Florida Keys Trip Report

[Chris Sawallich]

Just checked out your pictures... Where did you catch the nurse sharks?? we tried hunting them down all last week ourselfs.. but missed out.. We just missed four of them on the Duane.. We ran into about 6 good sized Reef Sharks at Molasses Reef on Tuesday.. But no Nurse Sharks..


Great Report.. We sent the week last week with Rainbow Reef and Ocean Divers.. Kind of make you have a real appreciation for New England diving.. The vis we had in the begining of the week was probally around 75ft or so.. on Thursday it was a horrid 40ft... If we could ony be so luky up here...... You are right, I could live on the Duane and the Speigel Grove... Amazing diving!!

 

[Vtdiver2]

Just checked out your pictures... Where did you catch the nurse sharks?? we tried hunting them down all last week ourselfs.. but missed out.. We just missed four of them on the Duane.. We ran into about 6 good sized Reef Sharks at Molasses Reef on Tuesday.. But no Nurse Sharks..


Great Report.. We sent the week last week with Rainbow Reef and Ocean Divers.. Kind of make you have a real appreciation for New England diving.. The vis we had in the begining of the week was probally around 75ft or so.. on Thursday it was a horrid 40ft... If we could ony be so luky up here...... You are right, I could live on the Duane and the Speigel Grove... Amazing diving!!

The picture of the nurse sharks were taken at the City of Washington , but the largest Nurse shark we saw was at Samantha's Reef down in Marathon. It was close to 9ft long. I'll try to get a shot of it uploaded this weekend.
Sadly, the best shark sighting we had, I didn't get a picture of. We were diving at Carys Fort Reef in 25 ft of water. I was 5-10 ft ahead of my dive buddy when I saw a 5 -7 ft hammerhead shark about 35-50 ft ahead of me. I got my camera ready, hoping it might circle in so I could get a shot. I could hear my dive buddy screaming behind me and I thought "Yes, I see it ahead of me, shut up and don't scare it away". About 30 seconds later I turned to check on her, only to see a much larger hammerhead diasappearing behind her. It appears that the two sharks were swimming paralell to each other, and while I was watching one, the other came up within 10 ft beside me before turning and swimming past my dive buddy. She told me after the dive that the shark that came up beside me was larger than I was, and I'm 6'3 and weigh 250 lbs. I'm still disappointed I didn't get a shot of either one.
I was happy with the vis all week, although the operators told us it was disappointing. My thought has always been that the worse the vis, the smaller you scale things. When vis is down, I look for the small things, and got shots of flamingo tongues, bridled gobies, sharpnosed puffers, juvenile spotted drums, and many other "macro" things. The dives are just as enjoyable, and perhaps even more so, as I sometimes find things I rarely or have never seen before. It's all in your perspective.
C-Dawg

 

[Buoyant1]

I got the same thing when I was down in January! Vis is crappy, WELL compared to quarry dives it's damn good! hahahaha!!!

I was down in July 2 summers ago and the viz was endless, so to their credit......

snip
I was happy with the vis all week, although the operators told us it was disappointing. snip C-Dawg