We had almost decided to leave Newfound harbor and I was feeling a little sorry that I didn't get another lobster reuben at Parrotdise Grill and I didn't have the name or phone number of a local dive shop to try to dive nearby Looe Key. Then, last evening, I asked at the little marina dock here if there were any dive boats that go to Looe Key that I could get to by dinghy. It turned out that they had a flyer for a very nice dive and snorkle boat over on the Gulf side that goes through this harbor every day to get to Looe Key, and they picked me up and dropped me off right at Nonchalance, so I didn't even have to dinghy in! Totally cool!
Looe Key is an almost completely underwater key that has excellent coral reefs. The dive shop claims that it's the number one reef dive destination in the continental United States. It certainly does have exellent coral reefs for Florida. They're as good as the average coral reefs in Saint John, although the water is cooler and not quite as clear, but it is really very nice.
I went diving with Brian Short from Alaska. Before the dive, he said he really was hoping to see a shark.
We saw the biggest shark I have ever seen, and it was up close, like less than 12 ft. away, in about 15 ft. of water. It's a dusky shark that I'd say was about 8 ft. long and easily 250 lbs or more. Of course, they say things look bigger underwater, but I just know this was a really big shark. Brian hadn't seen it and I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed just as it was coming into view.
It got this close! There was a pretty sand channel between coral canyons and the shark was just doing what we were doing, cruising up the channel to see what was there. No, I didn't just blow the picture up! You can even see some light colored upright soft corals in front of the shark in the first picture and in this picture, they're just by his tail. Totally cool and only a little scary because it didn't seem interested us.
It swam past us and Brian probablay got good shots then. Here, it's past us and about 20 ft. or more past from Brian, which gives some comparison of size.
We also saw literally dozens of barracuda. Some were large, some were small. This one just liked to hang out at an angle next to the rocks and wait for some unsuspecting fish to think it was part of the reef.
I saw Kathy's favorite, a 4 spot butterfly fish, about 3 inches long.
And one of my favorites, a trunk fish (about 4 inches long).
A scrawled filefish (this one about 16 inches long) that has beautiful neon blue "scrawling" all over which is hard to see unless you blow the picture up.
And too many other fish to show! My camera finally gave me the "out of memory" notice before the end of our second dive.
After the dive, in the late afternoon, we took the dinghy under the US1 bridge to the gulf side to Parrotdise grill. They're dog-friendly at outside tables and have a nice dinghy dock. We both had a lobster reuben which is nice large pieces of spiny lobster which are french fried in a light batter, put in cuban bread slices with coldslaw, peppercini peppers, some kind of creamy dressing, and grilled or toasted. Yum! Now we're not hungry for dinner, so we'll probably just wait until 10PM and have a "Kay Sundae" (invented on this trip by Kay Strayer using vanilla ice cream, dribbles of straight vanilla extract, cold hot fudge sauce and Bailey's Irish Cream. Totally decadent.
So now it's tomorrow that we plan on going up to Marathon Key. Glad we didn't go today!
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