Cappy's Corner

LOBSTERS EVERYWHERE

Yesterday we went out on the boat, my son and nephew. When we arrived at the marina it seemed a bit windy, but we were there anywhere. It was one of those times where our plan was to collect tropicals for our saltwater fish tanks, so diving and snorkeling were are main objectives. We head out the channel from Matheson Hammock Park, heading through the Stiltsville channel to the ocean we notice it is getting rougher and rougher. The last two channel markers are usually the telltale sign if it will be too rough, we began getting tossed around pretty good, so the decision was made to head back in. Turning back toward home, I said to the crew "why don't we try a place protected from the sea?", the guys didn't really want to go in, so we headed behind some of the barrier islands south of Stiltsville. Carefully navigating the shallow waters we stopped when we found some deep spots in the middle of the grass flats. Jason jumped in to scout out the location and he said that it would be a good location for tropical collecting. We got the hooka ready, the hooka is a floating air compressor, that allows us to go diving without all the equipment, it is a surface supplied air source, so that we can dive and air is given to us by demand. That is as long as the gas holds out. We can stay on a shallow dive more than 4 hours on a tank full of gas.
As we decended there was an amazing sight indeed, there were very few rocks and they were litterly stuffed with lobsters (florida crawfish) we watched them, so many of them they were fighting for holes to hide in, the lobsters were walking around everywhere, when one found a hole it pushed another out, they were just walking around everywhere. Lobster are currently out of season and taking them is prohibited, our main objective was tropicals and these lobsters made it difficult to do so. They would get in the way and they would come towards us to see what we were doing. We had to shoo them away like flies. We also ran across a green moray eel, and Jason kept putting his leg over the hole he was in, the eel would smell him, and luckly didn't bite. We found some angle fish and returned to the boat.
The current was making diving very difficult, we moved to a couple of different locations, our last location was near a little reef, just beautiful with lots of tropical fish, but the current was really was strong, so diving was impossible, we snorkeled and Jason found some giant starfish to show us. It ended up being a beautiful day. A bad day of boating is better than your best day at work!

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