MRXRAY
Contributor
Well despite NOAA's imperfect wave height predication Recharge, Sontek, and grouper321 (Our bubble watcher) made our way offshore to the Dredge Avocet (About 23 Miles nearly due south of the pass) we got a little beat up as we played in some 4-6 foot rollers on the trip out and then thought it best to live boat the site due to the size of the swells coming out of the east. I dropped on the wreck at 1127 and made my way down toward the bottom through a layer of heavy silt, But once I got to about 40 feet it started to open up and by the time I hit 60 feet I had a clear view of the bottom some 40 feet below. We didn't get right on top of the wreck so I had to battle a fierce bottom current to get to the wreck and tie out buoy in...And man do I mean the current was KICKING! By the time I got us tied in to the bow I was out of wind and had to set a collect myself before I continued. I shot some video of the area and jumped aft a little bit but felt I better watch how far I went as the current was a bit to much to fight so I stayed within 100 feet of the bow and explored the "Caynon" created from the bow being split apart from the rest of the ship. Threre was a huge goliath grouper the most pretty kind of mustard yellow but he moved through the "Canyon" so quickly from one hole to another I never got a chance to take a picture or any video of him. There were a lot of nice fish and although I did my best to put a couple on the boat, I lost both the fish due to I can only guess poor placed shots. I put the viz at around 70-80 feet and I ended the dive after 34 minutes with a max depth of 107 and I posted a min temp of 65*, but there was a huge thermocline and at the surface the temp was in the low 70's!.....Finally!
Even though I tried to communicate to Recharge to leave our buoy tied into the wreck for dive #2 he returned with the chain so we decided that we'd head to another site on the way back in.
We talked about a second site to hit and I love the structure and the condition of Tug Philip so away we went to explore her a bit more. Sontek and I splashed at 1358 and made our way down out bouy line to the tug. We had dropped the anchor right onto the wreck so we had no problem finding her and the viz was outstanding here as well pushing about 40-50 feet. There weren't many legal fish here so I took some video of sontek and the wreck and a shark that came into investigate the noise and a dead fish which tore off. It was a nice second dive which was puctuated by a great shark encounter within feet of me. I tired to snap some photos but there was just to much particulate so I then switched to video in time to see the shark pulling the dying fish from underneath the wreck where he had hid from us..... A great dive. I showed a bottom time of 31 minutes with a max depth of 101 and a min temp of 65 with a nice warm thermmocline at about 40 feet.
Even though I tried to communicate to Recharge to leave our buoy tied into the wreck for dive #2 he returned with the chain so we decided that we'd head to another site on the way back in.
We talked about a second site to hit and I love the structure and the condition of Tug Philip so away we went to explore her a bit more. Sontek and I splashed at 1358 and made our way down out bouy line to the tug. We had dropped the anchor right onto the wreck so we had no problem finding her and the viz was outstanding here as well pushing about 40-50 feet. There weren't many legal fish here so I took some video of sontek and the wreck and a shark that came into investigate the noise and a dead fish which tore off. It was a nice second dive which was puctuated by a great shark encounter within feet of me. I tired to snap some photos but there was just to much particulate so I then switched to video in time to see the shark pulling the dying fish from underneath the wreck where he had hid from us..... A great dive. I showed a bottom time of 31 minutes with a max depth of 101 and a min temp of 65 with a nice warm thermmocline at about 40 feet.
