Dive Report for the last big weekend of the summer

[Puffer Fish]

Managed to dive with Pat out of Panama City, then with a friend in Destin and finally with Scuba Tech....Great dives every day. Will be posting photos later, but will start with the last dive on Monday...after everyone went back to the boat...was trying to take pictures of a octo... when this happened:

Note.. this is a very compressed video.. the original is much, much nicer, but also 28 meg...

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/data/500/bridgerubble3.wmv

More to come......

 

[pamawi]

Wow, what a lot of fish in one place and moving so fast and erractically. Was there a big predator in the area? What was the louder noise at the end?

 

[Puffer Fish]

Wow, what a lot of fish in one place and moving so fast and erractically. Was there a big predator in the area? What was the louder noise at the end?

Noise.. hummm. Guess I should plug my speakers in. The seas on the surface were around 5 ft at the time (storm moving in)...so there was lots of banging going on, and there were several boats that were rushing to get back to the harbor..

No big predator, the Bar Jacks were feeding on the bait fish.. which sort of upset them. You are only seeing about 20% of that school.. it was circling them. And on the other side a hundred or so Amberjack were also taking advantage of the situation.

 

[Puffer Fish]

So, the first day was diving inshore from Panama City.. that means bridge spans and wrecks that everyone dives... but there is still stuff to take pictures of.

First... the usual:

 

[Puffer Fish]

Then, a new species of hermit crab (for me).. which now makes 5... love the eyes on this one:

Then, out in the sand there were these huge mounds... with a large hole in the middle... strange looking, with this in them:

I believe this Mantis shrimp is the spearing version...so decided not to play with it.

Some fish on the bridge junk:

There was a goliath grouper, but just did a video of it...

So ended day one.

 

[Puffer Fish]

Day two was out of Destin, and thanks to Dave, we were going to a new reef for me and the north stack of the bridge rubble...the north stack is interesting, in that it has lots of frog fish...

We saw 5 in total.. but the above were in the best places for pictures.

Then we ran into these guys:

and then these guys:

And then these guys: (boring, I know)

And just to make things a bit better:

I have to say that was one amazing day, thanks to Dave and his skill at both getting to the right place and then pointing out the good stuff (did not hurt to have Lisa and Rebecca along, as they are both great divers).

 

[Puffer Fish]

So, Day three has got to be a let down... but Nancy is taking the Sea Cobra to a new reef... ok, it was not "new", just not one that a lot of people have been on... how cool is that.

To say it was teeming with life would be an understatement:

We followed that up with the main stack and the video that I started the thread with...huge fun.

But between the start and the end, did get a couple of pictures in:

All in all, not a bad weekend.

 

[oceanbound]

it was a great weekend! hope to dive with you again soon! As always, I LOVE the pictures. oh but you forgot to post one picture, the one of you!

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Great pictures as usual

 

[Puffer Fish]

it was a great weekend! hope to dive with you again soon! As always, I LOVE the pictures. oh but you forgot to post one picture, the one of you!

Well, thankfully I don't seem to have any of me... which saves SB members from the torture. The whole weekend was fun, but Sunday was a very special couple of dives..due both the people and the location...