Jellyfish

Jellyfish are always fun to photograph with the light in your favor. I took these yesterday in Pine Island Sound by a remote inshore Island.

Wonderful Day

Another wonderful day on the water with long time clients, Nancy and Melissa, who traveled with me for a fun day of exploring on the islands. It is always fun to take Nancy and her family out. She usually says, "go wherever you want to go" (of course she knows this will always lead to Cayo Costa at some point in the day). We started the hot August day by traveling to the Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island for lunch. After a delightful lunch we traveled to the north end of Cayo Costa. Melissa enjoys photography and brought along her new lens for her camera. The light and cloud formations were superb for photography. I had not taken photos at the north end of the island like this for 2 years almost to the day. We spotted a new sand bar resembling Little Pavillion Key in the Everglades where we took numerous photos of the birds enjoying this new spit of land.

We then traveled south in the Gulf of Mexico along the shoreline of Cayo Costa dodging sandbars and afternoon rain storms, while admiring sea oats in full bloom along the way. We went to a spot on the bay side where it was calm and protected where we walked across the island and observed unbelievable cloud formations as we collected shells. Finds of the day were sand dollars, the largest Auger shell I have ever found and moon shells among others. Walking along observing the clouds , smelling a hint of rain, seeing the tide run out - it was another beautiful day on Cayo Costa and a pleasurable boat ride.

Walk On The Beach

Today I went for a long afternoon walk on the beach. I observed smooth driftwood and forgotten trees as the August tide pulled jellyfish into the Gulf of Mexico. In my travels I collected two worm shells and a deceased five leg starfish.

Fun Charter

Fourteen hours after landing on the tarmac in Miami, I was back on the water and traveling to Cayo Costa. I had a four hour charter that lasted five. The weather was great and the people even better. Jenny, Kristi, Adam, and Wes had a relaxing time island hoping. We started the morning at Cayo Costa in search of olive shells. We were successful right away. Jennifer is a photographer and she took some great photos of the beach and also of my boat. We had a fun time talking shop on photography and I learned a lot from our conversations. We then traveled to North Captiva where we had a delicious lunch. On our way out of Safety Harbor we spotted a bottle nose dolphin in three feet of water. I turned the boat off and we drifted with the tide and observed this dolphin. The dolphin swam up to the boat while we were drifting. It was amazing and the closest I have ever been to a dolphin in the wild. The dolphin swam away after observing it for 10 minutes. Unbelievable, you never know what you might see! Our next stop was Cabbage Key. The crew had a couple of Coronas and soaked in the island atmosphere. The trip back to Captiva was under a sunny sky and on a calm sheet of azure water. The trip was pleasurable and the people were great. Jenny took all of the photos in this blog except for the group shot. Thanks Jenny!

Capt. Brian