18 Nov 2021
Due to a scheduling quirk, I was so close to having a 5 day weekend and thanks to 2 awesome coworkers who covered a shift + call for me, I was able to make it happen. Unfortunately, my Florida bad weather luck continued and a storm rolled through, cancelling my dive boats for the first day. But I had tweaked a few things on my underwater camera and wanted to test it out, so I headed out to Jules’ Lagoon, an enclosed habitat located in Key Largo where classes often go when the weather’s bad (it’s where I did my Advanced Open Water training). Unfortunately, again, since I was by myself (not part of a class) and don’t have my Self-Reliant/Solo certification, they weren’t going to let me dive. Fortunately, Robert, one of the instructors there, volunteered to be my guide. He had a few things to take care of first, so I geared up and waited patiently, until I spotted a flatworm from the deck. I hopped in, sans gear so as not to get in trouble, and photographed this little guy:
He is a flatworm, Prostheceraeus crozieri, and he had a friend!
Turns out my macro lens creates a more shallow depth of field than I expected based on my camera settings, so that’s something I’ll have to play around with but so far, macro lens is a success!
I ended up finding quite a few of these cool flatworms:
Oh look, another one!
I also spotted several schools of fish:
And yes, the water really is that murky green. It’s part of why I don’t like diving the lagoon. But this diving is better than no diving…
Robert spotted this cool upside-down jelly:
Usually they drift along the bottom, upside-down, imitating sea grasses to lure in their prey, but this guy was free-swimming. I tried to get it against a less-busy background, but it wasn’t really cooperating.
After my dive (and a hot shower! the water was only 75*), I had lunch with Robert and Daniel, another of the master divers at Jules. Usually when I travel to dive, I’ll explore the area a bit on my own, but don’t really hang out with the people I meet. So glad I stepped out of my comfort zone a bit- we ended up talking all afternoon and I now have some great contacts to help expand my diving certifications.