Went on Pura Vida's Aurelia on Tuesday. Captain Chris at the helm and Amber lead DM training two new DM's (sorry their names escape my memory at the moment). Nice day, slight southwest breeze really no waves to speak of. North current with about 35ft of green water visibility. Surface temp 78F, bottom temp 67F, WTF Batman, 67F in the middle of May! I was at the bridge on Sunday and it was 79f.
First drop was on Flower Gardens. As I made my descent I really couldn't believe how cold the water was. And still because I have these very heavy steel 95s I had my 5mm instead of 3mm, and a Beanie hood. Couldn't believe I was thinking I needed my hooded vest. Anyway I hit about 40ft, and that was it I refused to descend any further into the cold. There was a mother and daughter with only diveskins on, they bailed after 22 minutes. Did a REEF survey of 53 species only because I would not descend any further than the 40ft where the temp remained a reasonable 73-74f. I did drop into the cold once for about two minutes to video the ancient looking male loggerhead sea turtle in the video. I am thinking that turtle just might be older than me. I registered 70f on my computer in that short amount of time. The 67f I reported is from other divers brave enough to descend further than 40ft for more than five minutes.
Three divers sat out the second dive because of the cold. Second drop was on 4th window. Same vis, same temps. Again did another REEF survey but managed a count of 61 species despite staying at the 40ft level. Again I did descend into the coldness for about two minutes to get video of Nurse Shark shown below. She had a nice notch cut out of her left pec fin. Sure it was from mating sometime early in her life. Dive length for the second dive was 50 minutes, nobody objected given the temps.
), I thought nothing of shooting my DSMB to mark the leading edge of divers for the crew. Holy cow, I got surprised getting whisked away like Charlie Chaplin!
