wjefferis
Contributor
Met up with Halftime at the Navarre Pier at a little past 9:00 am. I had received a private message earlier in the morning that Reef Hound and Sea Yoda would also be there. We arrived a little late and Reef Hound and Sea Yoda were already about halfway to the break in the pier when we got there. We got our gear on and jumped in. although there was some nasty skies present when we got there, it was moving away from us at a quick pace and by the time we hit the water the skies looked fair. The water was nice and clear with 30 feet of visibility easy. Saw a southern ray on the way out and lots of juvenile snapper. Got to the break in the pier and hung out there for most of our dive. At the break in the pier there were a fair amount of stinging nettles, but with the visibility so good they were easy to avoid. That is until I started to navigate to the next set of pilons and had my eyes fixed on my compass instead of the jellyfish I head-butted (ouch) :11: .On the way back in we ran into two different species of octopi (sp?) and another southern ray. I was so excited to get the picture of the ray that I let loose of my dive flag and after taking about 6 pictures realized my mistake. I looked around and it was nowhere to be seen
. Our dive time was already 60 minutes and we were heading in anyways so we made our ascent there and called the dive with 1200 psi still in the tank. Upon surfacing we saw my dive flag about 100 yards away. I saw a couple on a kayak and asked them to recover my dive flag, which they did (I owe them a beer). Hit a max depth of 22 fsw, water temps at max depth was 82*. After such an enjoyable dive we decided to join Sea Yoda and Reef Hound at Pensacola Beach for a dive there. The water was clear on the way out there, but the algae had moved in covering the site. I think I only saw about four stinging nettles during the entire dive. Visibility was 8 to 15 in places, which made for an ok dive, but just not as good as it has been lately. Made a 70 min dive and had to go in due to afternoon plans with the family. Had a great day of diving and it was nice to meet some more people from the MBT Dive Forum and Scubaboard. Here are some pictures from the dive:
