Review Aquanutz in Venice Beach, stayed at Inn at the Beach - Aug 23-24, 2022

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Kimela

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Messages
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Location
Missouri
# of dives
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We just got back from a quick trip for 2 days of meg tooth diving with Aquanutz. What a great trip! I'm used to clear, blue water - and this was green, murky, about 10-15 viz in the good spots - 87 degrees! Every dive is essentially a solo dive unless you tether to your buddy (we did not). Max depth 35 ft, with dive times averaging 105 minutes - 3 dives a day. I guess hunting for teeth has a pretty high learning curve but we found some cool things in our two days of diving. Lots of shark teeth (one mako, lemons, sand tiger, tiger, bull), two halves of a meg tooth - which does NOT make a whole meg tooth! - and pieces of both a mastodon tooth and a mammoth tooth, puffer fish mouth bone, spines and stingers from stingrays. Very exciting for me. We went out with Captain Blair - she was great. It's clear that she loves hunting fossils and is excited to share it with everyone. Btw, on our second day of dives my husband was the only male! We will be going back - just don't know when. I can't wait to sort through and organize all my goodies and maybe do a shadow box of teeth! I highly recommend diving for meg & shark teeth and other fossils.

Helpful hints: arrive dressed to dive - there's no room on the boat to change. Bring as little stuff as possible. There is a cooler if you bring a sandwich, but the boat provides candy bars/crackers/water. No marine head. The boat stays out the entire time, so take your Dramamine if you tend to get seasick - just in case - the night before and morning of the dive. Meet at the boat at 7:30 and get back around 4 or 5 - it's a long day. Be ready to have some serious fun - fellow divers are enthusiastic and Blair really knows her stuff!! She's very organized and you will hand her your gear, bit by bit, and she will assemble it on the boat before you board. She has a method and it works extremely well. Highly recommend this adventure! (I assume Mike - the owner - is also fun, but can't speak to that.) R and I both wore rash guards but it seemed that everyone else was wearing at least 3mil. We were plenty warm.

Like I said, the water is green and mirky, with this white stuff that looked like strings of snot in it. People on the boat jokingly called it 'whale snot'. If anyone knows what that REALLY is, please tell me! There were patches of grass here and there, but the place you find the fossils is where there is black gravel. If you find yourself in sand only, turn around and go back to the gravel! If the gravel is covered in shells that's ok too - if there's black gravel underneath that's something fossilized and broken into bits and you're ok. The teeth may be brown looking as they sit on the bottom, but when you pick them up and rub them you'll see they're black. I look forward to learning more about how to spot the meg teeth - I found cool stuff, but I desperately want a nice, big MEG TOOTH!

The cost for a day of diving is $130 for 3 tanks. You won't be touching your tanks to change things out because Blair does it all - she has a system and it's best to just stay out of her way. If you don't want her touching your gear I'm sure she'll let you do your own thing, but R is very picky (and I mean VERY picky) and he was ok with her changing out his gear. The boat is a small 6 pack and the tanks are sitting on the floor. You put on your fins and mask, sit on the back, and she brings you your tank/BC. You roll off the side backwards.

I will take my camera next time because there were so many cool things I missed getting pics of: sea robin, a really large pipe fish, cobia circling us on the dive, wrasses that were so curious about what we were doing (one bit my finger - no blood, no worries), flounder, huge mantis shrimp (white), a fire worm on top of a sea urchin - and none of them had any fear of us. I could have gotten some great pics.

Blair is an absolute delight! She's really dedicated to fossil hunting. The day after our second dive she was driving to do the Ledges in North Carolina for big meg teeth. This isn't just a job for her. Also, she has a business making things out of meg teeth and t-shirts and stickers. Her website is Meg Goddess Designs. I'm getting a black tank and a sticker for my water bottle. :)

We stayed at Inn at the Beach, which was a cute little hotel. It's across the street from a very small parking lot that is right up against the beach. I really liked that there are so many places in Venice to get to jetties and piers that don't require you to pay for parking and there is plenty of parking.

We went to dinner one night at the Crows Nest - pricey. I had coffee, R had a Long Island Iced Tea and we both got the grouper (always the best choice on the menu) and our bill was $120 with tip.

We went down with just carry-on - I was very impressed with us - and had to check a bag on the way back because our haul of fossils would have made my bag bulge too much to fit in the overhead!

The first pic is of day one. The second is day two, just the last dive. We were on a really good spot. I think my best items were a mako tooth and a mammoth tooth. It really is surreal to hold something in your hands that has been around for millions of years. Very cool.

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Living in Tampa, we drive down occasionally and do the same dive from a boat that drops us on the teeth or we just walk in from the beach. Our best finds are from a boat in about 28-30 feet of water. My wife and I will use a tether between us with one surface float. Its a very nice low stress dive and we have lots of teeth (megs too) and other artifacts to show for the time underwater. Finding a large 3-4" Meg will really get your heart to beat a little faster.
 
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