Whoa! I sure did have lots of fun yesterday! DiveSherpa and I were off for the day, and after striking out looking for an op up here, (who'd have thought it would be so hard to go diving?) decided to pay a visit to some old friends down in the Keys.
Laurie and Tony, owners and operators of "Scuba-Do" in Key Largo are awesome folks, who I'd met through the ScubaBoard Keys Trip last November. I'd been diving with them since then a few times and always found them to be accommodating and just plain fun to dive with. I gave them a call to find out what they had going on in the afternoon, but was deeply saddened to learn that there were no other divers looking to go out on such a beautiful day, and we were one passenger short of the three required to go. Fortunately, at the last minute, the G.I. Joe action figure I keep in my BCD pocket chimed up and said that he wanted to hit the Duane! So we booked the trip and Joe, the Sherpster and I headed south.
We made pretty good time and got there a bit early, and Laurie and Tony were ready to go when we arrived so we ended up leaving a bit early. They hadn't ever met the Sherpster, so they chatted for a while on the way out getting to know him and marveling at anyone silly enough to dive with a feller like me. Anyhoo we made it out to the site and here's how it went:
Seas were flat and very, very blue. There were two other boats out there, both private, one fishing, one with a couple about to go diving. Vis was right around 100' or so, maybe 110. I always have trouble quantifying vis more than 100'. Anyway, it was darn clear. There was a trickle of current... about 2 knots worth, so Tony dropped us hot on the bow buoy, and we were to drift the wreck and then ascend up the stern buoy and signal to boat for a pick up. We geared up and perched ourselves on the swim platform as Tony maneuvered the boat ahead of the buoy. Dive Dive Dive.
We entered the water and instantly were ripping towards the line. I missed the line proper, but got hold of the tag about 4' back. I was shooting wide angle with my Nikonos, Jamie (the Sherpanator) had his brandie new video set-up. I clipped off my camera and started working my way down to the wreck. The current was so strong that if I turned my head too far I could feel the mask skirt start to lift off my cheek. I made it to the bottom and ducked into the forecastle to get out of the breeze and watched Sherpadi-doo-da work his way down the line. The shadowy superstructure loomed in the background, swept by clouds of miniscule, shimmering bubbles torn from our regs by the swiftly moving sea. It was a powerful image.
We drifted back along the port foredeck towards the superstructure, ducking behind whatever shelter we could find along the way. Once there, we ascended to the wheelhouse and slipped inside amongst a multitude of snappers and a blue angelfish. The water outside appeared neon from within, and a regiment of a hundred barracuda that stood guard over the ship was visible through the dozen or so circular portholes that line the walls. After enjoying the view for a few moments we slipped out the starboard door and back into the wind.
The current pulled us aft the instant we passed through the doorway, and as I looked up I was amazed by a vision of thousands of large permit in a school that extended beyond visibility silhouetted against the shimmering surface. The dark angles of the radar tower were crisp in the gin clear Gulf stream, even from our far away vantage point midway back on the superstructure. We dropped down a couple of decks and slipped inside an entrance on the starboard main deck.
Inside, absolute darkness slowly dissolved as my eyes adjusted to the low light. Fish seemed to materialize before my very eyes. The interior was a very busy place. I didn't bother to turn on a light, because my attention was immediately drawn to the ball of yellowtail snapper churning just outside the port entrance. I crossed though the space to get a better look and was amazed to see thousands of snappers bustling in every direction, hiding out from the raging current in the lee of the superstructure. I'm quite sure that I have never seen such a dense gathering of fish before, but as compelling a sight as they were, the permit and the radar tower still beckoned, so I made my way amongst various vent hoods and deck equipment to the radar tower.
As I left the shelter of the superstructure behind, the current began to tighten its grip on me, and it was a fair amount of work to continue aft with any kind of control. I was glad to finally reach the tower and ducked behind the compartments that formed its base.
From the base of the radar tower, the school of permit extended as far as I could see both ahead of me and behind, and was even more inspiring than it was from the bridge. I tried to accommodate Sherp-o-rama with a diver swimming amongst a mega school of permit with radar tower shot, but made very little progress upstream, even behind the break of the tower, and at last I submitted to the relentless flow, and 35 minutes into the dive, we hit the up-rope.
Flapping like a sheet in the wind, I clipped off my camera and headed up, filling my mind with the image of the Duane as it faded to blue. A large bull shark swam figure eights 100' below me on the bottom as we hung beneath the buoy. I watched him while I basked in the dive, hardly able to wait to talk about everything that we'd seen.
The boat that was had been fishing was the one tied up on the mooring ball that we had ascended, the other private boat with the divers was still on the middle ball, but both divers were still on board. It seems that the current was a bit too much for their tastes, and they aborted their dive. It's a shame that they missed such a great dive, but it definately wasn't one for the faint of heart.
Upon futher review of the video tape, we have decided that there may be some more stuff to see there and are planning to go back another twelve or fifteen times.
Laurie and Tony, owners and operators of "Scuba-Do" in Key Largo are awesome folks, who I'd met through the ScubaBoard Keys Trip last November. I'd been diving with them since then a few times and always found them to be accommodating and just plain fun to dive with. I gave them a call to find out what they had going on in the afternoon, but was deeply saddened to learn that there were no other divers looking to go out on such a beautiful day, and we were one passenger short of the three required to go. Fortunately, at the last minute, the G.I. Joe action figure I keep in my BCD pocket chimed up and said that he wanted to hit the Duane! So we booked the trip and Joe, the Sherpster and I headed south.
We made pretty good time and got there a bit early, and Laurie and Tony were ready to go when we arrived so we ended up leaving a bit early. They hadn't ever met the Sherpster, so they chatted for a while on the way out getting to know him and marveling at anyone silly enough to dive with a feller like me. Anyhoo we made it out to the site and here's how it went:
Seas were flat and very, very blue. There were two other boats out there, both private, one fishing, one with a couple about to go diving. Vis was right around 100' or so, maybe 110. I always have trouble quantifying vis more than 100'. Anyway, it was darn clear. There was a trickle of current... about 2 knots worth, so Tony dropped us hot on the bow buoy, and we were to drift the wreck and then ascend up the stern buoy and signal to boat for a pick up. We geared up and perched ourselves on the swim platform as Tony maneuvered the boat ahead of the buoy. Dive Dive Dive.
We entered the water and instantly were ripping towards the line. I missed the line proper, but got hold of the tag about 4' back. I was shooting wide angle with my Nikonos, Jamie (the Sherpanator) had his brandie new video set-up. I clipped off my camera and started working my way down to the wreck. The current was so strong that if I turned my head too far I could feel the mask skirt start to lift off my cheek. I made it to the bottom and ducked into the forecastle to get out of the breeze and watched Sherpadi-doo-da work his way down the line. The shadowy superstructure loomed in the background, swept by clouds of miniscule, shimmering bubbles torn from our regs by the swiftly moving sea. It was a powerful image.
We drifted back along the port foredeck towards the superstructure, ducking behind whatever shelter we could find along the way. Once there, we ascended to the wheelhouse and slipped inside amongst a multitude of snappers and a blue angelfish. The water outside appeared neon from within, and a regiment of a hundred barracuda that stood guard over the ship was visible through the dozen or so circular portholes that line the walls. After enjoying the view for a few moments we slipped out the starboard door and back into the wind.
The current pulled us aft the instant we passed through the doorway, and as I looked up I was amazed by a vision of thousands of large permit in a school that extended beyond visibility silhouetted against the shimmering surface. The dark angles of the radar tower were crisp in the gin clear Gulf stream, even from our far away vantage point midway back on the superstructure. We dropped down a couple of decks and slipped inside an entrance on the starboard main deck.
Inside, absolute darkness slowly dissolved as my eyes adjusted to the low light. Fish seemed to materialize before my very eyes. The interior was a very busy place. I didn't bother to turn on a light, because my attention was immediately drawn to the ball of yellowtail snapper churning just outside the port entrance. I crossed though the space to get a better look and was amazed to see thousands of snappers bustling in every direction, hiding out from the raging current in the lee of the superstructure. I'm quite sure that I have never seen such a dense gathering of fish before, but as compelling a sight as they were, the permit and the radar tower still beckoned, so I made my way amongst various vent hoods and deck equipment to the radar tower.
As I left the shelter of the superstructure behind, the current began to tighten its grip on me, and it was a fair amount of work to continue aft with any kind of control. I was glad to finally reach the tower and ducked behind the compartments that formed its base.
From the base of the radar tower, the school of permit extended as far as I could see both ahead of me and behind, and was even more inspiring than it was from the bridge. I tried to accommodate Sherp-o-rama with a diver swimming amongst a mega school of permit with radar tower shot, but made very little progress upstream, even behind the break of the tower, and at last I submitted to the relentless flow, and 35 minutes into the dive, we hit the up-rope.
Flapping like a sheet in the wind, I clipped off my camera and headed up, filling my mind with the image of the Duane as it faded to blue. A large bull shark swam figure eights 100' below me on the bottom as we hung beneath the buoy. I watched him while I basked in the dive, hardly able to wait to talk about everything that we'd seen.
The boat that was had been fishing was the one tied up on the mooring ball that we had ascended, the other private boat with the divers was still on the middle ball, but both divers were still on board. It seems that the current was a bit too much for their tastes, and they aborted their dive. It's a shame that they missed such a great dive, but it definately wasn't one for the faint of heart.
Upon futher review of the video tape, we have decided that there may be some more stuff to see there and are planning to go back another twelve or fifteen times.
