For the past two days and possibly today the Florida Sea Base diving vessels have stayed in port. At 25 knots, the wind prevents us from taking participants out on the water safely. During the past couple days we have had other activities and tried to keep the kids entertained. Before the wind got too bad we dove in Port Antigua, it is now a harbor where they used to mine limestone. So it is fairly deep. There is also two wrecked barges on te bottom and some cool coral/anemones that I haven’t seen on the reef. However all the dives we did were open water training dives with our cert crew, so no camera. The most interesting thing I saw was a toadfish which I would have very much liked to photograph as this is the only one I’ve ever seen in the wild.

One of the activities we had for the kids was feeding the tarpon at Robbie’s. Te pelicans also hang out there looking for free handouts.

It’s a horrible photo but the manatee didn’t hang around long and all I had was my phone. During the lull in action I saw my third or fourth manatee of the summer.

So the wind is blowing 20 knots still today and we are most likely not going out again. I really feel bad for the scouts who paid to come here and never made it to the reef.

Brian Sevald
Photographer
Scuba Instructor
Islamorada, Fl