The ShoreXplorers: Snorkeling Key Largo [April 14, 2016]

Smooth Trunkfish

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo encompasses 70 nautical square miles. There are mangrove islands and upland areas, but most of the park is coral reef. The reefs have been protected since the park was founded in 1963. Concessions in the park offer Glass Bottom Boat tours, which we took with Dana’s parents and the kids 20+ years ago. They also offer SCUBA and snorkeling trips. There are a ton of dive shops outside of the park in Key Largo that will take you to the same sites. Permanent anchor buoys have been set up at the different sections of reef, and the dive/snorkel boats tie up to those buoys.

Clear blue water - the dark shade is the reef we swam on, the light shade is the sand

One of the Park Rangers in the Everglades had advised us that the snorkeling from out of Pennekamp State Park was better than the snorkeling in Key West. Having done both, what would we say??? The visibility was much clearer at Pennekamp, and we saw a greater variety of fish. However, the water was warmer in Key West and the swimming was easier, Pennekamp had small waves and a current that were a little tougher to negotiate. So it is a toss up! I would say… go to both places!!!

Our boat

We were on a boat with 15 other snorkelers, and motored out about 35 minutes to the snorkel site they call Grecian Rocks. The first thing we noticed as we approached the reef was the abundance of soft coral – sea fans, and sea rods. We also saw large growths of brain coral.

View of the reef and the surface from underwater

Among the coral swam many, many small, brightly colored fish. We are including photos here of ones that we didn't show in the Key West blog post. AND there were so many fish that we didn't get good photos of.

Brain Coral

So what are we showing here? The lovely trunkfish has hard sides and is triangular in shape. It swims by wiggling its tail and fins. We saw a ton of grunts, mid-sized yellow and blue striped fish. We got one good photo of one, but they were everywhere. There were a bunch of aptly named bluehead wrasses, tiny fish with bright blue heads. There were schools of little wrasses with yellow tops and a black stripe; at least we thought they were wrasses, until we couldn't find them in any of our fish books. And we saw several barracuda... They weren't very large, but they do look sinister, don't they!