Bradenton/Sarasota

[ILDiver]

Went to Bradenton Beach this morning and did some snorkling. Saw a big crab, a horseshoe crab and plenty of sea weed, and grabbed a couple shells for my wife.

Got home and found a Message from an SBer and went with him to Venice. We went down to Caspersen Beach. The vis was horrible right in by the beach. Almoast bailed, but I though if we got out and checked past the sand bar the vis might go up as we would be past the major surf. The vis in close I could not see my hand when I extended my arm. When we got out by the reef (what's left of it from what reefguy says) the vis was closer to 10 ft. We did not sift and dig for teeth so came back empty on that, they were a ton of sand dollars. I grabbed a couple of those for the wife and daughter and a few more shells.

We got back to the car and a guy that had been fishing starts talking to us. I had not heard about the shark bite. The whole time in the low vis area I was scanning fast always thinking, man what could find it's way out of the muck. I was not real comfortable.

I'll have to look at the directions to make sure I get to the right place to meet up.

 

[ReefGuy]

Casperson beach isn't all that far from Sandspur . How did the reef look at Casperson? The renourishment stopped at the pier, so it shouldn't have been affected that far south. North of the pier it's gone, though.

 

[Wildbill]

I wouldn't call 10' viz horrible....at Venice that's fantastic. Most times it's not more than arms length, but your searching the bottom anyhow so you only need 2-4'.

Wildbill:cop_2:

 

[ILDiver]

I didn't think it was too bad after the sandbar. It was inclose that it was horrible.

The reef then looked great then. I remembered you said you could only see the tops, I did not know how much was actually suposed to be there. The live rock had a lot of growth on it. But we only saw 1 decent size fish and 2 or three smaller fish. Hard for me to judge how it is when I don't have anything to base it on. Personally I could have swam around looking at the reef for awhile. I like checking out the micro sections of the dive sites and seeing the smaller life. The few times I stopped though, I didn't see too much other than crabs scurrying

 

[madeline]

well it should be around 10am i guess

 

[Wildbill]

Well I'm back home and have to say the only thing that I got at Venice is WET :11:

Viz was extremely bad.....I had trouble navigating out to the tooth area 'cause I couldn't even see my compass :mad1:

Oh well meeting Lil38 & ILDiver was great though....To bad the Venice dive gods wouldn't co-operate so that they could have enjoyed it.

Wildbill:cop_2:

 

[ReefGuy]

Sorry I missed you guys.

 

[Li'l38]

Well I'm back home and have to say the only thing that I got at Venice is WET :11:

Viz was extremely bad.....I had trouble navigating out to the tooth area 'cause I couldn't even see my compass :mad1:

Oh well meeting Lil38 & ILDiver was great though....To bad the Venice dive gods wouldn't co-operate so that they could have enjoyed it.

Wildbill:cop_2:

Vis was WORSE than extremely bad!!! There isn't a word for it. Still, glad to finally dive with a couple of SBers. So, that part, I enjoyed. Thanks for giving it a try!!! Sorry you couldn't make it ReefGuy. Your family picked a good day for you to miss! Hope they are feelin' better soon. It was an experience and I'm one step closer to topping the mark of 50 dives! At least, now I know where to find the place for the next trip over there. Florida West has some really nice teeth on display. It was cool checkin' all that stuff out. I bought one of those tooth n fossil ID books. This way, I know what to look for Have to give it another try, soon..... Is there another SB toothin' get-together on the calendar? You know, one of those Florida Conch parties?

 

[ReefGuy]

Pick a date

 

[ILDiver]

Thanks for trying to get out there guys. Another diver said they got up to 2 foot vis over the sand bar, but he still only managed 3 teeth. I just got a call that my boat trip for tomorrow is cancelled. I think I'm going to try to do a tooth dive Tuesday and hopefully Sea Trek can come through on Wednesday for a final boat trip. Monday I'm suppose to get together with someone off their boat. And maybe dzstr and I can get in a shore dive one afternoon.

It's about time for the dives to go back the other way now. Started out great on my first dive at 35' and have now dropped to 6".

Thanks again for giving it a shot today. I wish I would have dug around more yesterday when we had 5' vis on Caspersen.