Wow. Ok. Last November, a mess of us went to Miami, FL. As always, I tried to hit up National Park Service facilities, and the first of these that I noticed was really close to Miami was Biscayne National Park
This was me, Erin, Laura, Peter, Laura’s friend Sara, Cassandra, Aletta, Richard and Beth. Or at least that’s who I have photos of, and we were there on November 10, 2007.
Now, there’s not actually all that much to do at Biscayne unless you have a boat or want to do water activities. So, we walked around the tiny land-based portion of the park, while waiting to go snorkelling. It was actually really pretty, just to walk along the walkway, look out at the ocean, look at some of the mangrove trees, and whatnot. Also, to listen to some of the people in the dive shop. There were two possible places to go snorkelling, the barrier mangrove islands, and the coral reef. Apparently, however, actually being able to go to the coral reef is somewhat rare, as the water is often too choppy out there for people to see much. Ok, fine. But there were some people who had driven all the way out to the park to go snorkelling, and just left after hearing that they could only go out to the mangrove reef. Just not cool enough for them, I guess.
walkway at biscayne
They get you all your gear, and take you over to the boat, which goes on a special path out to the mangrove island. There were lots of birds, and shoreline to watch, and they tell you to watch out for manatees (for the boat to not hurt them, mostly) but we didn’t see any, but we did see a bunch of dolphins and we circled to look at them more. After a little bit we got out to the place where we were actually going to get out of the boat.
Now, I had never actually been snorkelling before, so this was my first opportunity, and it was a great deal of fun. We snorkelled in a little curved area of the mangrove barrier island, on top of this sea grass zone. They tell you that you need to take just a little bit of time and really look for things, that it’s not quite as flashy as coral reefs, but that there is a lot there. And they were totally right It was really awesome. Lots of fish use the mangrove reefs as breeding grounds, so there were all sizes of fish as well. So many fish, of so many different varieties!
the edge of the mangrove islands. crazy things, roots right in the ocean!
The grass area ended a few feet short of the actual roots of the mangrove trees, which was a very intriguing, very abrupt transition. But among the roots was where we could see all of the baby fish, and whatnot. And also adult fish, and also some of those weird “sea things” where you’ve really no clue what they are – in this instance, they looked mostly like cauliflower. I also saw some jellyfish, which I always personally find a bit unnerving.
Afterwards, we spent a bit of time talking to the rangers who work there, and walked around the visitors center area, but there really wasn’t all that much more to do there. All in all, a day well spent.
I like the caveat about snorkelling.
