Key West Snorkeling

posted by admin on Aug 3

When the winds are blowing hard, especially out of a southern direction, the water on the reef can be very rough. On days like that, there are other options to snorkel in Key West.

Cottrell Key Key is north of Key West on the gulf side, and there is a lot of rocky structure and many large coral heads. There is also wreckage from possibly a ship of some sort. Although on average the water is not as clear here as the snorkeling spots that are offshore closer the gulf stream, the water can be reasonably clear with around 20 feet of visibility.

Much of the structure is in less the 15 feet of water and in some places closer to 8 feet deep. You will see a variety of snapper and tropical fish here.  We also saw a jewfish, nurse shark and a school of small cero mackerel. There were also schools of small minnows in some areas.

posted by admin on Aug 3

The Alexander wreck is located on the gulf side west of Key West and is broken into two pieces. The wreck sits in 20-30 feet of water and is home to a large variety of sea life. The visibility can be very variable on this wreck. When we snorkeled it there was close to 20 feet of visibility which is considered good for this area.

The wreck was filled with lane snappers and although we looked inside we did not see any grouper or jewfish. Perhaps they are all the on the other piece of the wreck, we only explored one piece. It is rumored there is a 600 pound jewfish that lives in and around that wreck but we didn’t see him. There were huge schools of bait hovering over the wreck and spade fish, blue runners, parrot fish and cero mackerel swimming on and around it.