A Cold Day in Florida

Hi, sorry I've not been posting recently. We have been having relatives over almost all December. Yesterday was the only time that I have been on our beaches, and it was too cold to look for long. It felt like my ears were about to be frozen solid, here in Florida! The only animal I saw was a tunicate that was washed up on shore, and I put him back. There were no good shells and not much trash (it had rained a lot a few days ago, and it got windy). So we came back earlier than our usual two hour walk. This is the first time since I have moved down to Sarasota that it was this cold.

Devil Rays II

On the ninth of December, my sister, Valerie, my mom, and I went to Lido to go swimming and to let Valerie try her new surfboard on the flat, clear water. I was looking in the water and I found a tiny black seahorse. As I was walking out to bring it in deeper water, two boys stopped me and asked what I had. I told them that it was a seahorse. Then they asked if they could "see" it. I opened my cupped hands and one of them snatched it right out of my hands and was moving it around out of the water! I was speechless. Then my mom came over and explained to them that it needed to be in the water, then they finally gave it back. They kept asking me if they could "hold" it as I walked to a patch of sea grass in deeper water. Almost as soon as I got back, I found a tiny nudibranch in some seaweed. It was mostly tan, but it had blue and yellow on it too. By now, Valerie made another friend who was from Oklahoma. So she swam and talked to him the whole two hours we were there. A while after I had put the nudibranch out a bit further, a small group of devil rays swam a few feet from my mom and I. There were more than last time I saw them. They swam back and forth, eating the tiny fish that were there. The two boys I saw earlier where trying to catch them without any success. I got within a few inches from them at one point. As I watched them, I noticed that one of them had a scar the shape of a jellyfish, and one had no tail. Sometimes they would swim out deeper and jump out of the water! My mom estimated that some were jumping three feet out of the water. Valerie's friend got suctioned by one on the leg and it left a red mark. I don't know how it happened, they are not usually aggressive. He said that it bit him (even though it couldn't) and would not go back in the water for a long time. After a while, the people found out that they had no stingers, and went in the water. So the devil rays swam into deeper water. As I watched them, three jumped out of the water twice. It was a fun trip.