MRXRAY
Contributor
King Neptune must have been mighty happy with us because he sure set the bar very high with yesterdays dives. This according to the current charts was supposed to be a very low current morning/afternoon.......Check! The Tides were supposed to be just high enough to give us clean water but not enough to keep the channel ripping......Check! And the weather man siad Sunny, very little wind and seas of 1-2 feet......Check! WoW!!!! Anybody that was out yesterday was I'm sure very happy that they went as the weather was AWESOME!!!
I met Recharge and Brandon at 5:45 AM at Larrys house to load the boat and we were on our way shortly after. We made good time and were at the boat ramp by 6:15 and on our way by 6:30 AM. The bay was flat calm and the gulf was slick. Can I say it enough....WOW!
We splashed on the Mass at 07:25 AM and made our way down our anchor rope to the middle of the wreck. Now I have told myself time and time again that I won't try to spear and photograph but here I was again with a speargun in one hand and my camera in the other....... Silly me. What I ended up with was no fish and some okay shots. I only shot video on the first dive since I was carrying a speargun. But it turned out to be some nice video, although I'm going to need some serious editing before I can post the video I took. Recharge and I splashed together on the first dive and together we went exploring. What a nice wreck this is, and with no currrent and about 40 feet of viz it was unbelievable! We had a max depth of 29 feet and marked a min temp of 74*. There is a thick layer of tannic water in the first 5-10 feet but after that it opened right up to 40 feet. We made our way down the Starboard side toward the stern then went up the port side toward the bow. Inside of what remains of the bow section was a Goliath Grouper, What a site it was as I slid up to it from behind, I had my video rolling and watched as it slowly slid out of its "Cave" and wandered out into the blue.... What a massive creature. I'd estimate him at 5 feet and I can't even begin to guess on the weight...... But BIG! I continued down around the Starboard side and made my way down toward the stern again and made some jumps to the amid ships and turret and turret lid. I was so excited about the prospect of seing the "Jew Fish" again that I returned after about 10 minutes hoping he'd returned but instead of the jew fish we found a 7 foot nurse shark in the same spot. We watched and I took video as it slowly made its wasy out of the hole and out into the blue...... Wow!!!!! A short time later we saw a nice reef shark swimming away from us... I kept thinking, can this dive get any better?
We thumbed the dive after 77 minutes and made our way to the boat for a short surface interval.
About this time the raving mad boat from Bay Breeze showed up with some of the shop employees and the boss himself! We all splashed about the same time which was high tide (09:30AM) for what was my second dive and again we made our way to the stern this time with me just carrying my camera. A whold new world popped up in front of me when I wasn't looking for fish to shoot and I counted a total of 13 Octopus on this dive and got some nice shots plus a wolf Cowry out moving around, and I got some nice shots of some reef fish. We ended up dive number 2 with 63 minutes of bottom time and just a ton of pics. I felt the viz had dropped off just a bit in a few spots where there was a salinity difference. But the temp was up a degree to 75*.
Dive #3 for me was again just with camera and I took some more pics of the Octopus and stuff, I was diving with a spearfishing buddy so it made it hard to stop and take pics and I ended up just looking more than taking pictures. By the start of the third dive at 11:40 the viz had dropped a bit more to about 20 feet and the current was stronger in a couple of places mainly at the stern but it was managable. All in all a great day in the water and a fantastic day of diving....WOW!!!..... See there you made me say it again!
I'll post a few pics in a minute!
I met Recharge and Brandon at 5:45 AM at Larrys house to load the boat and we were on our way shortly after. We made good time and were at the boat ramp by 6:15 and on our way by 6:30 AM. The bay was flat calm and the gulf was slick. Can I say it enough....WOW!
We splashed on the Mass at 07:25 AM and made our way down our anchor rope to the middle of the wreck. Now I have told myself time and time again that I won't try to spear and photograph but here I was again with a speargun in one hand and my camera in the other....... Silly me. What I ended up with was no fish and some okay shots. I only shot video on the first dive since I was carrying a speargun. But it turned out to be some nice video, although I'm going to need some serious editing before I can post the video I took. Recharge and I splashed together on the first dive and together we went exploring. What a nice wreck this is, and with no currrent and about 40 feet of viz it was unbelievable! We had a max depth of 29 feet and marked a min temp of 74*. There is a thick layer of tannic water in the first 5-10 feet but after that it opened right up to 40 feet. We made our way down the Starboard side toward the stern then went up the port side toward the bow. Inside of what remains of the bow section was a Goliath Grouper, What a site it was as I slid up to it from behind, I had my video rolling and watched as it slowly slid out of its "Cave" and wandered out into the blue.... What a massive creature. I'd estimate him at 5 feet and I can't even begin to guess on the weight...... But BIG! I continued down around the Starboard side and made my way down toward the stern again and made some jumps to the amid ships and turret and turret lid. I was so excited about the prospect of seing the "Jew Fish" again that I returned after about 10 minutes hoping he'd returned but instead of the jew fish we found a 7 foot nurse shark in the same spot. We watched and I took video as it slowly made its wasy out of the hole and out into the blue...... Wow!!!!! A short time later we saw a nice reef shark swimming away from us... I kept thinking, can this dive get any better?
We thumbed the dive after 77 minutes and made our way to the boat for a short surface interval.
About this time the raving mad boat from Bay Breeze showed up with some of the shop employees and the boss himself! We all splashed about the same time which was high tide (09:30AM) for what was my second dive and again we made our way to the stern this time with me just carrying my camera. A whold new world popped up in front of me when I wasn't looking for fish to shoot and I counted a total of 13 Octopus on this dive and got some nice shots plus a wolf Cowry out moving around, and I got some nice shots of some reef fish. We ended up dive number 2 with 63 minutes of bottom time and just a ton of pics. I felt the viz had dropped off just a bit in a few spots where there was a salinity difference. But the temp was up a degree to 75*.
Dive #3 for me was again just with camera and I took some more pics of the Octopus and stuff, I was diving with a spearfishing buddy so it made it hard to stop and take pics and I ended up just looking more than taking pictures. By the start of the third dive at 11:40 the viz had dropped a bit more to about 20 feet and the current was stronger in a couple of places mainly at the stern but it was managable. All in all a great day in the water and a fantastic day of diving....WOW!!!..... See there you made me say it again!
I'll post a few pics in a minute!
