Dive Report: Ft. Pickens: 03 Oct 2009 Night Dive

[MRXRAY]

Mr. and Mrs. Fish decided to come out of Scuba retirement and Join Hetland and myself at Ft. Pickens for a night dive. Mrs. Xray had some errands to run so that left me a small window of opportunity to sneak away for a quick dive. So away I headed anxious to get back into the warm Gulf water after a week of work in the cold North. As Walter had mentioned in an earlier post the water is cooling off on the surface, in fact it was down right cold! Now mind you I'm still in my .5 mm wetsuit, but even I was feeling this water! As the four of us made our ascent it became evident quickly that the cold water is just on the surface to about 10 feet, under it was that wonderful warm bath water that I was hoping, And praying for at this point. As we reached the upright tire for tie in I noticed the viz was also picking up from the slightly tannic water we had seen on the surface. It was shaping up to be a great dive. Not a minute after tying in we came across a door mat sized flounder and moments later we saw our first of several Octopus out in the open. this one was moving slowly across the rocks on its way back to the Organ. We watched and played with it a bit as it moved through the darkness! Man I love Octopus. So we then turned West and slowly made our way down the "Shelf" of rocks taking pictures and playing with the life as we went. I ended up with some real nice pictures and a couple of videos, Which I'll post next. Dive time was 76 minutes at a max depth of 48 feet with a min temp of 80*. I had to get moving to make it home before the Mrs. Xray got wind of my absence but the others were planning another dive as I left, so more from them, I'm sure.

 

[MRXRAY]

Octopus pictures:

 

[MRXRAY]

Other Pictures from the dive:

Money Shot:

 

[msuman]

Nice pics.

 

[MRXRAY]

Video from the Night Dive:

Scuba Diving at Ft. Pickens.... At Night! on Vimeo

 

[Hetland]

The first dive was awesome, and the second was even better! XRay, the Fishes and I hung out for a few minutes after the first dive, and ate some delicious sandwiches that Mrs. Fish had prepared. After Barry left we made our way back to the tire and tied in. I had salvaged a length of rope on the first dive, and tied it off to a smaller tire just to the East of the main tire in order to use that for tie-ins.

We roughly traced our first route on the second dive as I wanted to show the Fishes the GIANT gag that Barry and I had seen on our first dive. This behemoth was barely stuffed in a large culvert, and if I didn't know better I would have guessed he was a juvenile goliath. Hopefully no one will mess with him, as it's these big fish that make lots of baby fishes, and if there's one thing we need, it's more grouper. Sadly, I could not find the culvert again. I knew we were close, but there was just so much to see, that it was hard to justify too much searching, even with a giant grouper at the end of the rainbow.

On the second dive we saw Sextapus again, flounder, live murexes, banded tulips, several species of puffers, toadfish and cowfish, Frenchy of course, and more of what we saw on the first dive. There was also a convention of stingrays in town. We saw between 20 and 30 stingrays, from small to vary large. I've never seen so many rays in a single day, much less a single dive. On both dives we also saw maybe half a dozen torpedo rays, one of which was almost completely buried in the sand. Luckily none of us got a sampling of their electrical abilities.

At some point I captured a small blue crab, which, unfortunately for him, would become a snacrifice to one of our eight-armed buddies. I signaled the Fishes, and hauled a$$ to the closest octopus den. The octopus closest to us had seemed skittish earlier, and had even charged me when I first inspected his diggs ( I honestly expected a beaking, but it was just a show). I offered up his snacrifice, but he was not interested a bit, and retreated into his den. After a few seconds I concluded that I would need the whole dive (or more) to earn his trust, so I left him in peace and headed to the organ. I found the next octopus, and showed him the crab. He immediately smacked my glove, but latched onto my glove and not the crab. The crab worked his way free, and ran for his life, perching under a ledge. Alas, for the crab, he ended up back in my hand, and dangling in front of the same octopus, who was now interested in moving away from me. I followed for a few seconds, and finally got the octopus to notice the crab again. He politely took the crab, and immediately stopped moving. He settled over the crab, and you could almost sense that he understood that we were feeding him, and not trying to feed ON him. We left him to enjoy his grub, and furthered our explorations.

After we surfaced and rinsed off some of the salt and sand, we headed to McGuire's for their pub menu. Mr. Fish had the fish and chips and Mrs. Fish and I both got hamburgers. I got carded at the door but they made up for it by bringing me four glasses of tea at the same time (while leaving the Fishes with only a single glass of water each ). It was the perfect wrap-up of a perfect set of dives. I was really happy to finally have the Fishes out diving again, and hope to find them in the water more soon. I hate that Barry missed out on the second dive and on McGuire's, but maybe next time we can get the whole group together.

Torpedo Ray

Frenchy

Banded Tulip

Sextapus

 

[Hetland]

Video from the Night Dive:

Scuba Diving at Ft. Pickens.... At Night! on Vimeo

LOL at your choice of music! Very appropriate.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Thanks for the report

 

[jhayes75]

Very nice, Love the video. I can't wait for next week.

 

[wjefferis]

Nice pictures sounds like a great dive. Next time y'all plan on hitting Ft. Pickens call or PM a brotha .