Snorkeling Grecian RocksSnorkeling Grecian Rocks is not the best, given how many other better spots there are available. Notice it is called Grecian Rocks, not Grecian Reef? It is rocky and is not nearly as healthy of a reef as compared to other options. So why mention snorkeling Grecian Rocks at all? Well, when the wind and waves are blowing in from the Atlantic, Grecian Rocks is where almost all the boat companies will take you (blowing 10-15 knots or more, depending on the wind and wave conditions). It is a bit protected from the wind and waves. While there may be 6 foot waves at the more desirable Molasses Reef, there may only be 1 or 2 feet of waves when snorkeling Grecian Rocks. But hey, if it's windy, you might as well get in the water. You will see some neat stuff.
When we snorkeled Grecian Rocks it was blowing around 15-20 knots. Our captain said that the Grecian dryrocks area was more protected and the only fairly calm place during higher winds. It was decent snorkeling given the wavy and windy conditions. There was a fairly strong current we had to swim into to get up to the reef from the boat. And the water was pretty cloudy, but not too bad considering the waves and wind. Our pictures did not turn out very good because of the conditions.
OK. That picture above did not turn out very good because I was chasing that poor Parrotfish. The reef was in OK shape, but not great. Much of the coral was dead. Although there were some interesting corals we had not seen before. There was a decent amount of soft corals and sponges. The purple fans looked less healthy than we have seen, and the coral had a lot of algae attached to it. We also noticed a handful of small Branching Fire coral.
We encountered a decent amount of fish, but not spectacular. We did see a bunch of the biggest parrotfish we have ever seen (at least until we snorkeled some more spots in the Keys). They were easily twice as big as we have seen in Hawaii. We saw a handful of Hogfish, which are fun to watch change colors (see below).
We were not able to snorkel over the top of the reef much because of surge and waves, so it was not the best time to really see it. We noticed some bigger fish species out over the reef, like a huge grouper. We saw a nice Smooth Trunkfish, barracuda, Blue Tang, goatfish, Porkfish, Chub, and some big jacks. We noticed a green parrotfish with another fish cleaning it. We also saw lots of Bluestriped & French Grunts. We noticed the Cleaning Goby and a handful of Blueheads.
You can see a Conch shell in the picture above. Even though the Keys are called the Conch Republic, there are very few live Conch in the waters (unless you consider the locals). Explore the next Key Largo snorkel spot - Molasses Reef
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