Snorkeling & Collecting Discussion Group

Oliver d · Jan 29, 2020

My best dives in that area where on the wreck of the Salem Express and Gamul Kebir,Gamul Soraja Panorama Reef,Abu Kafan.

Ron Reefman · Feb 2, 2020

Josepsh said:
I want too do that snokreling ?. .

You want to snorkel? Any place in particular? What part of the world do you live in?

Oliver d · Feb 3, 2020

Found a few photos of mine of the Salem Express wreck near Safaga in Egypt. Visibility was bad when we dived there and it is a very sobering dive as about 500 or more people drowned when she sank.

Ron Reefman · Feb 3, 2020

Love the shot with the BTA and the clown! Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

Peace River · Feb 3, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Love the shot with the BTA and the clown! Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

+1. Nice shots @Oliver d - thanks for sharing!

9Trees29gal · Feb 3, 2020

Following! Another land-locked reefer getting my ocean fix. Thanks for the great pics everyone!

Ron Reefman · Feb 8, 2020

Thursday afternoon and evening we had a fairly strong cold front go through. That only happens a handful of times during Dec thru March and not at all during the rest of the year. That gives us some westerly winds and washes some interesting stuff up on the beach other than shells! So Friday morning I was at the beach just before sunrise.

I was a bit disappointed as there were no sponges and very little algae on the beach. I walked an hour one way and at one point, for a few hundred yards there was a red urchin every few feet on the beach. Yes, probably 200 or more! Sea birds were having a field day eating some. Many were dead, some had managed to survive. I collected 2 small ones that I couldn't tell for sure if they were dead or alive. They weren't moving at all, but their spines were only a little 'droopy', so I figured they had a 50/50 chance.

I also found a small sea star in the same basic condition. And 4 small mollusks, 2 clams and 2 slipper shells attached to an empty fighting conch shell. When I got home they all seemed to be alive and the went into my 16g holding tank.

This morning they all seem to be doing OK and to my surprise, the 2 clams were open and filtering water! So not a great day for collecting, but a good 2 hour beach walk (an hour out and an hour back) and at least a few animals to enrich my DT in time.

Ron Reefman · Mar 1, 2020

Update:

Friday, the 27th of Feb, Elaine and I went for a beach walk at dawn. A marginal cool front had passed the day before so typically there is more 'stuff' on the beach due to wave strength and direction.

It turned out not to be a great day, but it was OK. None of the sponges I always hope to find (because they are full of young critters), but lots of scallops and urchins which are unusual to find. It's funny to see complete scallops on the beach rather than just the half shell. And the ones near the water were still alive so if you stepped near them, they would snap shut! Seeing them move was fun, and many/most of the shell collecting vacationers didn't even notice. I even started picking them up and showing people the row of silver/blue eyes that lay just inside the rim of the shell. I love showing/teaching people things and seeing their fascination with living things they had no expectation of seeing.

I brought home a few scallops and they are currently in my holding tank. I don't expect them to live too long, but they will make a nice change of pace meal for some of the inhabitants of the DT when I move them over.

I also brought home the biggest barnacle I've ever seen. Along this coast lots of shells have small tons of small barnacles. Very rarely we'll find a grouping of slightly bigger barnacles that I think are a different species. But there was a carapace of a big Blue Crab at the water's edge and it had 3 barnacles on it. They are all the same species but very different from any I have seen before... not that I normally pay a lot of attention to barnacles! One is quite small, one is bigger and one is HUGE! Maybe an inch or more in diameter. They are in my holding tank and still alive.

I also brought home a few small samples of 2 or 3 types of red macro algae that was still attached to small shells. It's currently in the holding tank as well.

I'm still hoping for a really strong cold front, but it's starting to get late in the season for that. So we have also hedges our bets and booked a motel in the Florida Keys for when the water starts to warm up in May. I can't wait to get back out in the water!

Hopefully photos to follow later today!

Ron Reefman · May 12, 2020

OK, I can't go to the Florida Keys because they are closed due to COVID-19. So we went to a local beach here in Ft Myers that is next to an estuary. It was a beautiful day, sunny, warm but not hot, the water was clear and we found lots of cool stuff.

A day at the beach... love that crystal clear water!

Me searching along the edge of the mangroves

A good size lightning welk

A nice Florida fighting conch

We saw lots of sand dollars

A crown conch which is more common in estuaries than along the beach

This one is special. The shell is a Pear, but the mollusk is gone. A good size hermit crab has moved in. On the top of the shell there are at least 2 Hitchhiker anemones, one with a purple mouth and 1 or 2 toward the top of the shell that appear to have orange mouths. They attach to shells or the carapace of crabs. When the crab eats the anemone gets bits of food that flow away. But the crab gets some protection by having anemones attached that keep some predators away. I love hitchhiker anemones, but they are not photosynthetic and need to be feed regularly. I kept one for about 6 months one time, but now I leave them alone.

I also used my net and swept the few algae beds and collected a lot of grass shrimp and small snails that I think are Stomatellas. There are a few other mollusks in there as well. I'll take photos after we sort them out. Stay tuned.

vetteguy53081 · May 12, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
OK, I can't go to the Florida Keys because they are closed due to COVID-19. So we went to a local beach here in Ft Myers that is next to an estuary. It was a beautiful day, sunny, warm but not hot, the water was clear and we found lots of cool stuff.

A day at the beach... love that crystal clear water!

Me searching along the edge of the mangroves

A good size lightning welk

A nice Florida fighting conch

We saw lots of sand dollars

A crown conch which is more common in estuaries than along the beach

This one is special. The shell is a Pear, but the mollusk is gone. A good size hermit crab has moved in. On the top of the shell there are at least 2 Hitchhiker anemones, one with a purple mouth and 1 or 2 toward the top of the shell that appear to have orange mouths. They attach to shells or the carapace of crabs. When the crab eats the anemone gets bits of food that flow away. But the crab gets some protection by having anemones attached that keep some predators away. I love hitchhiker anemones, but they are not photosynthetic and need to be feed regularly. I kept one for about 6 months one time, but now I leave them alone.

I also used my net and swept the few algae beds and collected a lot of grass shrimp and small snails that I think are Stomatellas. There are a few other mollusks in there as well. I'll take photos after we sort them out. Stay tuned.

Cant wait for Florida permanently !!! Very cool !
I thought all beaches were now open ?

Ron Reefman · May 13, 2020

vetteguy53081 said:
Cant wait for Florida permanently !!! Very cool !
I thought all beaches were now open ?

Not only are the Keys closed to tourists and other visitors, the only beach open on Sanibel Island is Bowman's Beach and that's because it's a County beach and Sanibel has no control over it. Also Naples opened their beaches, people flocked to them and were not 'social distancing' so 2 days later they closed them again. I think it will be much like California here, both open and closed.

We've gone to the beach twice now and both times walked far, far, far away from any people. It's not hard... but some people are either too lazy to walk down the beach or just stupid!

MombasaLionfish · May 14, 2020

Ron Reefman said:

I love that hermit.

Ron Reefman · May 15, 2020

MombasaLionfish said:
I love that hermit.

It made me wish I still had my shallow reef local tank set up.

Ron Reefman · May 31, 2020

The small (3' diameter) fine mesh (1/4") cast net I ordered arrived yesterday. So my wife and I are going to a beach that has an estuary right behind it. The beach is in a bay and typically quite calm. We go there to drag nets through the grass flats to collect whatever is there, various snails, shrimp, occasional small fish, dwarf sea horses... So today I'll try my hand with the cast net and see if I can collect a bunch of minnows. If I do, I'll bring them home alive in a 5g bucket with an air pump, sort them and freeze the fish. They will make good food for the my Rock Flower Anemones (smaller than the frozen silver sides at the LFS.

Results and photos to follow!

ReefGrammie · May 31, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Not only are the Keys closed to tourists and other visitors, the only beach open on Sanibel Island is Bowman's Beach and that's because it's a County beach and Sanibel has no control over it. Also Naples opened their beaches, people flocked to them and were not 'social distancing' so 2 days later they closed them again. I think it will be much like California here, both open and closed.

We've gone to the beach twice now and both times walked far, far, far away from any people. It's not hard... but some people are either too lazy to walk down the beach or just stupid!

I love your pictures and I would love to be at Bowman's Beach on Sanibel right now! Actually, I would love to be anywhere on Sanibel or Captiva right now...love that area.

No snorkeling for us anytime soon, at least not until December. Both of our cruises were canceled, so we booked another one for the Caribbean in December. We may lose out on that one, too, but at least we can hope for now!

Ron Reefman · May 31, 2020

It was a wonderful morning at Bunche Beach. We walked west to the inlet for the estuary because we know there are some nice sea grass patches we can drag nets through and the far side of the inlet (the other side of the channel) there is no beach, just mangroves in the water as deep as you can see through them, maybe 50 to 100 yards.

So the side behind the fisherman, there Elaine is standing to take the photo, is beach. You can see the deeper channel (blue water) just in front of the fisherman. And I want to try my hand (for the first time ever) throwing a cast net to catch minnows to use as food for my RFA's.

This guy was dead and right at the water's edge were Elaine was taking the photo of the fisherman above.

Me wading along about 100 yards from shore, pretty shallow eh? I have a big clear plastic bottle with some holes drilled around the top that is being dragged on the line looped around my left hand. That's were everything I collect goes until I get back to the beach and can put them in a 5g bucket with an air stone and a battery bubbler.

We don't catch many fish at all when dragging a net through the grass, they are usually too fast. But Elaine got lucky and collected this blenny. A bit later I caught a smaller one.

Mangroves are so cool with the prop roots. The shoreline behind me is all mangroves like this and the water of 1 to 2 feet goes way back into an estuary. Between me and the shoreline the water is just teaming with non-stop schools of bait fish.

And Elaine turns about 90 degrees to the west an that's the southwest corner of Sanibel Island off in the distance. But between us and Sanibel is where the Caloosahatchee River (to the right) flows south into the Gulf of Mexico (to the left). It was a beautiful day and the water was crystal clear! And I love seeing the sunlight create those streaks on the sand.

The Night Driving Avenger · May 31, 2020

im in north of scotland so too cold for snorkelling for me haha but i did collect some amazing critters recently from rockpools, a bunch of nice rockpool shrimp, 2 beautiful blennies, a bunch of hermit crabs and two beadlet nems!

Ron Reefman · May 31, 2020

After doing a fair amount of drag netting I decided to try my hand at throwing the cast net. I've never done it before (I'm not a fisherman) and my net just arrived yesterday... and thus a trip to the beach today! I did about 10 practice throws out in our yard yesterday and I was terrible at it. It's much harder than it looks. But once you get feel for it, it's kind of like riding a bike and it's easy.

So the water I'm throwing into is full of small fish. I mean full. They come out from the estuary when the tide is coming in to catch food... or get caught for food! Elaine took a number of photos of me throwing, I got to pick the good one!

This is a small mesh cast net with 1/4" holes. And the fish are so small they almost get through it... in fact, I'd wager half or more of the fish escape. And most of the ones I caught get their gills caught in the net. I only killed 5 getting them out. But all of them... well, almost all of them are going to get put in a ziplock bag and go in the freezer anyway! I have to admit I was kind of proud, as well as surprised that I caught anything.
And Elaine was shocked after seeing how badly I did trying it out yesterday!

So I set up a 5g tank and everybody is in it. This shows mostly the bait fish. And a bunch of tiny grass shrimp on the bottom.

There are 2 species of shrimp in here. The tiny ones are almost clear and have a green inside. The bigger ones (in this photo) are more tan and 3 to 5 times bigger. But both live in the sea grass beds.

So both blennies made it home alive. There are about 15 snails we'll need to ID before they go in the DT. I may release a couple of the REALLY tiny fish that I collected in the drag netting. But I collected 2 little black fish and neither Elaine or I can ID them. They are less than a 1/2" long and almost round and thin in shape. We think they could be juvenile Spadefish!

Ron Reefman · May 31, 2020

The Night Driving Avenger said:
im in north of scotland so too cold for snorkelling for me haha but i did collect some amazing critters recently from rockpools, a bunch of nice rockpool shrimp, 2 beautiful blennies, a bunch of hermit crabs and two beadlet nems!

North Scotland... man I bet the water is cold. Did you take any photos? Do you have a tank for local stuff that needs cooler water?

The only place I ever saw in Scotland was Loch Lomond. Back in 1972 a friend an I bought Triumph Bikes in London, went to the TT Races on the Isle of Man and then ferried over to Scotland. We wanted to go to Loch Ness, but it was raining and we stopped way short. Then we put the bikes on a train back to London and toured around the south of England. We stayed in a tiny caravan out behind a castle that was a bed& breakfast. They were full, but the owner offered us the caravan and we jumped at the chance. We did spend a wonderful evening in the local pub with the owner, his dad and a few friends. Everybody was so nice... at least I think they were as I could only understand about 1/3 of what they said! Too much beer and not enough concentration!