Turtle Rehab Center

~on our way home from key west we planned on visiting the turtle rehab center we heard about. the 4 of us are all adventurous and love creatures of all kinds so we were excited to get the opportunity to check out some turtles. it was definately a neat experience but wasnt quite everything we thought it would be. in visiting the facility we thought we would get to touch and hold some turtles, but after the introductory speech we learned how fragile the turtles at the facility can be. so its better we left the touching to the people that had to care for the turtle. on a side note: it was upsetting to learn the impact humans can have on wildlife. obviously we are aware of the impact as oils spills and such but to see the images of turtles with something as simple as fishing line wrapped around its leg, getting wound so tight it eventually cuts off their flipper was hard to look at. and one thing i learned is how much trash/waste turtles will eat. in the speech you see pictures of fishing hooks and numerous other things trapped in the turtles intestines causing stomach gases to build up. they build up so bad that it prevents the turtles from being able to dive down under the water, thus leaving them sitting ducks for predators such as sharks or once again the impact of humans and their motor boats. in learning of what turtles are able to swallow we also learned that due to the shell it is almost impossible to surgically remove the items they ingest. so that means the vet staff has to give the turtles stuff such as Maalox and vegetable oil to help pass the items. and they save some of the stuff turtles have passed and its painful to think of these items having to come out the rear of them...fishing hooks so big they would barely even fit in your mouth let alone down your intestines, and the fishing line thats thicker than weed whacker line. and the fishing line info hit home since ive been fishing for years and now being a mate i have thrown plenty of fishing line over board. yet after the speech i learned it takes fishing line around 600 years to biodegrade in the ocean. so i will no longer be doing that. besides my own impact or the impact of humans its hard to learn what some people in this world thinks is "cool". meaning... while on our visit we saw a turtle that is permanently scarred from some ass-whole that thought it would be cool to use a spear gun on a turtle. the bastard put a complete hole in the shell just missing the spinal cord and leaving a hole that you can completely see through, (its the turtle in the last pic, look towards the back of his shell) that will never heal and cover over. the turtle is doing well and should recover but that does not justify what some bonehead tried doing. on an upside we got to see baby turtles up close, which for me was a first. we still could not touch them but they sure were the cutest things ever. they do this survival tactic where they tuck their flippers up on their shell and just drift with the current and its so cute to watch. oh and i forgot to mention with our visit we got a tour of the operating room, so we got to see when they perform surgeries and take the x-rays of the turtles. it was so cool see how high tech they were. it was a pleasant thought to think after all we do im harming these animals that we at least have good equipment to help save a few of them. most of the machines used like the anesthesia machine are actually ones that are used on humans. it was a little disappointing not getting to touch a turtle, but seeming how some of my habits could have negatively effected a turtle..... i guess its better i just left them alone.

Key West with Aj and Jamie

~so on tuesday we tried our luck in key west again while my friends aj and jamie were down. we decided to get a room for the night so we could do key west the right way. the room we scored was pretty sweet and made the adventure tons more fun. key west itself is just an amazing place. once your there a few times it might get redundant. but being able to walk around a town with beer in hand is amazing. we did a little bar hoping and even grabbed a few brews to go while we walked around duval street. there are a lot of sights to see from the bars, shops, street performers, and weirdos. having aj around made for a lot of laughs. our first stop was at a neat bar on the southern most part of the US which had a decent happy hour. we ordered this appetizer sampler that had some meat, fish, and veggies that you cooked over your own flame grilled burner. so it made for a neat happy hour and then we hit a few bars and shops while making our way to sloppy joes. we decided to hit sloppy joes because its a pretty hopping place and the food is reasonable. they also had a live band that we listened to while we ate. after dinner we trekked to Hog's Breath Saloon to get a shirt for jamie to bring back for her dad. we pretty much covered all of duval street so after Hogs Breath we headed back to the room and kinda called it a night. jamie and aj kinda crapped out on us so we just headed to bed. but never the less we went to bed with our sides split from all the laughing we did.

fishing with captain joey

so sometimes the social networks such as facebook serve a better purpose than just keeping tabs on what ppl are doing. they can help remind you of peoples birthday, help family stay connect with pictures, or in the best case scenario help reconnect with old friends. back in may once we determined this trip was going to be possible i facebook messaged my old high school best bud joey letting him know we were moving to the keys for the summer. joey and i were real close in my last couple years of high school and grew apart once we went separate ways with college. not to mention the kid landed the dream job of his life and moved to florida to pursue it. which is where telling him i was going to be semi local came into play. but to my pleasant surprise joey contacted me while i was out training for robbies. he said he finally checked his facebook and got my message. anyways this dream job he landed is the dream job of every fisherman/woman out there. basically he is the captain of his boss's 48ft fishing yacht. a boss which in short version has to much money to know what to do with and decided he wanted a big toy to play with. so he hired joey and a first mate to run his new found toy. so joe has been a captain for somewhere around 4 years now. he lives on the boat full time, but is looking to save for a house. in more short version joey gets to travel around up and down the east coast captaining this boat for the boss and some of his clients. (i believe his boss is in the demolition business) and the boat enters yearly fishing tournaments with the hope of winning the first place. which joey has been able to come close to and actually place third. they caught a 501lbs swordfish or maybe marlin i forget now. but it is a very impressive fish that when you look at the photos, you wonder how they only got third place with this fish. but the third place prize money was $64,000 that gets split up by ppl involved with the boat; owner,captain,mate. joey ended up coming and staying in the keys for the 4th of july and invited us down to see his boat which is docked in ft lauderdale. and man am i glad we took the ride down there to see him. i also had a buddy from home come down and flew in and out of the ft lauderdale airport which made the trip so much more convenient. which also meant dan was able to join in on all the fun. there was so much great stuff during this trip that im not sure i could type it all. but basically it started like this. we went down thursday went out to dinner for the best hook and cook ive had yet. than we tried our luck for the "moon fish" that come out in the marina behind joes boat. we didnt spend much time but i was able to catch one (its the silver shinny fish) and than slept on the boat to get a bright and early start fishing friday. joey said we would go for king mackerel and some bonita. bonita are similar to tune except they have no eatable value, but joey needed them to use for bait when he comes up to NJ this summer for fishing tournaments. the style of fishing we did was of the sport fishing kind. and while it may of seem a tab boring at times, its the way you go for big game fish. basically we trolled around waiting for the fish to bite. we trolled with about 6 rods in the water at once, and the way it works is you have a rotation. one person gets the first fish, and another gets the second fish, and so on and so fourth. basically you never should be pulling in 2 fish back to back. for typical fisher people this style of fishing is a little boring, waiting around for the rob to bend than just winding the reel to retrieve the fish. but i dunno for me it was so exciting. watching for the rods to bend that pulling in a mystery fish was for me at least intense. especially the way you have to get them to the boat. the fish down here at soooo line shy. which means if you dont use leaders the fish wont bite because they can see the line attached to the bait... and a leader is long piece of clear fishing line that tends to be stronger than the line weight you are using but when in the water is practically invisible to the fish. but the leaders we used with this type of fishing were 60 ft long. so when you wind up to the leader line you have to BY HAND pull in the last 60ft. which means your going one on one hand in hand fighting the fish for the last 60 ft. definitely intense. joey wanted me to experience this so he had the first mate let me do it a few times. and to my luck dani caught a whooper of a king mackerel that required the gaff, so i even got to gaff a fish. which was good practice and a good gaff shot if i do say so myself. at the end of the day we ended up with 4 king mackerel, 3 bonitas, and 2 small blackfin tuna. which makes for a really good day on the water. after that we went back to the marina and tried our luck at tarpon fishing with the fresh catch we just brought back. we got some really nice tarpon to come in but we couldnt land any. we hooked into some but they take you right around the marina pilings and break your line off. dani hooked one and got it to jump out of the water though. than to top off the night we went to joes boss's house that was down the street and took his 23 ft boat out night fishing. the boss's house was sick. it was on the water much like danis shore house, but had thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of boats floating. and the house was something you would see in some home style magazine. the fishing trip at night was very successful in catching fishing but we didnt have to many keepers. only a few close yellow tails and a decent mangrove snapper. which was caught by my lovely girl friend. she killed it on the night fishing trip and had a lot of luck with her spiffy pink rod. all in all the weekend was amazing, we slept on a yacht, fished for 12 or so hours, and shared a few drinks with great company. after looking back i started thinking of all the fish species we caught, so we added them up. we came to about 18 DIFFERENT fish species we caught or hooked into over a 24 hour period. thats gotta be a record or something. thanks captain joey!

sorry for delay- Week of Jen/Chuck and Kids

~alright so i know this is a tad delayed but better late than never. So jen chuck and the kids came down to visit and we had an awesome time. the kids being here was great, i loved waking to hang out with them. the week they were here it seemed very hectic, due to having 6 ppl in a 4 person condo but we still had a great time. we started off by doing some things around here like going to the pool and going fishing over at ernie's place. the kids loved the pool, especially lex and asked every day if they could go swimming. lex also killed it in fishing over at ernie's and with a little help from dad she caught upwards of 20 fish (no lie). Sam had a more frustrating time but i still think she enjoyed it. dani and i got our founders park membership cards while they were down so we took everyone over to the pool at founders park one afternoon. the kids loved that pool too. they have a mini water park, water slide, and diving boards so the kids really enjoyed that. the other local thing we did around here was visiting anne's beach again. i thought sam would have a blast snorkeling around in the water finding things. and i was right, sam got really into the exploring and even took lex out with her and they ventured out into the water. chuck enjoyed seeing them get along like sisters. i personally was so excited to have jen and the kids down because it was great to see jen doing things with the kids she herself was never able to do. things her mom never had the heart or head to get them involved in. jen and chuck deserve a lot of credit for doing their best to make their kids lives meaningful. but with that said it was just great to see everyone laugh, smile and having a good time. now for the awesome part....
-So while they were down they wanted to visit key west, but there were too many of us to fit all in 1 car. and no one really wanted to commit on being the designated driver lol. so jen and chuck pleasantly/amazingly decided on getting cab to take us to key west. that way we could all fit and not have to worry about drinking and driving. well turns out the cabs were so expensive and rather than shell out that money for a cab, they decided on getting a limo. which by all accounts was the best idea. the limo really made the trip awesome. it came stocked with some adult beverages as well as soda and water. we were able to have more than a few drinks before we even got to key west. key west was really neat as well. the atmosphere is so upbeat and lively. plus being able to walk around with drinks in hand from store to store didnt hurt the situation either. from the get go chuck wanted to stop at sloppy joes restaurant, so that is where we ended our trip. we did get a chance to stop at guy harvey's and margaritaville, but ended with dinner at sloppy joe's. the trip was awesome and the week great. but no matter how much fun we have or what we do, we can never forget how we got here. and for that i give a thanks to the grandparents and our parents. i know grandmom was looking down with a big smile on her face seeing all of us together.