This year I bought an underwater camera and a mask and snorkel before heading down.  I chose the Pentax W90 from Amazon after a lot of reading.  Below are the pictures and video I took on the trip…

This is a picture from the balcony of our 4th floor condo overlooking the Gulf.

One of the really cool things about the beach is the schools of rays that come through.  I got up early one morning and took these videos

I had really wanted to take video of the manta rays that play in the surf every morning, but they chose to stay pretty far away from me.  However, the cow nose rays were quite a bit more friendly as you can see in the video above.

I spent 3 to 4 hours each day hanging out in the water looking for cool fish to come buy.  About the only fish that stayed around long enough for me to react with a camera was sheepshead.  I took quite a lot of video of sheepshead.  It isn’t easy to tell in the video, but these fish are quite large – roughly 2.5 to 3 feet long.  Several times, I found myself in the middle of a school of these fish.  They didn’t particularly mind me being in the middle of the school, and would only back up slightly if I attempted to touch them.  The demeanor of these fish reminded my very much of cows.  The herd more or less moved together, grazing on anything and everything laying on the bottom and moving on when it was all eaten.  I found one sheepshead, featured in the video below, that had what appeared to be a ramora or some similar fish latched on to it.  The sheepshead did not seem terribly pleased with his “friend”.

Mid week, we rented pontoon boats from a marina inside St. Andrew’s state park and drove the boats over to Shell Island.  Last year, we had a very close encounter with some dolphins and hoped for the same thing this year.  Fortunately, we did find some and they came up to see what we were doing.  It happened very fast, but I managed to get this video:

If you watch very closely, you can see that one of the dolphins that comes closest to our boat has a calf swimming right under her.  That was quite a find.

Shell Island is a barrier island, which means there is a channel of water between it and the mainland.  About 4 miles in is a relatively shallow place – 4 to 5 feet deep where many urchins and sand dollars live.  We dropped anchor there, and most of our group went exploring for shells and sand dollars.  I took off for a grassy area about 100 yards away.  The sandy area was crystal clear, but other than the urchins and dollars, it was desolate.  All of the activity will happen in the grassy areas.

The most interesting thing I found was a number of stingrays parked just outside of the grassy area.  I got some of them on video:

If you listen closely, you can hear me swear into my snorkel when I realize I am on top of a very large (6″) stingray.

We next went to a beach that has a pier.  There were a few interesting things happening there.  First, we saw a puffer fish cruising through.  My kids were giving it a hard time, but I made sure they did not hurt it and that it got released safely:

I swam over to the pier to check out what was living on in around the posts, and this is what I found:

The last place we went was was a very cool cove that is ring by some sand bars:

Behind me on this picture is the deep water channel that leads out to the Gulf of Mexico.  There are jetties at one end of this inlet, and I headed there to see what I could find.  This is what the tip of the jetties looks like above water:

After taking those pictures, I headed out along the channel side of the rocks to take some video:

I have many hundreds of other pictures and hours of video left to process.  As I have time, I will update this post with new pictures and video.

This was a fantastic vacation.  I am very hopeful that the current oil spill disaster in the Gulf does not disrupt this area, but it appears the oil is now headed to Panama City.  Hopefully, the beaches and water ways will be in shape for our visit next year.

Post from: Tropical Fish Central

2010 Vacation in Panama City Beach, FL

It’s hard to get a perspective of how big this thing is, so I took a short video:

Next, I saw the jaw of a Megalodon:

For perspective, I am 6 feet tall, and could have walked through the mouth without needing to duck my head.  Simply massive.

And then there is the thing nightmares are made of…

The Xiphanctinus:

This thing looks truly terrifying in person.  The tag for this guy says that some fossils of Xiphanctinus are found with intact, large fish in it’s stomach.  I took a video of him and his display mate, the super turtle Protostega:

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The Terrible Fish

I thought for a while about the best way to do this.  It seemed to me that a hose siphoning into a bucket would be the most effective – simply vacuuming up the gravel, leaving a bare bottom and sucking up any nasty chemicals that may have built up along with it.  After thinking about it more, that seemed like a lot of work.  So, here’s what I did instead:

Phase 1: Removing the gravel

I got my handy 5G Home Depot bucket and my largest fish net (about 6 inches across).  I started at one end of the tank and scooped up as much gravel as I could, dumping it in the bucket as I went.  This was pretty fast and effective, but there was quite a bit of gravel left in the tank that I simply could not get with the net.

Phase 2: Cleaning up the mess

I took my “Python no-spill” water changer and removed the gravel vacuum head (the clear plastic tub part) by unscrewing it behind the valve.  I attached the python to my sink, and took my large net and placed it directly under the python’s discharge, to catch gravel that came through, so it would not go down my drain.  I turned the water on high to get the most suction.

At the tank, I used the bare of of the python hose like a vacuum, sucking up every last bit of gravel and waste left, leaving a very clean tank bottom.  All of the gravel I vacuumed up ended up in the net in the bottom of my sink.  I simply dumped the net into the bucket and had cleanly transferred all of the gravel from the tank to the bucket.

Phase 3: Rinsing the Sand

I rinsed 2 20 pound bags of argonite sand very well to remove the fine sediment that would could the water using a bucket in my kitchen sink.  This took a looong time.

Phase 4: Sand in the tank

I scooped the sand into a cup, and then lowered the cup into the tank, until I had transferred all of the sand.  Much to my dismay, the water was still turned milky-white, despite my rinsing efforts.

Phase 5: Water changes

I reconnected my python’s gravel vac and performed 3 75% back-to-back water changes to get rid of the cloudiness.  This was pretty effective.

Phase 6: Finishing touches

I had some drift wood in the tank previously, and arranged it to provide a bunch of hiding spots.  I also bought a few pieces of rock, and used some stones to create a few other hiding areas.

Here is the result:

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Converting My Tank From Gravel To Sand

It’s subtle, but I think the person with the bottle is mostly squeezing the food out into the fish’s mouths.

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Bottle Feeding Koi