Key West 2012: Swimming, Fishing, & Lobstering

This year we decided to spend more time in the water and Anthony especially wanted to make sure to have more time for spear fishing and lobstering. He ended up being able to go every single day of our trip and he was in heaven!! We still had a lot of family time, but at least once a day Anthony would go off either by himself or with our friends to try to catch some dinner! We had fish or lobster that they caught four different nights out of the week!

As soon as we checked into our place on Saturday afternoon, we all changed into our swimming gear and headed to the beach to snorkel. We saw some awesome fish, but pretty soon after we got in the water my snorkel mask started leaking and I got the hiccups! I decided to go back to the beach and hang out with my mom and James. Right after I left, everyone else who stayed to snorkel came across a sea turtle and got to swim with him. No fair!!!! I am so bummed that I didn't get to do that. It was way cool for everyone else but I am determined to see one next year! James loved the beach, but he kept getting mad that we wouldn't let him just walk into the water. The waves were pretty strong and it got deep really fast so he couldn't run around with his legs in the waves like he does at home. After a few tantrums I took him to play in the showers where you rinse off and he had a blast pushing the buttons and getting soaked. Such a cutie! 

Anthony didn't lose any time getting to fishing. Here is one evening's catch of snapper, I think this was from the second night. They were yummy!

Here is another night's:

In the middle of the week, we drove up to Marathon about an hour away from Key West where our friends' friends were renting a 4 story beach house! They had been catching lobster like crazy earlier in the week and we were hoping to be able to get our limits.

As soon as we got there, a group of us took off in their boat to try to catch some lobster. Unfortunately, the places that they were hanging out earlier in the week had almost no lobster and after 3 hours of snorkeling, we only ended up with 1 lobster in our bag. It was fun to snorkel around and we saw some neat fish and coral. I tried to take good pictures with our underwater camera, but the visibility wasn't that great.

Some fish in the rocks:

This was a huge coral colony on the group of rocks. Anthony and I were thoroughly impressed!

A lobster that the boys finally caught, but had to throw back since he wasn't big enough :(

At one of the spots we went to I saw some cool coral and a very purple anemone:



When we got back from the first lobster trip, I realized that I didn't put on enough sunscreen and the entire back side of my body was bright red! Ouch! We took a dip in the pool with James to rinse off and after a few hours, the guys decided to try again at a different spot. They left around 5pm and stayed out catching them until dark, but they finally came back with a net full of lobster. The lobsters went right on the grill and were the star of a full-on fish feast that included grouper, snapper, conch fritters, hush puppies, and all sorts of sides. It was so good!!! Especially since it was close to 9pm before we ate. Everything tastes that much better when you are starving :)

One afternoon Anthony took the fishing poles over to a dock right across the street from the townhouse to see what he could catch. The water was crystal clear and it was fun to see all the fish and sea life in the water. My mom and I walked James over to see what they were doing and were just in time to see Anthony hook and pull in a nurse shark! It was so cool!

 Here is a video of him pulling it in. James got scared by the shark's jerky movements so I had to take him to the end of the dock to watch and you can hear him start to cry at the end of the video. Poor boy!