7 divers from ScubaBoard showed up and faced the weather and the jellies tonight. I snapped this picture of us before we hit the water. I'm sorry I have forgotten one name already. But I think this is correct otherwise. Please help me where it's wrong and fill in the missing name please. Left to right we have MRXAY, ?????, Hetland, Halftime (Hiding behind a raindrop....Sorry!), Paulwall, dereks040581, and thojdie.
It was the night dive that almost wasn't! A bad line of storms was coming out of Mobile, and dumped a lot of rain in Navarre. This wasn't what was worrying us though... None of us were anxious to strap a metal tank to our backs with all the lightning we were seeing.... We all met at the beach at 5:00PM but it wasn't long after that we headed for Waffle House had something to eat and waited out the storm. We headed back to the beach a while later and again debated our fates. But ultimately the call of the water was more than we could endure! So we geared up and hit the water at about 7:30. The vis was great near shore and the algae wasn't all over, but the further we ventured out we began to notice an increase in the algae, and we realized we were not alone!!!!!! Jellies here, Jellies there, Jellies, Jellies everywhere! They were thick! We all made it to the missing pier span together, and dunked just as the light was fading. I soon found myself with just Dereks, and thojdie (Tom). We searched for the rubble to the west for a bit but eventually made our way back the the pier and took our time exploring the pilings on the way out. Halftime found a small puffer and we played with him for a bit, and then made our way from one column to the next, on the way we saw a couple nice flounder, and what we think was a Tarpon (About 4'). As we got further from shore and deeper the vis picked up to about 20 feet, from the average of 10, and things were looking up as the Jellies thinned out. We saw some Blue crabs and lots of Macro stuff on the pilings, but I noticed an absence of Juvenile damsels and other fish on the pilings. Not sure if this was due to the night creeping in or what. About halfway back to the beach under the pier we had a fantastic encounter with a Loggerhead turtle. To me this made the dive worth it! Sorry didn't take the camera! We also saw a nice sized Stingray on the way back in as well. All in all, I was real happy with the dive. We hit the beach at about 8:15PM, BS'd a bit then headed our seperate ways. Thanks to everyone who made it out, I really enjoyed it!