i could read about your adventures all day and your wife takes amazing photos. please share more, this is a bucket list item for my wife and i to snorkel... we are landlocked in Indiana.
I explained to my wife that you like her photos and she said "Thank you!" Here are a few more.
I would love to snorkle in the Keys.
@Ron Reefman , you should organize a R2R field trip, lol.
To both of you and anybody else that ever plans to come to the Florida Keys, please feel free to ask questions. Whether it's just a visit to the Keys or a snorkel trip, I'm always willing to try and help. I'd like everybody who visits the Keys to have a good time!
I have been known to help out a visiting aquarium club when they were visiting the Keys. The huge boat they had lined up, ended up damaged and unavailable. So I got them to come down to the Horseshoe and they had a great time!
I'm retired, so my schedule is kind of flexible. And an excuse to visit the Keys and snorkel is always a possibility. We are considering a Fall trip (like October). But the weather can be very questionable that time of year (hurricanes and thunderstorms). However, hurricanes are few and far between, thunderstorms are mostly afternoon events and the water is so warm (90F or more) that you can snorkel for hours and not get cold! May is far and away the best time to visit. Less people, water that has just become warm enough (upper 70's), no hurricanes and very low chance of any rain... oh, and lots of juvenile critters to see since it's just after the breeding season.
I expect to do 1 or 2 photography trips to the Keys sometime from December to March; around the full moon time. I have a couple of full moon photos I want and that is the best time of year to get a clear horizon so I can get the moon behind a lighthouse. This is the Sanibel Lighthouse and a photo I took in April of 2025.
And here are a few more of Elaine's photos from our Keys trip. She didn't share finding this sea star with me or it would have been the one I'd have collected. The orange color is just awesome!
We saw 5 or 6 bigger crabs like this swimmer crab.
Elaine really enjoyed watching this big Tulip snail 'walking' along over the rocks.
There are a million feather dusters attached to the rock here. But all the rocks are huge and the feather dusters are attached so well that you kill them when you try to remove one.
This is a view along the shoreline of the Horseshoe a short while after high tide. At high tide (especially near a full or new moon) the water gets up over most of the dry land you see here. At low tide the rock drop off edge is about 12 to 18 inches.
This is the view looking out over the Horseshoe. The marker you can see at the horizon is at the outer edge of the left arm of the quarry. The land you see at the horizon to the right of the marker is Big Pine Key, a couple of miles across the water. The water inside the quarry slopes down at 45 degrees until it gets about 12 feet deep, then it goes vertical down to 30 or 40 feet deep. Outside the Horseshoe, the water is only 2 to 4 feet deep for very great distances. Inside on the left arm, outside on the right arm and out at the entrance into the Horseshoe is the best snorkeling. Just note that there is almost NO CORAL here. If you want to see big coral, take a snorkel charter out to Looe Key or Sombrero Lighthouse.
