Scuba Diving at Sombrero Reef - FL

It was a beautiful day, some clouds but very bright.  Nemo and Dorey were waiting for us to visit them on the Reef.  We got our gear and we were off.  

Adrian could not use the scuba gear (the Snuba gear) because of his asthma so he and I decided to only do the snorkeling.  We got to the sight and there were only one to two foot waves, perfect for scuba and snorkeling.  Got our gear on (checked the horizon for shark fins) and began to dive in.  Here is a brief video of our preparations from Adan’s head camera.

There was something looming in the back of my mind, something sinister and disgusting.  I could not quite point to it.  The scuba and snuba divers went first.  Adrian jumped in and I went in last.  It was a beautiful site!  Fish of all different colors were swimming in and out of crevices in the reef.  Sea weed fluffing on the reef moving to the rhythm of the waves above.  I was just like the movie Finding Nemo.  Although I did not see any Nemo-looking fish (clown fish), I did see lots of Dorey-looking fish as well as hundreds of different kinds of colorful fish.  Adan and Vivian had a close encounter with sharks and barracudas.  But we did not see any of those from our vantage.  Adrian was a water puppy in his natural element, diving to the bottom and coming back for air through his snorkel as if he had been doing it all his life.  It’s too bad that two of the three underwater cameras were not working.  One, because of a bad SD card and the other because I forgot to put in an SD card!  Adan’s small head camera was the only one functioning.

Then the menace lurking behind me hit and we quickly got out of the boat!

I was told that I was an early walker when I was a baby, that I could balance myself on any tree branch, I remember I was a very good diver in the swimming team and could execute any complex dive with ease.  Why?  Because I had a very delicate and sensitive sense of balance; something in my ear allows me to know what position I am in al all times.  That same sense of balance was totally disrupted with the waves, the reflection of the sun on the bottom, the moving sea weed and the taste of salt water in my snorkel.  Needless to say, I was sick for the next hour.  But he 15 minutes of paradise was worth it.  Once the boat started back I was back to normal.

We did have an interesting episode when Debra fed the fish with her breakfast and instantly all the fish from the reef, as if expecting this, darted out of their protective shelter and instantly went up to the surface to have a snack of an, I’m sure, not too rare delicacy.  

We did manage to get up early this morning because Alex insisted on getting a picture of a sunrise, so five of us went out at early dawn-30 to do this on the west side of the 7-mile bridge west of Marathon Key.