Dive Report: Navarre Pier 10/04/2008

[Hetland]

Rode down to Navare with <*}}><( and his wife. We met up with XRay at around 4:45, and suited up for our first dive. There was a tad bit of surge, but almost no surf. Viz varied from 2-20ft depending on where you were. We saw lots of the usual suspects plus plenty of octopusses, and Chuck, the large turtle that frequents the area. It was a wonderful dive. Second dive was after dark, and while the surf had picked up, the surge was mostly the same. Bad for photo work, but not bothersome otherwise. I'm too tired to give a full report (maybe <*}}><( or XRay will contribute). BIG THANKS to XRay for acting as our tour guide. We would not have seen a fraction of the critters without his directions. Photos below, video to come:

 

[MRXRAY]

Nice Pictures! I might add the temp had come up a little more and I had it a 78.7*. The surge really messed things up all day. The issue is that the rubble is all in a bowl with the center being at 24 feet and the outside or rim of the bowl being at 16 feet, so all the debris that is there has no place to go so it just sits and sildes back and forth and the muck at the bottom turns to a black cloud. A lot of times you can just swim around it to get to your next area which we did last night a couple times. But it is still an awesome dive. We had so many neat encounters with Octopus last night! We saw the giant Octopus (By my standards) in the PVC again, and a smaller one had caught a blue crab and we watched it slowly envelope the whole thing with just a claw sticking out.....It was so neat to watch. We saw Chunk in his usual spot but he must of had enough swimming with us earlier as he never came out of his hiding spot to play. We did see the smaller turtle with only one barnacle on her back, that's the one the pictures are of. She was a real ham too until we all took are lights off her, then she was gone!!! We got some real nice video and pics of an Octopus out in the open sand too, it was wild to watch it running around. Again lots of salt water Cats, a striped burrfish, and tons of Scrawled Cowfish everywhere. We saw a couple small squid too. The night dive had a Bottom time of 84 minutes and max depth of 24 feet.

The day dive was much of the same except for the amount of Octopus activity and another noticed lack of fish. We did see a couple schools of small red snapper, some small to medium grouper, a school of Red Drum (big 'uns) came through which caught my eye and I looked to the surface and there almost at the surface was a huge barracuda! I got so excited to show my dive buddy and have a witness that I forgot to take a picture! Even with the surge and low viz at times I'd still cal it a great dive, made only better by the great friends and conversations of both past and future encounters!

 

[Hetland]

Thanks for posting XRay. I look forward to seeing your pics and vids. and thanks again for being our tour guide!

 

[MRXRAY]

Here are a couple pics:

Octopus:

Octopus eating a blue Crab (Guess I'm not the only oe that likes those crabs)

Turtle:

 

[MRXRAY]

Here's a video of one of our Octopus. My photo light is turning off when the flash from Alex's camera is triggered, but otherwise nice video:

 

[MRXRAY]

Unedited Octopus Video #2:

 

[<*}}><(]

I guess I can't really add a lot to the description of these dives, but I wanted to say that this set of dives were far superior to every other dive I've ever done at Navarre, and even better than a lot of the boat dives I've been on.
From the smallest squid I've ever seen to the largest sting ray and octopus I've ever seen, there's TONS of wildlife to watch (and TURTLES to pet!) here.
Furthermore, being so shallow, this site offers maximum bottom time with which to visit all of these critters.

Don't underestimate this dive spot, and don't give up on it after a bad day here with extremely low vis, rough surge, etc... True, I've had dives here that weren't worth washing my gear for, but now I've had some fantastic dives here as well, and I can guarantee I'll be back!

Thanks to both Hetland and MRXRAY for the great pics and vids, and a SUPER-SIZED Thank You to MRXRAY for being such an excellent tour guide! I couldn't ask for better buddies, or friends!

 

[Hetland]

Doh! sorry for killing your vids XRay. Really nice movement you caught though. Good job.

 

[MRXRAY]

Doh! sorry for killing your vids XRay. Really nice movement you caught though. Good job.

NP. It's one of the quirky things with a video light to have it turn off during the strobe firing..... I never knew though that it was with all strobe firings, not just my own. So it made me laugh when it turned off.

 

[MRXRAY]

The diving has been way to good to set down and edit the pictures I've taken buy I did one or two: