Marathon Marine Life

I have enjoyed seeing the various marine creatures in the Boot Key Harbor of Marathon. I have seen one manatee (although other people around me have seen more, but I missed them), some spotted eagle rays (photo from ) swimming around and many brown jellyfish that I can't seem to identify. There are also some feather duster worms and zebra mussels growing on the floating docks. Many fish that I will probably never identify swim all over the harbor, including a tarpon (identified by someone else) that chases a school of some kind of silver fish which looks like a wave from the ocean when the school jumps out of the water to get away from the bigger fish. I always enjoy seeing the marine life in their natural environment. I look forward to see more, but I doubt I will see anything different than what I have already seen. Well, a few days later we were riding in our dinghy at night to return to the boat and we had to stop to refuel. As we were doing so, a baby swordfish jumped into our boat and flapped around the bottom. It was our first experience of a marine animal boarding our boat and we were definitely surprised. JR carefully put it back in the water because even though it was a small swordfish we didn't want to get hurt from it's "sword". We weren't sure how sharp it was and we didn't want to find out. I hear that it is pretty common for fish and some other marine animals to jump into your boat so this occurrence is not unheard of. Some stories I heard had sad endings with deaths from a sting rays barb through the heart, but I mean what are the chances of that happening?