Detailed Flower Gardens Dive report

[TwoBitTxn]

This is going to be long. And from my point of view.

After a long night of light sleep I woke up feeling dizzy and a little discombobulated. The wind was blowing pretty good and I was looking at 4-5' waves with 6's thrown in the mix. I grabbed a light b-fast and shortly tossed it back up.. I wasn't the only one looking green either. I started to feel better after clearing my stomach. Gear up time was called and we were given a good briefing of the conditions and what to expect. We were also told there was a BIG Manta down there just hanging out feeding. Diving with Texas Mike we hit the water and swam to the granny line to the bouy line and down we went. Lots of colorful stony corals, brain corals, fire corals, and your standard carribean reef fish. Didn't see the manta on this dive but we did see a spotted moray. The current wasn't bad on the bottom. Barracuda seemed to be just hanging out everywhere. Some between 5 and 6ft long. The safety stop at 20ft we flapped in the current like a flag. It got brutal at times. Max depth 71 feet for 34 min. Back on the surface with 1250psi. Its time for breakfast. Sausage egg and cheese biscuits. I'm hungry.

Mandatory two hour surface interval back in we go. Mike was already at the junction of the granny line and the bouy line when I was comming down the granny line and the manta shows up. She was huge. Had about an 18" remora attached to one side. She was just flapping along with her mouth agape feeding. I start yelling into my reg to get Mikes attention and point. She hung about for ten minutes or so then left. The surge on the reef picked up and I quickly learned not to fight it. I saw one greenish variety bearded fire worm which looks like a fuzzy centipede cruising along a patch of brain coral, another one that was curled up in a nook, it fuzzed when I poked it with a gloved finger, and a trumpet fish. Some of the barracuda got a little too close for my taste. Maybe he liked having his picture taken I dunno. Max depth 75ft bottom time 27 min. Back on the surface with 1000 psi. By the end of this dive the seas had calmed some. Its lunch time. The boat also moves from bouy #3 to #4. We are on the East bank. The west bank was too crowded.

Number 3 and 4 are really much of the same stuff. Waves have calmed down but the current and surge havn't. Still flapping on safety stop.
Dinner was roasted Pork Loin... oh man that woman can cook.....She also owns the boat

#5 Night dive. Red night shrimps eyes glow red when your dive light hits them. Eeeeerie... One adult spotted drum and two juvenile. I guess the juveniles just grow into that dorsal fin. Several file clams and a brittle star. I almost forgot to mention. This place is christmas tree worm heaven. Saw the tail end of a spanish lobster too.
Time to move to Stetson Bank. I woke up as soon as the engines cut and it was still about 330.
6:30am wake up call for the 7am dive. We are on a schedule. Fish wise this dive was lacking. Lots of the night fish were gone, but the day fish weren't up yet. HUGE queen, french, and gray angels.. I learned the difference between a juvenile gray and a juvenile french. They look alot the same. Lots of sea urchins. To picture Stetson take a 3 prong garden rake and run it thru soft dirt. The ridges are the coral structures and the valleys are flat spots. It had some cuts inbetween coral heads that were 10-15 ft deep. I oopsed and started off going down current. Realized what I had done and turned around. Wore myself out swimming back. Burned alot of air too. Max depth 79ft for 29 min.
Next dive I did better. We went over the wall and saw some huge porcupine fish. Also saw the biggest sea cucumber I have ever seen. Max depth 101ft for 28min. Note I was not that deep for very long.

I never went into deco. I never boarded the boat with less than 500 lbs. Typically I started to surface with my buddy at about 12-1400 psi. Vis on the east bank was about 100ft and Stetson was about 80 below the thermalcline. By Sunday morning the waves had calmed down to slow rollers of about 2-3 feet.

Thanks for reading,

TwoBit

 

[Dee]

I was hoping someone would post some particulars. Isn't Stetson Bank one of the ugliest reefs you've ever seen? Reminds my of a roadbed construction site! But Man...that place has the babies. It's nickname is The Nursery. You'll find baby everything there, from Moray Eels the size of your thumb, small turtles, dice size Trunkfish, and all the Angel fishes. To me it's the only reason to go there!

I'm sorry ya'll had such conditions but...that's the unpredictable Gulf! Glad you had some decent dives, though.

 

[Corsair]

Couldn't have said it better myself!

As a side note, on the first dive Texass and I found a 6-7 foot nurse shark resting on the bottom under some coral growth. We think he got some decent pictures, but it didn't stick around for an extended photo shoot!

Thanks for setting up an excellent trip Dee, it was well worth it, and I'd do it again!

 

[Dee]

I left as everyone was boarding the boat and was afraid you and Lynette weren't gonna make it. Sure glad you did!

 

[sealskin98]

Lol...sounds like a whirlwind trip...lotta dives and little rest.

Safety stops sound like some I did in Caymans and out of Pensacola...flappin', 'cept the swells were only 2-3 ft. Deco bar and ladder were reeal fun.

The little surface chop in Caymans was a little unusual to me, as the current at depth was non-existent...almost. Surface currents out of Pensacola were about 3 kts....Help!...lol.

Glad you had a great time, I wanna go!

Great report...and I never get sea sick.

(Well, almost. On a big party fishing boat out of Galveston with 4 ft. chop...[keep my eyes on the horizon...go outside...whew] gag gag)

Was nothing like a smaller dive boat.

How come when I got my sea legs I didn't get my sea stomach?

I'm gettin' some of that dramamine equivalent stuff at the pharmacy.

 

[daylight]

Tom,

You reported it good. I enoyed diving with you.

Larry

 

[TwoBitTxn]

Stetson is ugly/beautiful like a Shar Pei dog is ugly/beautiful. The beauty is in the ruggedness and other worldliness look to the reef. (IMHO of course) It isn't the reefs of Coz, or Florida, or the Bahamas. Its stark, and very different looking.

Daylight, thanks I enjoyed having you as a buddy. I always knew where you were going to be.

Seal, Yes I was exhausted when I got home. It took about two days to get totally recovered. I didn't sleep well on the boat.

I did leave out the rig trip.

One the way in the Seasearcher always tries to stop at a rig. The captains favorite was a no so he picked another one. We were warned about the gorgonians and fire coral. We were also warned to watch our depth as the bottom was 200+ Barracuda every where. A school of nice size amber jack came to check up out. The legs and cross members looked like they were covered in snow with the fuzzy white gorgonians. Actually brown with white fuzz. Lots of little reef fish. Some current and surge but manageable. I was perpetually scared of ramming a cross member and impaoling my scalp on fire coral so I was a little paranoid the whole dive. I could have also been feeling the effects of narcosis from the added tiredness. Max depth 94 ft. Average depth 43ft, bottom time 43 min.

TwoBit

 

[Dee]

The legs and cross members looked like they were covered in snow with the fuzzy white gorgonians.

Those were Hydroids! Little buggers will sting you as bad, if not worse, than Fire Coral.

I really like the rigs. Being inside the legs makes me feel like I'm in an aquarium looking out at all the big stuff circling around.

 

[Rockhound]

Stetson Bank, although actually not a live reef, but a series of siltstone ridges forced out of the seabed by salt, is one of my favorite dives. While the firecoral is a negative and the scenery is sorta "forbidding", this is a very unique and exciting place.

Fortunately, there are a couple of boats that run out of Galveston and Freeport that make trips just to that reef, which is also now part of the Marine Sanctuary system. These boats can save you quite a bit of money if all you want to do is visit Stetson for a couple of days.

As for all the critters, the night dives there are even more fantastic than those in the daytime. Plus, on the early morning "twilight" dives, you might get lucky and see the "resident" shark (which I was told was a bull, but it looked like a dusky to me). Anyway, I have to force myself to bring the 15mm on at least one of these dives, because I can shoot a roll of macro on each dive and still feel the need for another camera to keep me shooting.

The current? As divers, we are all guilty of overstating current speeds. A 3 or 4 knots is not only unswimmable, it is almost "unhangeable'. For most folks, a current of 1 to 1.5kts is pretty darn strong--strong enough that it isn't swimmable in scuba.

However, at Stetson, I've seen such outragous currents that the down lines were unuseable. I wouldn't be surprised that the currents were well over 2kts.

On one dive day, we had to go back to the "granny line" when the 100'lb of lead on the downline couldn't keep the divers from dragging it to the surface.

Backing up to the granny and the mooring, the rest of us chose the hang there. Of courese that meant that folks stopping at varying depths from 15' to 25'. Egads. On that occasion, I turned my head to look at a big barracuda, and my mask ended up on the side my head. I couldn't face into the current without holding me hand over my reg, because of the freeflow (and my purge is designed so as not to be "current" sensitive).

It is also pretty surreal when the bubbles from divers below the current take sudden horizontal turns when they hit the shearline at 30 or 40 feet.

Anyway, Stetson is a great dive (did you see the chain morays on the big siltstone head?). Those French Angels are the biggest you'll see anywhere.....

I'm glad you guys had fun....

 

[Dee]

I call Stetson one of the ugliest places I've seen but that's comparing it to a normal reef full of soft and hard corals and their colors. There's no denying the uniqueness of stetson. I mentioned the babies there, but the adults you see all seem to be 3X sized! My first sighting of several fish and creatures were at Stetson, baby Smooth Trunkfish and Chain Morays, for example.

I had to laugh at your description of current speeds, you are so right!