SeaYoda
Contributor
Some non-diving friends were in town so we went for a snorkel day at the jetties. We were to meet at 10 am (a couple hours before high tide). As I went over the Mid Bay Bridge, I saw some strange dark patches floating in the water to the west. I called the coast guard and reported what I saw and was asked if it looked like june grass. It did not look like anything I've ever seen before in the 10 years I've been crossing the bridge. At the jetties I found a lot of saw grass and that could have been what the patches were - I never got a report back and the patches were gone at 1:30 pm when I went home across the bridge.
At the jetties there was no oil, sheen, or tar balls. SeaLife seemed to be doing well. I could hear the crackle of barnacles all over the place. I saw lots of different species of fish - atlantic croakers, mullet, blue runners, cigar minnows, sargent majors, damsels, blennies, pigfish, toadfish, wrasse, doctorfish, and one very annoying shark sucker that wanted a ride. I was at the end of the rocks that are visible above water and over the flat that extends out beyond that when I thought I felt a wrasse nipping at my stomach. I brushed my chest and seconds later I felt it again. I looked down to see a 2 foot sucker trying to attach to my underside. I knocked it away with my arm and it circled and came back toward me. I punched it and it came back again. I finally swam at it in a threat pose and it backed off long enough for me to swim past some other snorkelers. I guess he decided to bother them because I didn't see him after that. There were a fair amount of crabs (stone, blue, and hermit) crawling the rocks.
The water was very warm up in the shallows and was cooler but not bad at the end of the rocks. There was a strong current coming in at the end of the rocks until almost the time I got out at around 12:30. It was strong enough that you could swim at a medium pace and not make headway. Viz was a hazy 20' at best with a slight green tint. There were a few jellies out and rare clumps of june grass.
Things seem to be normal for now, so the pool is still open!
At the jetties there was no oil, sheen, or tar balls. SeaLife seemed to be doing well. I could hear the crackle of barnacles all over the place. I saw lots of different species of fish - atlantic croakers, mullet, blue runners, cigar minnows, sargent majors, damsels, blennies, pigfish, toadfish, wrasse, doctorfish, and one very annoying shark sucker that wanted a ride. I was at the end of the rocks that are visible above water and over the flat that extends out beyond that when I thought I felt a wrasse nipping at my stomach. I brushed my chest and seconds later I felt it again. I looked down to see a 2 foot sucker trying to attach to my underside. I knocked it away with my arm and it circled and came back toward me. I punched it and it came back again. I finally swam at it in a threat pose and it backed off long enough for me to swim past some other snorkelers. I guess he decided to bother them because I didn't see him after that. There were a fair amount of crabs (stone, blue, and hermit) crawling the rocks.
The water was very warm up in the shallows and was cooler but not bad at the end of the rocks. There was a strong current coming in at the end of the rocks until almost the time I got out at around 12:30. It was strong enough that you could swim at a medium pace and not make headway. Viz was a hazy 20' at best with a slight green tint. There were a few jellies out and rare clumps of june grass.
Things seem to be normal for now, so the pool is still open!
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Will be down their next week and want to get a dive in. We'll see.
