i signed on for Saturday May 12th Rich. i welcome your company. its a reliable boat. the guy keeps it mechanically well maintained. at the moment there are plenty of available seats on the boat.
there are three reef lines or ledges offshore the Carolinas and i would like to work them for fossils this season. almost all divers that go here just go for the swim tour. very few know about, or care about, fossiling. all three ledges have limestone exposed. there is no guarantee of course that you will find fossils but all fossilers know there are fossils in limestone. i have found large fossilized scallops there and had to dig them out with my knife. That limestone was like cement. needed an air hammer. i am fairly sure one of the ledges turns into the "Meg Ledge" site that is so popular offshore Wilmington.
Now, if I were the captain, i would work up and down the ledges until i found a Meg garden or something that would attract a lot of business. the boat ride is about 90 minutes to the furthest ledge and other site (ledge) i think is on the way back in. depth is 70 to 80 feet. i will do two dives each with a single 100 cube tank 30% enriched.
i will work my way up current, staying on the edge of the ledge for navigation purposes. if i find a fossil bed i will not move around a lot. i will then down drift back to the up line for my ascent. at that depth i usually stop the dive at about 1300 psi. that gives me plenty of time to make a slow ascent
