Preface: In looking through the www.treasuresites.com website, I found a reference for Manasota Key. Since I am adventurer, I made a note to want to dive it, especially since it said it was in the same county as me. I double checked location and found it to be between Englewood and Venice, but still in the "tooth" domain for fossil hunting and decided on that as a good weekend shore dive trip.
Date of trip: September 1, 2003
Conditions - 30% chance of rain, maybe I'm lucky for rain because it did. There was a northwesterly offshore wind, light surf at the waters edge. Bright and sunny up until 2.15 or so.
Dive type - shore entry with a brief swim to roughly the swim bouys then down and follow the bottom on a 330° out to the old river bed. I rate it a beginner/intermediate as there is some swimming that a newer diver may not be accustomed to.
Dive 1: This was the better of the two dives for inshore visibility. Visibility on the bottom was 20' +/-, just enough to lose or see your buddy with each roll of wave action depending on how you looked through the water. Found one shark tooth broken, many larger shells, and wildlife was abundant. I wish I had my camera for this dive since we found 2 of the largest live whelks I have ever seen measuring in at roughly 12" in length and covered in enough other live stuff to have their very own entourage of smaller fishes keeping watch. Also found were some pipe fish, a small flounder (about the size of my hand in size: 6½" long by 3½" wide), various sized pinfish, some fish that were identified as robins (had front legs like shrimp, back like a fish, brownish in color and about 3-4" in lengh), and lots of crabs of various types (one big spider crab). Also of note was one jelly fish of that my buddy and I gave a nice circumvention to and paused to watch it for a moment before carrying on. Max depth attained, 15'; Duration 70 minutes surface to surface.
Dive 2: Much the same as the first dive, but the inshore vis had degraded considerably. We had gone down the beach some for entry on the second dive to get away from people as well. This appearently moved the riverbed some as well since we were a good ways offshore when we surfaced at the end of the dive. More teeth were found and considerably more sea life there as well, though of the same variety as dive 1. Max depth attained 20'. Duration 55 minutes surface to surface.
Overall my buddy and I both really enjoyed the dives because of the wide variety of bottom variations, the visibility was better than we hoped for, and the duration of the dives we were able to achieve due to the great conditions. We had one boat pass within approximately 50 yards of us (i surfaced briefly to peek), the rest were well off shore. I also now better understand the fossiling technique as I did not take a colander with me to sift with, but used my hands to fan. This was great until a nice tooth once again made itself a fossil of the sea due to an inadvertant fanning that relocated it.
Date of trip: September 1, 2003
Conditions - 30% chance of rain, maybe I'm lucky for rain because it did. There was a northwesterly offshore wind, light surf at the waters edge. Bright and sunny up until 2.15 or so.
Dive type - shore entry with a brief swim to roughly the swim bouys then down and follow the bottom on a 330° out to the old river bed. I rate it a beginner/intermediate as there is some swimming that a newer diver may not be accustomed to.
Dive 1: This was the better of the two dives for inshore visibility. Visibility on the bottom was 20' +/-, just enough to lose or see your buddy with each roll of wave action depending on how you looked through the water. Found one shark tooth broken, many larger shells, and wildlife was abundant. I wish I had my camera for this dive since we found 2 of the largest live whelks I have ever seen measuring in at roughly 12" in length and covered in enough other live stuff to have their very own entourage of smaller fishes keeping watch. Also found were some pipe fish, a small flounder (about the size of my hand in size: 6½" long by 3½" wide), various sized pinfish, some fish that were identified as robins (had front legs like shrimp, back like a fish, brownish in color and about 3-4" in lengh), and lots of crabs of various types (one big spider crab). Also of note was one jelly fish of that my buddy and I gave a nice circumvention to and paused to watch it for a moment before carrying on. Max depth attained, 15'; Duration 70 minutes surface to surface.
Dive 2: Much the same as the first dive, but the inshore vis had degraded considerably. We had gone down the beach some for entry on the second dive to get away from people as well. This appearently moved the riverbed some as well since we were a good ways offshore when we surfaced at the end of the dive. More teeth were found and considerably more sea life there as well, though of the same variety as dive 1. Max depth attained 20'. Duration 55 minutes surface to surface.
Overall my buddy and I both really enjoyed the dives because of the wide variety of bottom variations, the visibility was better than we hoped for, and the duration of the dives we were able to achieve due to the great conditions. We had one boat pass within approximately 50 yards of us (i surfaced briefly to peek), the rest were well off shore. I also now better understand the fossiling technique as I did not take a colander with me to sift with, but used my hands to fan. This was great until a nice tooth once again made itself a fossil of the sea due to an inadvertant fanning that relocated it.
