MRXRAY
Contributor
The West Florida Dive Club had it's May outing planned for this weekend and Wow did it ever turn out to be a gorgeous weekend for it. Hetland met me at my house at 6:00 AM we loaded up his gear and we stopped to pick up BellaBeachGirl on our way and the rest of our tail at Publix in Navarre and were on our way at about 6:45 AM. The ride went quick and we were at the Park in no time and just after the 8:00 AM opening. We secured the closest large Pavillion and set up base camp for the cookout for later.
All the help made this fly and we found ourselves done and setup with plenty of time so we all headed down for some snorkeling. The water temp was fantastic and the viz was too. We goofed around in the Kiddie pool and near the exit to the channel for a good hour before we headed back up to set up for our first of two dives.
Most of the crew had already shown up and we had a few trickle in a bit late and we ended up starting our dive briefing a bit later than expected. We had a quick breifing and before long we were all headed toward the water. The whole group splashed at about 11:22 AM and most of us made our way to the right and toward the deeper water and the gulf. The particlualte wasn't bad at all and I had the viz at around 25-30 feet.....WOW! This was going to be some great diving. I stuck with JHayes who had driven over from LA with his family and Hetland as we slowly made our way taking pictures as we went. One of the group pointed out a great find an Ocellated Frog Fish which had not doen a very good job of blending into its background.....A great find and some awesome pictures (See below). We slowly made our way down the slope to what I logged as 67 feet before turning and heading back. We saw just a ton of life and I've attached a few pictures below (More are in my Photobucket under this dive heading/date).
I ended the first dive with a max depth of 67 feet for 49 minutes and the min temp....... 79* ! Oh do I love summer time!!! I dove in just my .5 mm wetsuit and was comfortable the whole dive.
We had planned to cook between dives but due to the approaching tide we decided to turn around relatively quickly and hit it again before the high tide caught us. We changed tanks and splashed again after a one hour surface interval at 1:14 PM. We headed right down the same route but stayed a bit higher up most of this dive and again took our time and snapped pics the whole way. I think I ended up with 240 pictures in the two dives and snorkel of which about 150 were worth keeping. The second dive was just as awesome as the first with great viz and awesome temps. This dive I recorded a min temp. 79* and a max depth of 66 feet for 72 minutes. We all then spent a couple of hours debriefing, looking at pics and enjoying each others company and the retell of my Shark Encounter, while we ate Hotdogs and Hamburgers courtesy of the WFDC (West Florida Dive Club). It was an AWESOME day of diving and I really enjoyed the company as much as the diving. Here are a few pics:
Slippery Dick Wrasse:
Blue Angelfish:
Filefish:
Damsel Fish:
Toadfish:
Ocellated Frogfish:
Ocellated Frogfish Closeup (See the small lure on top of his head?)
Stareye Hermit Crab:
Cowfish:
Cubbyu:
Seaweed Blenny:
Cocoa Damselfish:
Jackknife fish:
Striped Burrfish:
Veriegated Urchin:
Pigfish:
All the help made this fly and we found ourselves done and setup with plenty of time so we all headed down for some snorkeling. The water temp was fantastic and the viz was too. We goofed around in the Kiddie pool and near the exit to the channel for a good hour before we headed back up to set up for our first of two dives.
Most of the crew had already shown up and we had a few trickle in a bit late and we ended up starting our dive briefing a bit later than expected. We had a quick breifing and before long we were all headed toward the water. The whole group splashed at about 11:22 AM and most of us made our way to the right and toward the deeper water and the gulf. The particlualte wasn't bad at all and I had the viz at around 25-30 feet.....WOW! This was going to be some great diving. I stuck with JHayes who had driven over from LA with his family and Hetland as we slowly made our way taking pictures as we went. One of the group pointed out a great find an Ocellated Frog Fish which had not doen a very good job of blending into its background.....A great find and some awesome pictures (See below). We slowly made our way down the slope to what I logged as 67 feet before turning and heading back. We saw just a ton of life and I've attached a few pictures below (More are in my Photobucket under this dive heading/date).
I ended the first dive with a max depth of 67 feet for 49 minutes and the min temp....... 79* ! Oh do I love summer time!!! I dove in just my .5 mm wetsuit and was comfortable the whole dive.
We had planned to cook between dives but due to the approaching tide we decided to turn around relatively quickly and hit it again before the high tide caught us. We changed tanks and splashed again after a one hour surface interval at 1:14 PM. We headed right down the same route but stayed a bit higher up most of this dive and again took our time and snapped pics the whole way. I think I ended up with 240 pictures in the two dives and snorkel of which about 150 were worth keeping. The second dive was just as awesome as the first with great viz and awesome temps. This dive I recorded a min temp. 79* and a max depth of 66 feet for 72 minutes. We all then spent a couple of hours debriefing, looking at pics and enjoying each others company and the retell of my Shark Encounter, while we ate Hotdogs and Hamburgers courtesy of the WFDC (West Florida Dive Club). It was an AWESOME day of diving and I really enjoyed the company as much as the diving. Here are a few pics:
Slippery Dick Wrasse:
Blue Angelfish:
Filefish:
Damsel Fish:
Toadfish:
Ocellated Frogfish:
Ocellated Frogfish Closeup (See the small lure on top of his head?)
Stareye Hermit Crab:
Cowfish:
Cubbyu:
Seaweed Blenny:
Cocoa Damselfish:
Jackknife fish:
Striped Burrfish:
Veriegated Urchin:
Pigfish:
