Sombrero Reef snorkel
— the reef the lighthouse keeps an eye on.
Not only on a wall.
Sombrero Reef snorkel, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A spur-and-groove coral reef under the Sombrero Key Lighthouse, that old iron screw-pile tower the Lighthouse Service finished in 1858. Mooring buoys instead of anchors, six to thirty feet of water, brain coral and sea fans and the slow patrol of parrotfish. The Keys outfitters run morning and afternoon trips out of Marathon. The wind decides whether the water reads jade or ink. Boats come in by mid-afternoon. The tower stays. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Sombrero Reef sits about three and a half nautical miles south of Marathon in the middle Florida Keys, inside a Sanctuary Preservation Area of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The reef is shallow spur-and-groove coral, mostly six to thirty feet deep, marked by the Sombrero Key Lighthouse — a 142-foot iron screw-pile tower lit in 1858 and one of the tallest of its kind on the reef tract. Charter boats out of Marathon and Vaca Key run the trip in under thirty minutes when the weather sits. Anchoring on the coral is prohibited; vessels tie to the sanctuary's mooring buoys.
Visibility on a calm day runs thirty to sixty feet, helped by the Florida Current sliding north off the reef. The coral here is largely Diploria and Montastraea — brain and star corals built in low hummocks — with elkhorn relics along the shallower spurs. Snorkelers see French and queen angelfish, stoplight parrotfish grazing the algae off old coral heads, and the occasional nurse shark resting in a groove. Wind direction matters more than wind speed for clarity, since a southwest breeze stirs sand off Hawk Channel and pushes it over the bank.
Day trips leave from Marathon marinas, usually a morning run and an afternoon run, three hours dock-to-dock. The Sanctuary charges no entry fee, but every vessel must use the public mooring buoys and follow no-touch, no-take rules inside the preservation area. Hurricane closures happen; the sanctuary posts advisories. Late spring through early summer is the steadiest window before the August heat and afternoon squalls thicken. Hard-bottom shoes and a thin rash guard help in the sun. Reef-safe sunscreen is required across the Keys.
