Florida Keys - 'ROCK STARS' TO RULE THE FLORIDA KEYS REEF DURING UNDERWATER MUSIC FESTIVAL

Beautiful music is made underwater, pretending to play faux musical instruments. This year's theme is 'Rock Stars.' Participants in the Underwater Music Festival at Looe Key Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary have fun prancing and pretending to play music during the six-hour subsea radio broadcast.

LOOE KEY, Florida Keys - Rock legends are to celebrate the "key of sea" in Lower Keys waters Saturday, July 14, as divers portraying Sonny and Cher, Elton John, David Crosby and even a mermaid Madonna rock the reef during the 23rd annual Underwater Music Festival.
The scuba-diving superstars are to "perform" beneath the waves during the offbeat underwater event, which draws as many as 600 divers and snorkelers each year to explore the colorful diversity of marine life that characterizes North America's only living coral barrier reef.

The underwater songfest is set for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Looe Key Reef, an area of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary located approximately six miles south of Big Pine Key. Staged by local radio station WWUS 104.1 FM, it features the station's selections broadcast underwater via Lubell Laboratory speakers suspended beneath boats positioned at the reef.
The playlist typically includes ocean-themed ditties such as the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine, " Jimmy Buffett's "Fins" and even an authentic humpback whale song.

Photos by Bill Keogh/Florida Keys News Bureau.

FLORIDA : The Vandenberg Project, a New World Class Artificial Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

A World War II troop carrier that saw duty in the Cold War and had a role in a movie is destined to become the largest artificial reef in Florida.

The 533-foot Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, among the hulks in the ever-thinning James River Reserve Fleet, will be towed to waters off Florida’s Key West, probably in one year, the U.S. Maritime Administration announced Tuesday.

The Vandenberg began its nautical life in 1943 under a different name: the Gen. Harry S. Taylor. After duty in World War II and the Cold War, it was overhauled and became a sophisticated missile-tracking vessel in the Atlantic.

When christened for that assignment, in 1963, it was named after a former Air Force officer and CIA director. In the 1990s, the ship was repainted and stenciled with Russian lettering for its role in the Universal Pictures science-fiction film “Virus.”

A related web site, Sink the Vandenberg has a break down of the economic and ecological impact as well as photos.