Trawling

I haven't been trawling in ages, but today I had a VIP tour and it felt good to get back on the water! Any day as beautiful as this one should be spent outside, for sure.



We caught several polka-dot batfish, which are such fun fish to teach about! They have crazy adaptations to love on the bottom and use an esca, or lure which pops out of their nose-area, as bait to catch their own food instead of getting caught on a hook & line like most fish. Teachers and students get really excited about them because they look like some made-up creature from another planet.



We caught 3 batfish, among a slough of other cool critters, and then returned them all back to sea for another day. Bye bye batfish!



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Scallop Round-up

This was the second year I participated in the Pine Island Scallop Round-up. But this year... I actually caught scallops!  And yes, they will pinch your finger if you let them!

Check out the video of our excursion here:

And a nice write up on Do Florida Right.  Good times!

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Funky Buddah Brewery

Steven and I took a tour of the Funky Buddah Brewery over in Ft. Lauderdale. What a fun place! We sampled some beers and played life sized Jenga.

Then out to a fancy dinner at the beach!

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Timber!

What a surprise when I came home from work! It looks like it would have landed on my car if I was home. Glad to have a landscaper to take care of the mess! Hopefully this will allow more sunlight on the hedge underneath and thicken it up a bit.



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Flood!

Without any warning, a torrential downpour left up to 4' of water over Naples. I noticed a lot of water on the road on my way home from work but I was really surprised to see my driveway knee-deep!

Here are some pictures from downtown Naples.

Drift Dive

First dive since my certification! I drove to Pompano on the east coast to met up with other divers from SCUBAdventures. We chartered a boat out a few miles for a drift dive. It is the easiest kind of diving! You jump in the water, hold onto a line attached to a float, and relax as the current takes you a few hundred yards. When you're running low on air, you surface and the boat is there to pick you up! There is minimal swimming effort and maximum amount of time on the bottom. Its brilliant!


I learned all about spear fishing- really an interesting concept of shooting fish underwater. The guys took home several hogfish, which are very tasty I hear.







There were so many cool fish- it was like swimming in an aquarium. It is amazing to be able to see 100' through the water.



No photos of me on this trip- I was green! I experienced seasickness for the second time ever! Waves were 8-10' so it was plenty rough, but jumping in 65' of water made me feel 100% better. Or maybe it was seeing all the cool fish that distracted me?!

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