Rick, GREAT report, and I can relate to much of it. Very sad, too. I've seen incredible changes in the Keys reefs since I became familiar with those waters in the mid-seventies.
Dive Stories From Back In The Day?
- Thread starter RickI
- Start date
Please register or login
Oh yes I do! First time I went with all my gear and got a bottle of No Fog. Next year I went with fins mask snorkel and got some stuff that did not fit. Traded for cash.
OP
RickI
Contributor
Thanks Debby, it is quite an impact looking back. With change happening slowly over time, it can be easier to take in. I was just in Cozumel diving for the first time since 1973. I recall Palancar as the most incredibly diverse and robust reef that I had seen, in large measure even up to today. It has changed a good deal too, can still picture the wall and coral back then, excellent blue water viz. too. It is still a great dive, just different. Lots of changes in such a short time. Visibility has dropped even up here in SE mainland Florida. Back in the day, if you went out into a few hundred feet of water or more, it was intensely clear with a unique cobalt blue cast. Been out there a lot in the last few years for free diving training sessions on the float. Sixty foot, slightly turbid viz. is more the norm these days. Did have some astounding 110 ft. perhaps greater viz. days late in the fall this year though and over wrecks closer to shore. Felt good to see those conditions.
Rick, I remember my first beach dives off Broward circa 1981-ish. It was a very short swim out to the reef and it was so beautiful! Now between pollution, beach renourishment, and everything else, the swim out to the good part of the reef is 30-40 minutes and that's not because I got older!
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE diving here, and there is still so much beauty, but because I know "how it used to be", sometimes I weep just a little bit. :depressed:
OP
RickI
Contributor
I grew up seeing, even studying distressed corals in our more turbid, cooler water off Broward. That in part made visiting reefs in great shape in most of the Keys, excluding parts off Key West even in 1972, the Bahamas and Cozumel all the better. You could even see old (real old) remnants of elkhorn assemblages on parts of the second and third reefs off Ft. Lauderdale. Our reefs resembled those of the Florida Reef Tract off the Keys at one time, we even had two barrier reefs off here sheltering lagoons (the second and third reef terraces today). Glacial recession and deepening water changed that about 10,000 BP last time around. It is tough to see what fairly common coral distress in our transition area reef years back occurring over a much wider basis today. Some good news, abundant staghorn colonies vanished off Ft. Lauderdale well before my time here. Yet, by appearances earlier this summer, staghorn is exploding over large portions of the second and first reef in areas. So, things are changing, hopefully some of the changes are easier to take like the staghorn comeback.
Have you ever seen Ken Banks' excellent presentation on Broward reefs? From how your post reads, you have a lot of that information.
OP
RickI
Contributor
No I haven't, we trade emails every once in a while over misc. stuff offshore here. I was fairly obsessed with reef distress as a teen down here and did a lot of research on the subject and observation offshore. Ken and I went through Ocean Engineering together at FAU a while back. I bet he has put a good presentation together, really like those reef laser tomography images they commissioned at EPD. I'll email him to see when he will give it again. Thanks for the heads up.
A high school buddy was the cook on the Impossible Dream until they ran it into the NW Channel marker in the middle of the night returning from the Bahamas.
Rick, If he does let me know where. He presented to Kayuba a few months back, awesome stuff.
Last edited:
Similar threads
