Florida’s Looe Key, a Sanctuary for Beauty
YOUR boat is chugging out from Big Pine Key into the open ocean. The gentle breeze ruffles the water and makes it sparkle in the morning sunlight. For seven miles you luxuriate in the fresh air, warm sun, and open water. What a respite from the hubbub of New York City!
Then you see a scattering of yellow buoys riding the waves. You have arrived at Looe Key, a protected national marine sanctuary. But you don’t see it yet. First you tie up at a buoy, and then you look over the side—and gasp in disbelief! Thirty feet below is a canyon with white sandy bottom, craggy elkhorn, fan coral, and schools of fish. You rush to the other side of the boat. Just three feet down lies an underwater coral garden—the splash of brilliant colors takes your breath!
Quickly you don snorkel and flippers and let yourself down into another world. You gaze enthralled as with slow kicks of your flippers you propel yourself out over this fantasyland. You glide over corals of many shapes, sizes, and colors—elkhorn, staghorn, fan, gorgonian, and others nameless to you. In among them move brilliantly colored fish in great variety. You feast on the exquisite beauty and smile in wonder—and suddenly realize that you don’t smile underwater with a snorkel in your mouth!
Floating out over the canyon, you see 30 feet beneath you an impressive stand of craggy elkhorn coral. Holding your breath, you upend yourself to dive down for a closer look, and find resting beneath its heavy spreading antlers a school of 60 or more grunts. Nearby a huge purple fan coral perched on the side of the cliff waves lazily in the water.
You surface again to the shallow reef to see a pink squirrelfish with a big eye fixed on you. You hear the crunching of a parrot fish as it dines on some stony coral, creating as it does sand that settles to the bottom. Two yellow butterfly fish wiggle by. You spot a long, pinkish stick—it’s a trumpet fish lurking in a dark hole. Next, a pugnacious little damselfish patrolling its coral turf indignantly chases off an intruder twice its size. You smile in amused delight, forgetting the lesson you had learned previously and paying for it with coughing and spluttering.
A blue cloud of fish moves quickly past you, intent on some business elsewhere. You resolve to go to the library to identify them (and later learn that they are blue tang).
You take a swing out over an expansive sea-grass meadow that adjoins the reef. The tall green grass sways just beneath you—a home for crabs, shrimps, clams, conchs, grazing fish, and other thousands.
Now your diving partner beckons you back to the coral reef. She has found a vicious moray eel. Only it isn’t vicious. It’s very shy. Its head barely shows out of its hole. But the offer of the leg of a spiny lobster entices it out for quick bites followed by hasty retreats. Out and back it slithers until the leg is gone. A parrot fish has noticed, and now it comes to nibble on a second leg that’s extended to it. A four-foot shark is found resting under a ledge—quite harmless.
The hours slip by unnoticed. You hate to leave, but schedules are dictators. You find yourself back in the big city, in crowds and traffic, assaulted by noise, stress building again, fearful of being out on the streets after dark.
But the lovely memories of Looe Key you have carried back with you. In quiet reverie you once again glide under the spreading antlers of the elkhorn, smile as the damselfish chases the intruders, hear the parrot fish making sand, and again the shy moray slips quickly out and back to dine on lobster.
Lovely Looe Key, a sanctuary for beauty. And for you.