Then suddenly around 4pm with just about an hour and a half of daylight left, the sky to the north changed from the blue color it had been all day, to a pearl-grey.   There was a clear horizontal line low in the sky, which kept moving closer.  At first I thought it was a rainstorm moving in, and the line was the bottom of the rain cloud.  You could see a color line on the water too, just below the line of pearl gray color.

At this time, we were at the Western Dry Rocks, which has a stick.  The stick became difficult to see as the lines came closer, and I realized it wasn’t rain but fog.  Within minutes the stick was no longer visible and, afraid the snorkelers would soon also disappear, I got everyone in the boat and we all headed home.  It was foggy all the way home, and not until we were very close to Key West could we make out the beach at Fort Zachary State Park.

There was a wedding at the State Park, taking wedding photos, I guess.  And the sunset celebration, which should have been in full swing, looked sparsely attended.  The sunset cruise boats were drifting really slowly around the harbor, staying close in with their sweatshirt-clad passengers.  Bummer sunset!

Its pretty cool spot. The reef doesn’t apppear to be designed with creating fish habitat in mind, but a bunch of fish have moved in any way. There are numerous mangrove snapper living on the reef now and one large but kind of shy jewfish.

The area is home to large schools of grunts and small snapper, along with other reef tropicals.

This time of year it is also home to huge school of ballyhoo and usually schools of ciro mackerel that feed on them.

It is a popular scuba diving spot, and it rare to see someone snorkeling there, but since most of the depth of the rocks and intersting stuff is less 30 feet it is good for snorkeling.

A little video clip of the sea life you can see snorkeling the inshore waters of Key West. All video was taken in water less then 12 feet deep and within a half mile of shore.