Davis Reef is part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and is located about 4nm southeast of Plantation Key. It was established as a sanctuary for gorgonians, or soft corals. In Greek mythology the Gorgons were Medusa and her sisters, the ones with snakes for hair and who would turn you to stone if you looked into their eyes. They’re not particularly endearing characters to be named after, but some of these corals grow into snakelike structures (many-fingered, or I suppose, many-snaked), thus the name. There’s your science/history lesson for the day.
We dove Davis Reef in a bit of a current. The area ranges from 6-30 feet overall but the small section we dove was about 20-25 feet deep. There were soft corals aplenty, but we’d seen equally lovely, if not more lovely, colonies on other dives. There were, however, very many fish of quite a variety, including several schools, so we had fun watching those. On our return to the boat we swam over this little bulbous thing that we each thought looked like a funny hard coral (not gorgonian) until we passed over it and looked back. It was a little Budda statue about 12” tall! What a fun find. We of course took pictures of ourselves next to it, which you will see in this week’s video slide show.
Life on Lady 
Once again I enjoyed the show, including Buddha. Unfortunately I couldn’t (in any of the videos) determine the size of the fish unless they were near you or Dave. But there is nothing you could have done about that.
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Glad you’re enjoying the videos! Most of the fish aren’t very big. The barracudas tend to be about 3-4 feet, the nurse sharks around 4-5 feet. Angelfish are maybe 12-18 inches (tall, anyway). Everything else is pretty much a foot or less in length. I use this online reef guide to identify the fish. Check it out!
https://reefguide.org/carib/index1.html
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Hi, Lisa – I am never sure where you are – home or home away from home… But if you have not snorkeled at night, get a couple of u/w lights from Amazon or Ebay and try it. You will see different creatures out and about, including little ones attracted to your lights. The fish seem to disappear and are all holed up in and under corral for the most part, but lobsters, brittle stars and Diadema and other things are about. And coral polyps open up – it seems a different world at night.
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Ooh, I’m going to try that. Thanks, Tom! We are home through the holidays and will head back to the boat (which is in FL) sometime in January. How long we stay aboard and where will depend on the pandemic. Fortunately, a boat is a good place to socially distance.
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