Copyright: Jurgen Brauer,Augusta, Georgia, USA

1. Christmas - time for vacationing and scuba diving in Pennekamp Marine Park off Key Largo, Florida! My daughter and I were soooooooooooo eager to jump right in the water. Hereunder, a French Grunt.

2. Wow! A triplet of sea slugs. I never seen three of them together before.

3. Due to sometimes dangerous diving conditions, my daughter and I made a number of land-based field trips. In the Florida Everglades we saw this fellow glide along the shoreline.

4. At an animal rescue station near the Everglades, another crocodile was lying in ambush.

5. One of the volunteer animal keepers give the Bengal tiger a scratch.

6. The rescue station takes in all kinds of animals that somehow or other are stranded in the United States. Often people illegally import "cute" animals only to dispose of them when the grow up and are harder to keep. Hereunder, an ostrich with a height of about 6 feet.

7. Warning: Florida panther crossing. (Seen in the Everglades.)

8. A heron at the bird rescue station.

9. An egret and an ibis (?).

10. Cute, isn't it? At the Bird Rescue Center, we ran into a crowd of pelikans waiting for the daily feeding ...

11. ... alright already - I am going to feed you in just a moment.

12. But now it's time to go back onto the dive boat and into the water.

13. Whopeeeeeeeeeeeeee ... we got lucky with a threesome group of dolphins who had fun playing in the dive boat's wake.

14. A harmless nurse shark is cruising around the City of Washington wreck in about 25 feet of water.

15. Actually, there was a pod of about six of them. Here, two nurse sharks are nuzzling up to each other.

16. My favorite critter, however, was Fred, the Jewfish. As you can see, he was quite willing to let himself be petted.

17. Here he is again with his shy girlfriend off to his side. Fred swam up to me repeatedly. Perhaps he was attracted by my underwater humming ... A local dive operator feeds him once a week, and so he has become quite friendly and curious about people. He is about 5 feet in length and, what?, 300+ pounds of weight or thereabouts.

18. Also on the City of Washington wreck, there is a resident green moray eel. Here he peeks out from under a hideout.

19. "Christmas tree" worms are animals that live inside tubes made from calcium. They are filter-feeders, meaning that they extend their "feathers" out of the tube to reach into the current from which they filter out nutrients.

20. On perhaps the best dive, on the Duane, a former coast guard cutter, we entered the wheelhouse at a depth of 80 feet or so and came upon bundles of orange cup corals with their tentacles extended for feeding. The wheelhouse looked as if it was a giant warehouse full of grapes hanging from the ceiling.

21. After 9/11, dive operators began to "decorate" a number of wrecks with American flags. The one below sits atop the wheelhouse of the Duane. The flag is fully unfurled and "flapping" in exceedingly strong current. Because of the strong current, which requires a bit of care and dive experience to handle, the dive operator took only my daughter and I out to the wreck. The current swept much of the particulate matter away so that we had about 60 feet of visibility. Imagine, a whole wreck for yourself to dive on!

22. Computer art? No, just the water surface in a mangrove swamp through which we took a kayak tour.

23. My daughter was paddling, and I took a well-deserved break.

24. We had a map but there were also a number of directional signs to prevent people from getting lost.

25. Beautiful mangrove stands.

26. Hereunder mangrove seedlings just poking through the water surface.

[The end.]