Snorkeling off of Anna Maria Island

Wow! We love the north shore of Anna Maria Island. We have actually named this beach Sand Dollar Beach, since there are a lot of sand dollars at this spot. We always have a great time here, but with snorkeling gear, an entire new world opened up to us! Amazing!

This stretch of beach has a short shallow end, then much deeper water, shaped like a lagoon, with an outer sand bar. We have always stayed away from the deeper water since at least I think it is scary when you don't know what is below you in the deep.

But now, when I got a full view of it all, I am amazed! The waters here are crystal clear, so the visibility is very good. I laid for hours just floating around, looking at this new world opened up to us. Once in a while I would dive down to the bottom to pick something up, even if it sometimes was hard to reach all the way down due to the depth and it often required 3-5 tries. It is hard not to float in saltwater!

At first, we saw many schools of smaller fish, they did not seem scared at all and came right up to us. Perhaps it was their own reflections they saw in the diving masks?

Then we encountered the first wow of the day: an Atlantic Spadefish! This guy was almost playful, following after us and kind of hanging out.

Atlantic Spadefish

Ken had to take breaks now and then, since he actually got seasick in the mild chop. Sarah did so good, no problem swimming in the deep water or even diving a little. When it was just her and I, I had her bring a swim noodle just in case, since it sometimes is good to have something to hang on to while you catch your breath after accidentally drinking some ocean water (rather than mommy)... We snorkeled all over the deep water, holding hands so we would not get separated by the current. All of a sudden we are face to face with a huge Tarpon! Oh my, both of us were screaming in excitement underneath the water, through our snorkels. The Tarpon did not move a fin it seemed, just calmly looked at us before slowly making its way...

Tarpon

If this doesn't look like much to you, look at the picture below, to see the size compared to an adult! The first thought that ran trough my mind when we saw this guy was "Barracuda", but then I quickly realized it was a Tarpon. Later that day, we actually heard I guy had caught one from the beach. It took him over 4 hours to get it to shore, it was huge! So after looking at the picture here below, you can understand we almost crapped ourselves :-)!

Then I kept hearing this odd sound underneath the water. A very peculiar, kind of organic rustling. I couldn't figure out what it might be, and it kept coming and going. Almost a little creepy, actually. I asked Sarah if she could hear it, and she could. While we were listening to the sound, all of a sudden it got louder and louder.

It was a humongous school of Yellowfin Snappers! A little unnerving having this carpet of fish (not exactly tiny) under us, but after awhile (they kept coming and coming, lots of them) we relaxed and just enjoyed the beauty of them. These guys are yummy to eat, by the way... They seemed to hang around for a while, so a little later I actually had to shoo some of them away so I could dive to get a nice shell I had spotted. Cool!

Yellowtail Snapper

Then I saw a little Atlantic Stingray scurrying away from us, the first Stingray I have seen locally for years. I know they have been having a lot of them up north in the Clearwater area, with lots of people being stung by their painful barbs after accidentally stepping on them...

Atlantic Stingray

We saw a lot of creatures on the bottom: Spider Crabs, lots of other types of crabs (especially hermit crabs), shells moving around with snails inside, sea urchins and so on. What we mainly was looking for was live and dead Sand dollars. Dead once (which are white and hard) to take home, and live once (which are brown and leathery) to just look at. We would never take a live animal such as a Starfish or a Sand dollar home, they belong in the ocean...

I found a whole bunch of dead Sand dollars, Venus Sunrays, Olives and so on.

One of the Sand dollars I found

and one of the Venus Sunrays...

and one of the Olives...

The only thing missing was to find a live Sand dollar. They are cousins with the Starfish and live in a similar way. And at the very end I looked down, and there one was, just laying around on the bottom! It was really cool seeing it up close, it was not as "suctiony" as a Starfish. After laying him back down in the sand he slowly started to bury himself underneath the sand.

A live Sand dollar

So not only did we get a beautiful day at the beach, we got loads of exercise. Sarah fell asleep like a stone at night, and she is now off to her first day of Summer Camp...

Lets now just hope we get to do a repeat of this beach day next weekend, but it is not looking favorable for that, the oil seems to be creeping closer and closer to our shores, unfortunately...