Aaron Gordon Got My Swim Trunks, and My Flippie- Floppies 2/7/11

Aaron Gordon

2/7/11

English Blog

Got My Swim Trunks, and My Flippie- Floppies

            Beginning at the unexpected hour of 3am and at the whim of a blizzard, we packed up our van, hooked up the trailer and began driving for 2- days to the beautiful, hot, and sunny Florida Keys.  We stopped overnight in St. Augustine, Florida at Anastasia State Park, where we spent the afternoon at the beach.  The next morning we continued our drive to the Keys.  After our second 8- hour day of driving, we finally arrived at our campsite in the Sugarloaf Key. Unfortunately, our first few days in the Keys were a little bit rainy, but after that, we had perfect, beautiful, sunny weather.

            As soon as we arrived in the Keys, we began work on PADI Divers certification.  Our Scuba instructor, JB, is one of the coolest people I have ever met.  She has over 40 years of diving experience and gave us true insight to diving.  Throughout our diving course, she made every moment of it fun and interesting, which helped all of us become more interested in the entire process (even the boring academic day).  Thankfully, we only had one day of the academic work, and the rest of the time we were either in the water, or out on the dive boat. 

            Before this semester, I was not certified in scuba, so it was a pretty good feeling when I was finally certified.  The feeling of being able to breathe underwater is unlike anything else I have ever experienced.  Underwater, I saw fish that I have never seen before; along with other undersea wildlife.  Even at 20 ft, there were over 30 different species of fish (including Goliath Grouper, Barracuda, Parrot Fish, and Lions Mane Fish) and over 50 different species of underwater plants, (like Fire Coral and Sea Cucumber) to be seen.  The colors were incredible as well. 

            For my first trip down to the Florida Keys, this was a pretty good experience.  I became scuba certified, caught my first fish, ate freshly caught fish almost daily and got some summer sun!  I am even more excited for the Everglades and Costa Rica, which are the next big trips we have planned.  There are certainly more great experiences to come, and cannot wait to share them with all of you.

Anders Recent expedition

Hello,

                Anders Here again, and for this special blog post, I am going to be telling all of you loyal fans about my team and I’s latest excursion.

                Our latest expedition took us to the sunny beaches of the Florida Keys. We didn’t fly there. But drove in a van filled with nine guys and one girl. The drive took us two days to accomplish, and each day we drove for periods of eight to nine hours with breaks for lunch and snack.

                Upon arriving at our destination, our entire group fell out of car with exuberant happy faces at the fact that we were all in a place that wasn’t snowing and presently warm.

                While we were in the Keys we were able to do many interesting and aweing activities such as: fishing, snorkeling, lobstering, crabbing, diving, sunbathing, and coconut hunting.

My favorite activity being of course: fishing was my highlight of this trip. We were able to go fishing almost every other day which to me was well worth the tiresome ride all the way down there. We never caught anything really giant, but we were able to catch a few really good eating fish such as Sand Perch and Mangrove Snapper.

                My second activity that my team did, which I also particularly liked was scuba diving. In my group there were people who were advanced certified, and there were people who were open water certified. Open water certification allows divers to dive up to 30 feet of water, while advanced divers are able to go up to 120.

                I was able to help a few of the advanced divers with another certification which was called fish identification. I really love fish, and I make it a point for myself to learn as many names of different types of fish as possible. While we were diving., we saw many awesome species of fish such as Lion fish, barracuda, parrot fish, sergeant majors, black grouper, raspberry grouper, blue tang, yellow tang, goliath grouper, mangrove snapper, ox eye snapper, white grunt, sailors choice, look down, ners shark, yellow tail snapper, slippery dick, pin fish, sand perch, porgy, blue fish, yellow runner, and a blow fish.

These were all of the fish that our group saw and also caught.

Thank you for reading this blog, and this is

                                Anders Deboom Signing out! :)

Florida Trip By Jon Adkins

There were so many things that happened while I was in the Florida Keys that it is a bit hard to put all of it down on paper but I do remember parts of it that I will discuss.

Since there isn’t just one thing that I will remember I will list some of the things that I will always remember, some good some bad but I will start with the good ones.

Some of the good ones were when Chris got a lure stuck on a power line like so many other people had except in Chris’s case there was still a fish head as bait on the hook, there were all the times that all of us went scuba diving on Looe Key off the stretch of keys about forty-five minutes from Key West, and when I braved the cold water at the KOA camp grounds with a wet suit to go lobstering at night by myself.

          Some of the bad or not necessarily bad but not good things were the arguments over trivial things, and the trust issue that I’m not going to go into detail with. Other than those we had an awesome time and I now can’t wait for the Everglades

          In conclusion I will remember the most the scuba diving, and lobstering for years to come.

isaac x2

Hi it is me Isaac and I just came back from my second expedition, which was in the Florida Keys.  Our staff let us fish, swim, and dive, which was the first time for four of us including myself. 

On my first and second dive we practiced basic skills. The other two were just for log time and fun. We got certified in open water diving.

 The first fish I ever caught in my life we ate for dinner one night. The fish was a mangrove snapper, so were the other three I caught that were eaten. Two others were used for bait. We went to Key West and Coley’s parents came and treated us to ice cream then we went out to dinner without his parents.

 We went to the shipwreck museum which was fun and interesting, but the tour guide talked funny which got annoying. It was still interesting though.  

The whole expedition was really fun except the four days of van rides.

Florida Keys Expedition by Chris Veno

Florida Keys Expedition by Chris Veno

Our expedition to the Florida Keys was sick-nasty.  I saw so many cool plants and animals and I really loved it. 

One thing that I will always remember is scuba diving because it is absolutely amazing to breathe underwater.  You feel like a fish due to the fact that you are breathing underwater like a fish in the sea.  Another reason why I will always remember scuba diving is because it is a feeling like no other and also because you see so many amazing and picturesque things.  While I was scuba diving, I saw many different species of fish, invertebrates, and seaweeds and it opened up my mind to becoming a marine biologist.  The main thing that I like about wetsuits is that they make you look more buff.  While I was scuba diving I had to put my hair into a ponytail so my hair would not get stuck in my mask straps. 

While we were in the Keys, we collected lots of coconuts and we ate some of them and they were tasty-nice.  I brought ten coconuts back to base and they made my X pack really heavy.  At the campground we stayed at, I lost my spoon so I carved a beastly spoon from a coconut and it is sick-nasty and I love it.  In the Keys we did a lot of fishing.  I caught two sand perch for dinner and they tasted pretty good.  While fishing off a bridge on Sugarloaf Key we caught 17 mangrove snapper and Alec cooked them up.  They were very tasty and I loved them. 

On a Key West beach, I met someone that lives in Philadelphia.  Alex, Doug, and I were talking to him and he was really cool.  While we were at the beach in Key West, Aaron, Doug, and I played beach volleyball with three local guys.  We lost the first game 25 to 23 and won the second game 24 to 22.  I made a lot of diving saves and scored 10 points on the serves.  The beach volleyball games were a lot of fun.  Also on the beach in Key West, I was laying down in the sand and told Alec, Anders, and Jon to bury me in the sand which was really cool and funny.  In the Keys we threw the football around a lot and we improved our catching ability so that latter we could beat the other group in a football game. 

coley keys

           Hey, what is up? I just got back from the sunny Keys; Boo, cold weather now!  That’s the down part; let’s get to the good part like diving, fishing, tanning, and hot weather.

          Diving was awesome.  We got to go down 110 feet and see a shipwreck.  The water was cold, surprisingly, but still fun.  We had two wetsuits on to keep us “warmish.”  At the shipwreck there was bad visibility, but it was still awesome.  We saw some lion fish and monster stone crabs.

It was in the 70s pretty much every day during our trip.   Then at night the bugs came out. I got bitten badly then. The mosquitoes were evil.  They bit everyone. That was a negative to the warm weather.  A positive was that we all got tan.

 One of the fun things we did was go snorkeling and Jon caught five lobsters and we had them for dinner. It was very good.  One day we went fishing and caught 17 mangrove snappers and I cooked them up. It was amazing.

We also went to the beach in Key West and swam and played volleyball. It was very fun. However, my favorite part was the last night in Key West when my parents came and met us.  We all walked around.  It was awesome and I thank them for that.

Love you mom. !!!!!

Florida Keys scuba wreck dive by Alec T.

Florida Keys scuba wreck dive

On the Rebel tribe’s first expedition out of North Carolina, the team went scuba diving. The advanced divers went to a wreck called the Adlophous Buch.  The divers were Coley, Jon, and I.  We geared up and jumped into the 70 degree water. Jon was the first to go down with our instructor Patrick.  Jon had trouble clearing his ears so he could not go down. We were allowed to wear gloves because there was fire coral and barnacles on the rope. The rope was attached to a buoy to mark the ship wreck.  Earlier we had to do a combo lock on the surface.   Then we had to do the lock again at 110 feet down. I got it on my first try and Coley tried but couldn’t get it. I still remember the combo. It was 30-08-34 and I still can remember how hard it was. Over all this expedition was going awesome.  After the expedition we enjoyed a great dinner of fish and pasta.  I will never forget this expedition. This will be a memory that will last forever.