Walks On Water

Vaca Key
24 41.43 N 081 03.59 W

Yesterday and today we saw some very peculiar fish. They are about the length and diameter of a big cigar. We saw three of them and each time we saw them they were walking on water away from the boat. I'll explain.

You've all seen jumping fish, and probably you've seen flying fish too. How about a fish that jumps to the surface of the water, and then flogs its tail so rapidly that only the tip of the tail is in the water. The three fish we saw doing this each walked for about 5 seconds, moving about 25 feet and flapping their tails perhaps 100 times. If that can't be described as walking on water, then I don't know what can.

The time between their tail flaps is only 250 milliseconds. If I could churn my legs that fast, maybe I too could walk on water.

I called them walk on water fish, but my sister Nancy offered a better name -- Jesus fish.

We have so many well informed readers of this blog that I hope one of them can identify this fish and send an email.

Today, Saturday was a lovely day with only light winds. We saw hundreds of boats anchored or moored out on the reef. So many that it looked crowded. We'll go for a day sail on a nice week day for our own visit to the reef for skorkeling.

Tonight, we arrived at Vaca Key around 1700. Just in time to find a sandy spot to anchor before the sun went down. By 0830 tomorrow morning, we'll be in Boot Key Harbor in the City of Marathon.