MRXRAY
Contributor
Yes! Yes! Yes! What an awesome day of diving at the Pier! Dove with some new friends and met quite a few more! I met wdunne311 at the Paking lot at 9:30 and we hit the water about 9:45. I had talked wdunne311 out of diving in a 5mm but once he got in the water he decided to go back for it while I held onto his Gear in the water.....Sorry Man! So....We finally got under at 10:05 and made our way out to the break. For anyone diving or planning a dive to Navarre here is what I recommend. Blow past all the first section of pier and the missing section, just burn through it as fast as you can without making yourself tired. There is a lot more to see out further and once you get down to 700-800 lbs and are on your way back in follow the pier back up and burn the tank down to 500 or so in the 10 feet of water in the first section. I see a lot of people spending a lot of time here in the first pier section...... Save it for the return trip. (Just a tip).
OK back to the dive! We made it to the beginning of the second section and made our way right to the pier rubble. I have to tell you that even with the neap tide in the last couple days more of the pier rubble is being exposed everyday....Weird I know, but stuff that I had seen before Ike and then lost after Ike is now coming back again....Awesome!!!! We were taking in the sights of the dive.....Maybe 15 feet of viz around the rubble when I saw a huge turtle swim ahead of us and away from us. Being that this was my first dive with Brad I didn't want to take off hell bent after him and leave my dive buddy in my silt wondering where'd he go. So I turned and motioned to him what I had seen. Now think to yourself how do you tell your buddy that you just seen a huge turtle. I tried several things includig trying to say the word tur-tle in his ear....No go, just shrugs. I used my flapping bird signal which I use for rays and added the #4, and I think he may have got it. But no matter....Not more than 4 minutes later I was yelling and motioning for him to come.....He was Back!!!! He was HUGE!!! Probably 3 feet across and 4+ from head to tail! It's hard to describe the feeling of watching these magnificent giants grace... So exciting! We took some awesome pics and videos of the turtle and then let him be and swam on. We had another visit to our residnet scorpionfish, I got some more great pics of him! He is a great subject! We saw some Queen Angels, and a brood with her, some sea cucumbers have show up and we saw some nice sized schools of Red Snapper, AJ's, some smaller Grouper, a lot of Rays/Skates, and about 6 Octopus. We had one awesome encounter where he Octopus came out and swam around the piling giving us somw nice videos and pics. All in all, an awesome dive. I'll post pics below of a few! wdunne311, be sure to add a few more!!!!
After dive #1 I met up with CMUFieldHockey8 and we dove the same again. And saw much of the same things, I was diving on a short tank I had burned saw air out of investigating P'Cola but still had a great dive with the girls even though I had to cut it short. Thanks for the dive girls!
Water temp was 77deg on dive #1 and 78deg on #2. Max depth 24 feet, and we got 72 minutes on dive #1 and 60 minutes on #2.
OK back to the dive! We made it to the beginning of the second section and made our way right to the pier rubble. I have to tell you that even with the neap tide in the last couple days more of the pier rubble is being exposed everyday....Weird I know, but stuff that I had seen before Ike and then lost after Ike is now coming back again....Awesome!!!! We were taking in the sights of the dive.....Maybe 15 feet of viz around the rubble when I saw a huge turtle swim ahead of us and away from us. Being that this was my first dive with Brad I didn't want to take off hell bent after him and leave my dive buddy in my silt wondering where'd he go. So I turned and motioned to him what I had seen. Now think to yourself how do you tell your buddy that you just seen a huge turtle. I tried several things includig trying to say the word tur-tle in his ear....No go, just shrugs. I used my flapping bird signal which I use for rays and added the #4, and I think he may have got it. But no matter....Not more than 4 minutes later I was yelling and motioning for him to come.....He was Back!!!! He was HUGE!!! Probably 3 feet across and 4+ from head to tail! It's hard to describe the feeling of watching these magnificent giants grace... So exciting! We took some awesome pics and videos of the turtle and then let him be and swam on. We had another visit to our residnet scorpionfish, I got some more great pics of him! He is a great subject! We saw some Queen Angels, and a brood with her, some sea cucumbers have show up and we saw some nice sized schools of Red Snapper, AJ's, some smaller Grouper, a lot of Rays/Skates, and about 6 Octopus. We had one awesome encounter where he Octopus came out and swam around the piling giving us somw nice videos and pics. All in all, an awesome dive. I'll post pics below of a few! wdunne311, be sure to add a few more!!!!
After dive #1 I met up with CMUFieldHockey8 and we dove the same again. And saw much of the same things, I was diving on a short tank I had burned saw air out of investigating P'Cola but still had a great dive with the girls even though I had to cut it short. Thanks for the dive girls!
Water temp was 77deg on dive #1 and 78deg on #2. Max depth 24 feet, and we got 72 minutes on dive #1 and 60 minutes on #2.
