5-26-12

In order to expand TISIRI's Reefs Revealed Efforts, TISIRI is beginning to investigate reef locations around the state. The idea is to continue to build the Reefs Revealed user accessible database and collect imagery and information from as many natural reef locations and artificial reef locations as possible. The the more offshore dive locations and fishing locations cataloged in the Reefs Revealed system the better for offshore enthusiast everywhere.

Today we visited a reef area of live bottom offshore the coast of Lee County Florida. We actually intended to visit a site called the Isabella, a sunken shrimp boat, but the coordinates we had for the Isabella did not appear accurate. The reef area we ended up investigating is roughly 15 miles east of Fort Myers Beach in 65 feet of water. Unfortunately the viability on this particular day was limited at the sea floor with divers reporting only about 5 feet of sight. Regardless TISIRI's Kistel did his best to capture imagery of the dive location. The pictures below provide a good representation of the type of invertebrate life inhabitants this area of Lee County Sea Floor. We also did some hook and line sampling to get a better idea of the fish species assciated with the area.

Video conditions were poor but we wnet ahead and descided to post this brief clip to provide viewers a better idea of the sea floor regardless of the quality of video.

Marine life observed via scuba divers observations and hook and line sampling included:

Wrasse
Red Grouper
Gag Grouper
Shark
Belted Sandfish
Gorgonia
Button Coral
Sponge

For reef coordinates please visit this dive location's Reefs Revealed page here