Snorkeling in Florida Keys Buys Turquoise Waters, Pastel Tropical Skies

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

The Keys were tropical, lovely, not too hot (but so humid that the air conditioner ran all night at 70 degrees; about 85 in the daytime), the snorkeling was beautiful, the seafood was abundant and reasonably priced, and Key West is a great party town.

We ate grouper, snapper, conch, cobia and shrimp galore. Especially at a mom ‘n’ pop joint where they offered a pound (yes, a full pound) of steamed shrimp for $4.99.

Earlier that day we had seen the shrimp boats unloading, and a dazzling array of sport-fishing catches: dolphin (mahi mahi to us), tarpon, skipjacks, one sailfish and some smaller varieties.

From Key Largo to Key West, we signed on for three boat trips to the reef a few miles into the Atlantic to snorkel. We saw a variety of bizarre fish, including a couple of large and nearly tame barracudas.

Some swimming and sunning . . . nice. Fun in Key West to be around so many Eastern and Southern types while they are partying. There were also lots of gays and transvestites. The bars are very loud and “happening,” but the people are mellow. Rock music blaring from patios.

Of Hemingway’s two hangouts, Sloppy Joe’s and Capt. Tony’s, the first is mobbed from mid-afternoon on and the second gets the fallout.

Dined on Seafood

We were in Key Largo on John’s birthday. We dined on seafood at the Italian Fisherman--linguine with gobs of shrimp, mussels and fish.

The decision to go to Florida to celebrate his 50th birthday was a good one. We were rewarded by eight days of brilliant sunshine (although a weather forecaster predicted “partly sunny” on our day of departure). Evenings ranged from occupying a couple of rocking chairs on a front porch overlooking the gulf at Marathon to making the rounds of the endless party in the nightspots of Key West. Days were spent three ways: sailing, snorkeling, sunning.

The best snorkeling was in John Pennecamp State Park at Key Largo. Divers and snorkelers are told: “Look. Don’t touch.” And the value of that restriction is evident. The coral is beautiful and unscarred by careless climbing, and predatory collectors must look elsewhere for their shells and rocks. The fish glitter like fine jewels at a private party.

That the Keys exist at all is thanks to the chain of coral reefs that guard them protectively. The waves that reach ashore are mere ripples, having broken miles earlier on the reefs. Otherwise, the beaches along the Keys would long ago have washed away.

As it is, the Keys is a series of coral islands so flat that the resorts dotting their shores had to build small hills into which to sink their swimming pools. (Here in Key West, Ernest Hemingway’s home has a swimming pool fit for a king. He got away with it because his elegant residence is 18 feet above sea level, the highest bit of land in town.)

Eye to Eye With Mike

To snorkel in most areas requires taking a boat out to the reefs several miles from shore. The first reef found us eye to eye with a barracuda that looked a yard long, its silver-blue scales glinting in the bright water, its lower lip sullenly stuck out. The dive boat skipper said that “Mike the Barracuda” usually lurked harmlessly in these parts. He was only dangerous if one stuck a ringed finger in his direction (he might think the glitter was a small fish and try to bite it off with razor-like teeth).

Mike also had been known to make a pass at a diver’s mask, evidently thinking that the reflection from the glass was something edible. He glided by, scratches on his sides evidence of what unknown marine adventures?

About 25 feet beneath us a pair of scuba divers tried to coax another denizen, a moray eel, from beneath a coral head.

Around us in all directions a rainbow of tropical fish swam over the pastel corals or loafed to and fro with the tidal surge. Completing the picture was a statue of Christ permanently anchored to the bottom of the sea, a gift to the public from the Florida Keys’ Italian fishing community. Speckled with fire coral, he raises his arms in permanent supplication.

The variety of fish is the main attraction, but the reef itself is fascinating too. The water temperature along the reef’s edge, where we snorkeled, was about 74 degrees and dramatically clear.

Coral heads erupt from the rocky mass below to form dramatic shapes: brain coral indeed looks like big single-sphere brains six feet across. Antler coral gropes out like so many elk horns; some are fan-shaped, others tubular, like bones. All have a distinctive color.

Thanks to the ban on fishing and shell-collecting in the underwater park, the fish were more abundant and the coral more plentiful and varied in odd shapes than around Sambo’s, a reef area close to Key West.

No Restrictions

There were no restrictions at Sambo’s, and shells were hard to come by. Snorkelers there brought up a few crusty conch shells about eight inches long and some small brightly colored living conchs, the color in their openings pink and yellow so delicate and lush that it almost hurt to look at it.

In contrast, we saw a couple of living conchs at Grecian Rocks reef in Pennekamp that were 16 inches from tip to tip.

Parts of the Sambo’s area looked like a bone yard of antler coral broken and left to bleach and become covered with moss, and fish were sparse. The relative desolation made it clear why some areas are protected.

In Pennekamp, the fish came like Shakespeare’s troubles, “not in single file, but by regiments.”

A stunning assemblage: blue, green and gold queen angelfish and dark French angelfish about a foot across, blue and gold shy Hamlets, angular-shaped trunkfish, blue-spotted and yellowtailed damselfish, and many more, most brilliantly colored.

Puffer fish, looking like partially deflated footballs, blended in so well with the mottled coral on the ocean floor that they were nearly invisible until they moved.

A stingray two feet across cruised over the grassy bottom at Pennekamp’s Grecian Rocks. The bottom held a couple of conchs, one luxuriating in the protected environment until it grew to an enormous size, pink mouth gaping invitingly.

Mingling with the coral were a variety of invertebrate life, with lovely names: deep-water gorgonian, sea whip and curly sea fingers. Most noticeable was the common sea fan, the color of Pacific kelp. They were a couple of feet wide and waved gracefully in the gentle surge.

Visitors also like the Keys for the superb sport fishing, or for golf and tennis at luxury resorts, or just to escape the frozen north.

It’s a three-hour drive from Key Largo, the northernmost key, to Key West. The ribbon of road spans 43 bridges, including one that’s seven miles long. We took a week, down and back, and could have spent a season at least.

We’ll go back some day for more time in the turquoise waters, to watch another series of sunsets unfold on the pastel of tropical sky, to stroll Key West’s tree-lined streets wondering what’s behind the plantation shutters of big clapboard houses, to eat platefuls of shrimp at $4.99 a pound.

A list of Key West accommodations and special events may be obtained from the Key West Visitors Bureau, Box 1147, Key West, Fla. 33041. The Florida Division of Tourism, 107 W. Gaines St., Suite 410-D, Tallahassee 32301, will also send brochures and maps on the Keys.