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Sand Key

Florida Keysreef lighthouse southwest of Key West, Florida, United States

Coordinates 24.46389, -81.87944 (from Wikidata Q7415820, CC0). Wikidata coordinates may mark a reef, park or wreck in general, not a mooring buoy or entry point. · Wikipedia

🎬 Video coming soon. Footage from the ReefSeason crew.

What you might see, by month

Counts of species records within about 1 km of this point, from GBIF.org, filtered to CC0 and CC BY 4.0 licenses only (land animals and birds excluded). These come from survey effort, so more records do not mean more animals. They are not a sighting forecast. 7,290 qualifying records in total. See the records on GBIF.

Jan 2 records
  • ivory cerith (Cerithium eburneum) (1)
  • flyspeck cerith (Cerithium muscarum) (1)
Feb 0 records
  • No qualifying records
Mar 14 records
Apr 4 records
  • smooth risso (Zebina browniana) (1)
  • Decussate Risso (Zebinella decussata) (1)
  • Banded Dovesnail (Steironepion minus) (1)
May 596 records
Jun 1,926 records
Jul 2,711 records
Aug 1,606 records
Sep 318 records
Oct 1 records
  • mantis shrimp (Squilla empusa) (1)
Nov 37 records
  • No qualifying records
Dec 15 records

Most-recorded species here (all months)

  1. bluehead (Thalassoma bifasciatum) (508)
  2. bicolor damselfish (Stegastes partitus) (452)
  3. slippery dick (Halichoeres bivittatus) (349)
  4. Ocyurus chrysurus (342)
  5. striped parrotfish (Scarus iseri) (327)
  6. redband parrotfish (Sparisoma aurofrenatum) (271)
  7. Barber (Acanthurus bahianus) (267)
  8. yellowhead wrasse (Halichoeres garnoti) (231)
  9. Blue Tang (Acanthurus coeruleus) (213)
  10. clown wrasse (Halichoeres maculipinna) (198)
  11. Haemulon plumierii (191)
  12. French grunt (Haemulon flavolineatum) (174)
  13. stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) (163)
  14. Haemulon sciurus (151)
  15. Doctorfish (Acanthurus chirurgus) (132)
  16. foureye butterflyfish (Chaetodon capistratus) (129)
  17. yellowtail damselfish (Microspathodon chrysurus) (124)
  18. hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus) (104)
  19. cocoa damselfish (Stegastes variabilis) (88)
  20. Sergeant Major (Abudefduf saxatilis) (87)

Reef heat stress: Florida Keys region

NOAA Coral Reef Watch 5 km regional virtual station Florida Keys. This covers the whole region, not this exact site. Latest value at build time (2026-10-12):

Bleaching alert level (7-day max)Bleaching Watch
Degree Heating Weeks16.7671 °C-weeks
SST range29.73–30.58 °C

Values refresh from NOAA when the page loads. Source: NOAA CRW virtual station: Florida Keys (data, method). Credit: NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

Conditions links

Depths, entry details and mooring info aren't listed yet because we haven't verified them from a citable source.

Data citation

GBIF.org (2026-10-14) GBIF Occurrence Data, queried via the GBIF API: https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search?decimalLatitude=24.453889999999998,24.47389&decimalLongitude=-81.88944000000001,-81.86944&license=CC0_1_0&license=CC_BY_4_0&taxonKey=44&taxonKey=206&taxonKey=229&taxonKey=136&taxonKey=225&occurrenceStatus=PRESENT&limit=0. Records by license: CC0_1_0: 7,135, CC_BY_4_0: 155. Contributing datasets (top 15):