Jupiter 05/19/2006

[Orlando Eric]

Escape from Work day. Diving the reefs of Jupiter. I hope to see the ever present shark or three. I very often see a shark when diving Jupiter, certainly turtles galore.

Perhaps a visit with Scarface the friendly Moray. If anyone wants to join me for a serene 'go with the flow' Escape from work day.

Jupiter is 80' dive with Ledges ranging from 4' to 15' in relif. Awesome dives and I never get tired of diving these sites.

Sign up Temptation

 

[Orlando Eric]

Opps I did not see that we are all segregated by regions now! Maybe Marvelious will give me a Wave of the Magic Wand and put this post in the proper region.

So does this mean I am stuck in the middle? Where is Fort Pierce? Central or South Florida. I'd rather be a S Floridian.. those Central Floridians dive into dark, cramped, cold caves and stare at wet rocks and bream.

It is about time we got some seperation around here... now I do not have to post around "Those People." "You people" know who you are...

 

[Marvel]

I haven't used any in quite a while!!!

 

[GulfCoastdiver]

So does this mean I am stuck in the middle? Where is Fort Pierce? Central or South Florida. I'd rather be a S Floridian.. those Central Floridians dive into dark, cramped, cold caves and stare at wet rocks and bream.

It is about time we got some seperation around here... now I do not have to post around "Those People." "You people" know who you are...

And sometimes a catfish or two... :14:

 

[Orlando Eric]

Thank You Marvel!

Catfish.. I always wondered if Catfish and Dogfish fight?

Jupiter Dive:

GREAT conditions. The seas were VERY calm and the sun bright and warm. We jumped in to look down and see the bottom that is what we SOUTH Floridians like to call.. TOP to Bottom Vis!
First drop was Lee's Ledge and what a drop it was. I did a little roll over to watch the other divers to make sure no one had any serious issues then rolled back and the ledge was EXACLTY beneath me. If I was a 200# Bomb and the ledge was a ball bearing factory... *KaBooM* right on target. I got to see two Moray and stopped to say Hello to them and they mouthed back something that looked like "Waa, Waa" but I do not read lips and can not speak Moray so I really do not know. Several turtles, and HUMUNGOUS Grouper. Then a treat, a Spotted Eagle Ray. I guessed it to be about 4~5' but other Expert Divers who were closer approximated it to be 6'~8'. My standard formulation for sizes in the sea seen by other divers = divide by two and add one. So the eight foot Eagle Ray: 8 divded by 2 = 4 plus 1 equals an actual size of 5'. Yep spot on to what I thought. PS I got this formula from my good friend Lee aka Hoya.

Drop 2:
The Tunnels. This is always a fun dive and there are some really cool things to do on this dive but I am not going to give up all my secrets. There are two easy to find swim throughs and some ledge swim unders. The first swim through ALWAYS has two to three grouper in it. I went through this and the grouper swam out in front of the group of divers at the other side. In doing this two reef sharks come by to see the divers as well so there were three large grouper and TWO reef sharks swirling around the divers. Two of which with 15 dives so they were very happy to see them.
The rest of the dive was filled with turtle spottings and lots of barracuda.

FUnny story here. The on duty DM made his way around feeling out everyone's experience level. The temperature was 74 at depth. There was a fellow in a 2mm shorty legs and shorty sleeves. "Oh I have not dived for quite some time." Well how many dives do you have? "oh.. let me see.. about 500 or 1,000. (Well that is a GAP me thinks...) As we are starting out I see the diver doing a cross between a breatstroke and the doggy paddle. I look at my dive buddy and she fills her mask with water. Kudos to the other two who said.. around 15. They where much better divers and watched their time and PSI to make two Textbook dives.

I hope to dive again before the end of this month. Maybe the Jupiter Bullshark will be spotted then.