About half way into our dive I noticed a shadow moving into my vision a head to my right, a nurse shark approximately 9 feet long swam by me and my dive partner. This was the coolest thing to see, nurse sharks are very docile in nature so i wasn't frightened just excited!

This dive was one of the coolest and most informative to me. It gave me a chance to do some actual species surverying of a reef and getting the chance to get my new jersey bones back to diving in the tropics. After our dives we headed back to mainland to take a trip to the Windley Key Fossil Reef where we saw a fossilized reef and all the coral from hundreds of years ago. Then we made a stop at Quinn Bird Sanctuary  to look at the different types of local birds before heading to dinner in Key Largo. Today was a blast and I can't wait to see what tomorrows adventures involve. I'd love to stay and chat but me and some of my research team are heading to the hotel's pool for some night time swimming! See you tomorrow!

For more information about Captain Slates Scuba Adventures: http://www.captainslate.com/
For more information about the Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological Park :  https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Windley-Key