Have not had time to change my gear back over from the week before trip to BVI, so decided not to take my drysuit...instead, I decided to wear my Oneal J suit...all 20 lbs or so of neoprene.
Pat was taking his boat out on sunday, the weather looked to be nice... so after a short drive from Destin to Panama City, we loaded up and headed out.
After a short discussion, it was decided to do the red sea and... well it ended up being a bridge span.
As I struggled to get into my two layer, semi-dry with hood, I could not help but notice that everyone else was wearing 5 mil and 5/3 mil suits. Either the water was much warmer than I expected or there were going to be some very cold people on that boat....turns out the later was the case.
Once one gets into a J-suit, it is best to not try to move, as doing so can be difficult... warm - yes, flexable......no.
Also, on the surface one could easily die from over heating.
But once in the water, it gets better (not the flexibility, but the overheating issue).
The water was a strange color and filled with zoo plankton (where is a whale shark when you need them?). Vis was ok...but a rather hazy look to it....20 feet at best and down to maybe 10 at worst.
So, for starters, with 5mm gloves on, I cannot get to all the camera buttons.... and then I had a strobe fail.
Not sure what the issue is with the strobe, but it shorted out the batteries...so all I had was one working strobe. I would be upset by this, but these strobes have lasted thru 4 cameras... something around 1,000 dives and maybe 60,000 flashes.
So, sorry about the crappy images.... I blame the stobe for it.
Both places were, well cold, yea, cold would be a good description, and dark...yup, cold and dark. Most fish that could swim somewhere else, seemed to have done so... on
the first dive, I saw:
4 damsel fish
one amberjack
lots of spade fish
4 small grouper
a couple blenny
one butterfly
one reef fish
several arrowhead crabs...
That was pretty much everything.
Pat was taking his boat out on sunday, the weather looked to be nice... so after a short drive from Destin to Panama City, we loaded up and headed out.
After a short discussion, it was decided to do the red sea and... well it ended up being a bridge span.
As I struggled to get into my two layer, semi-dry with hood, I could not help but notice that everyone else was wearing 5 mil and 5/3 mil suits. Either the water was much warmer than I expected or there were going to be some very cold people on that boat....turns out the later was the case.
Once one gets into a J-suit, it is best to not try to move, as doing so can be difficult... warm - yes, flexable......no.
Also, on the surface one could easily die from over heating.
But once in the water, it gets better (not the flexibility, but the overheating issue).
The water was a strange color and filled with zoo plankton (where is a whale shark when you need them?). Vis was ok...but a rather hazy look to it....20 feet at best and down to maybe 10 at worst.
So, for starters, with 5mm gloves on, I cannot get to all the camera buttons.... and then I had a strobe fail.
Not sure what the issue is with the strobe, but it shorted out the batteries...so all I had was one working strobe. I would be upset by this, but these strobes have lasted thru 4 cameras... something around 1,000 dives and maybe 60,000 flashes.
So, sorry about the crappy images.... I blame the stobe for it.
Both places were, well cold, yea, cold would be a good description, and dark...yup, cold and dark. Most fish that could swim somewhere else, seemed to have done so... on
the first dive, I saw:
4 damsel fish
one amberjack
lots of spade fish
4 small grouper
a couple blenny
one butterfly
one reef fish
several arrowhead crabs...
That was pretty much everything.
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