Fort Jefferson - Day 3

Hello from the the Dry Tortugas

This morning, after a night of rocking and rolling from Key West, we anchored off of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park.

The Dry Tortugas are a small group of islands, located at the end of the Florida Keys, USA, about 70 miles west of Key West. Still further west is the Tortugas Bank, which is completely submerged. The islands were discovered in 1513 by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.

The islands get their name from their distinctive characteristics: Dry because none of the islands have fresh water and Tortugas because seafarers stopped at the islands to take sea turtles, which they kept on their backs in the holds of sailing ships and butchered when they wanted fresh meat. Thus, there are very few sea turtles left in the Caribbean.

The islands, or keys, that encompass the Dry Tortugas are contstantly changing over time as wind and waves reshape them. There are seven islets, which are from West to East:

1. Loggerhead Key
2. Garden Key with Fort Jefferson and the inactive Garden Key lighthouse
3. Bush Key - formerly named Hog Island because of the hogs that were raised there to provide fresh meat for the prisoners at Fort Jefferson. Bush Key also is the site of a large tern rookery.
4. Long Key
5. Hospital Key - so called because a hospital for the inmates of Fort Jefferson had been built there in the 1870s.
6. Middle Key - it is not always above sea level, disappearing for weeks or months only to reappear again. And finally,
7. East Key

Today we did 3 dives throughout the Tortugas - we saw Nassau Grouper (Epinephelus striatus), more huge Moon Jelly (Aurelia aurita), and many other beautiful fish, corals and invertebrates. The weather changes and quickly and dramatically - and this evening after a long rainstorm a beautiful double rainbow arced across the sky over Fort Jefferson. What a great day at sea! Now it's time for me to try to sleep, hopefully I'll be used to the rolling of the boat tonight....

Goodnight