wjefferis
Contributor
Drove out early Wednesday morning (9-16-09) to Ft. Pickens under mostly cloudy skies. Upon arriving in the parking lot it started to lightly rain. I wasn’t worried as I could see that things were going to clear up shortly and I didn’t see any lightening. I walked over the seawall and the water really looked clear. After a short wait GlenFWB and SeaYoda arrived in Glen’s truck and Denisegg came in shortly after. We splashed in just after 07:50 and I could clearly see the grains of sand with my head out of the water in chest deep water while putting on my fins. The visibility near shore stayed at 25 feet (maybe a little better in spots), but once we got to the tire/cage to tie off the dive flag we got into a different layer of water that was already starting to move out. Visibility went down to 15 feet around the rocks and once we got out into the pass there were spots where the visibility went down to 10 due to the swifter moving water stirring up the sand in addition to the cloudy conditions. Once we arrived at the tank/culvert I found a nice sized southern stingray which was very cool. After that we enjoyed the French angel and blue angelfish for a while and then headed out to the drum. While looking around the drum, I found a nice fully intact fishing rod with a nice reel, sweet!!! It is now on my porch as I write this. From there we headed back in towards better visibility at the “organ.” I found an octopus taking a nap in there. I couldn’t get a good picture of him as he was in a very picture unfriendly spot. From here we went over to the truck frame, golf cart, and then played around in the main rock pile for a while. While zigzagging up the main rock pile I found a large pink frog fish which was pretty cool. Once we made it back up to the 19’ range the visibility really opened back up as the sun was now shinning brightly and the view was really great. I was reluctant to end the dive as I could have stayed in the shallows for another half hour, but we ended the dive just a little over 70 minutes. After a one hour surface interval we headed back into the water with dark clouds off in the distance. Glen was having trouble with his ears so he headed back up to the surface for his own little adventure (I’ll let him tell the story). Meanwhile we headed to the west over to the monster truck tire and to the toilet. On our way back it got dark, and I mean almost night dive dark. We were at 40 fsw and I figured that the dark clouds were now overhead and it was time to start moving back towards where I had the dive flag tied off to. I now had to use the rocks a little bit to help move against the out-going current. I paused for a second at a tire to make sure everyone was still behind me when I felt something nipping at my fingers. When I turned to look to see what it was I found a damsel fish nipping at my fingers and I started to laugh. He obviously didn’t like the fact that I was touching his tire and I am sure that if he actually had larger teeth I would have certainly lost at least one digit. It was about this time that I noticed a flash and then another. At this point I wasn’t sure what was safer, 1. Stay in the water or 2. Walk to our cars with steel tanks on our backs. I did a 3 minute safety stop while I pondered my options which worked out nicely as the main part of the storm had moved over by the time we got out. We ended up with about a 45-50 minute dive (haven’t downloaded my dive computer to my computer yet). I saw a couple more stingrays and a really nice sized gag amongst all the other marine life on this dive. I quickly got out of the water and to my truck in record time and threw everything inside. After we all got changed we went to Peg Leg Pete’s and I had the Cajun blackened grouper sandwich, which rocks. I had a really good time and it was great to dive with everyone, I look forward to going it again sometime soon. I only got a few pictures as it was a real P.I.T.A. to try to take picture while carrying a long fishing rod in the water. They are not very good, but here are a few:
GlenFWB:
Denisegg:
Sea Yoda:
GlenFWB:
Denisegg:
Sea Yoda:
.
