HalcyonDaze
Contributor
Yeah, it's hard to say; unless I have a known large distance I can work off of (such as looking up at the boat, down from the surface or the top of a wreck, or out from one location to another) I often just say "good enough." I was on the Spiegel with Quiescence Sunday morning; we tied up on the line going down to the starboard forward gun mount (I forget the buoy number). I know the viz was good enough that I could look down from the edge of the upper deck and see all the way to the bottom, which would have been 70-80 feet. I ended up doing pretty much the same circuit on the diagram reefman posted; I was mostly looking for fish so I wasn't terribly interested in swim-throughs. I did get some decent shots of the flag, although nothing as spectacular as timg's shots.
Second dive was the slabs, which was actually more interesting to me. We were the only dive boat out there; when we anchored up there were two outboards fishing in the area but they took off before we hit the water. Lots of nice big groupers and snappers, including a midsize goliath that surprised me while I was under a ledge. I have to admit I found it amusing to hear folks oohing and aahing over the goliath and the nurse shark; for me going out of Riviera or Jupiter that's a very slow day underwater. I did really enjoy Quiescence and I'd go out with them again my next time in Key Largo; I think being on a cattle boat would have caused me to blow a gasket.
My primary motive for requesting a deep wreck dive was to play a hunch that Katherine might show up; however looking at OCEARCH's tracking site it looks like after briefly doubling back towards Islamorada on Thursday she continued back on course down the Keys. As of an hour ago she was well south of Big Pine.
