Thought on snorkeling in the Keys
We just spent one week at the Jolly Roger CG in Marathon Key (recommended BTW). We were mainly interested in snorkeling.
1) The CG had a very good beach for shallow snorkeling. It has a lot of fish and other critters-sponges, corals and my first nudibrachs. Lots of lobsters at the start of the week, hardly any at the end. This was lobster season but the CG forbids lobstering off it's beach plus whoever was doing it was pulling the tails off and leaving the heads in the water. That's illegal.
2) The real reason for this was our boat snorkeling trip on Captain Hook's boat. We had a good time the boat stopped in two spots. The first was about 15 ft deep. I could reach the bottom but my son (age 15) and wife could just get down with little bottom time to look around. The second spot was 20 ft and there I could just get down and had a couple seconds before I had to go back up.
It was too deep for snorkeling for the type of people on the boat, ones who don't do this very often and about half were doing it for the first time. IMO the tour operators were catering to SCUBA divers (6 on board) and not to the snorkelers (21 on board)
The point of this is that you should determine where the boat is going and how deep the water will be. My guess is that 10-12 feet would be ideal for most people snorkeling, 15 feet is the limit.
Capt Hooks was $25/head for the trip. Others we checked we up to $45/head. But there must be 20 or more operators doing this. A trip only with snorkelers would probably be best. Let me say that the people working on the boat were great otherwise. Take a small ice chest with cold drinks (they had water available) and some snacks.
BK
1) The CG had a very good beach for shallow snorkeling. It has a lot of fish and other critters-sponges, corals and my first nudibrachs. Lots of lobsters at the start of the week, hardly any at the end. This was lobster season but the CG forbids lobstering off it's beach plus whoever was doing it was pulling the tails off and leaving the heads in the water. That's illegal.
2) The real reason for this was our boat snorkeling trip on Captain Hook's boat. We had a good time the boat stopped in two spots. The first was about 15 ft deep. I could reach the bottom but my son (age 15) and wife could just get down with little bottom time to look around. The second spot was 20 ft and there I could just get down and had a couple seconds before I had to go back up.
It was too deep for snorkeling for the type of people on the boat, ones who don't do this very often and about half were doing it for the first time. IMO the tour operators were catering to SCUBA divers (6 on board) and not to the snorkelers (21 on board)
The point of this is that you should determine where the boat is going and how deep the water will be. My guess is that 10-12 feet would be ideal for most people snorkeling, 15 feet is the limit.
Capt Hooks was $25/head for the trip. Others we checked we up to $45/head. But there must be 20 or more operators doing this. A trip only with snorkelers would probably be best. Let me say that the people working on the boat were great otherwise. Take a small ice chest with cold drinks (they had water available) and some snacks.
BK
