St. Andrews Dive Report 6/18

[Tessunderwater]

Great diving yesterday! Doccarl, Dwatts and I met up at St. Andrews park at 8am and after introductions and a dive plan discussion, we were geared up and headed for the channel entrance. We dropped down into some algae and headed south, i saw a puffer fish on this dive but was unable to catch him since there was a pretty good current. We saw a couple of gag grouper, some arrow crab and many toad fish. On our second dive, we headed north and found much less algae in the water. Visibility was pretty good, ranging probably between 20 and 30'. Doccarl and Dwatts saw an eagle ray, which I missed cause i was looking for shells, oh well. We ran into probably the laziest flounder I've seen. Carl took a picture of him and expecting him to flee I brushed his tail, only to see him stay there. He let me pet him and nearly pick him up off the sand, I guess we weren't that intimidating. After our dives we filled the tanks up at Pat's shop and headed to the Red Rose for lunch and some great post dive conversation. It was a great dive. Thanks to Dwatts for the great company and Doccarl for some underwater photos, hopefully they can be posted soon.

 

[DocCarl]

Another beautiful day in paradise.

The sun was shining, the tide was incoming, and the eagle rays were outgoing!
Dive #1: 64', 55 minutes. Water temp 82 degrees.

We made our through the gap in the jetty and dropped about 10 after nine. Visibility wasn't bad, but it wasn't phenomenal either. By my estimate, about 15'-20'. There is still some algae in the water, but it is no where as bad as I have seen it before. Actually, I'd wager that I saw more washed up on the shores of the kiddie pool than I saw anywhere out in the channel. The usual school of lookdowns was waiting for us, as well as a noticeable incoming tidal current. Our plan was to drop and work our way south down to around 70', looking for the resident goliath grouper. Unfortunately, they were a no show. There were, however, the usual ten thousand or so Diadema sp. all over the place.

Dive #2: 50', 57 minutes. Water temp 83 degrees.

For dive number two I suggested that we go north, to the completely submerged section of the jetty. Back in February during Jettyfest, Sontek, JBM and I wandered over some of this area but had to cut things short due to starting the dive with some half full tanks. Algae was noticeably less than dive #1, and viz may have reached up to 25' or so at times. I happened to look over my shoulder at one point and noticed a good sized spotted eagle ray slowly flying back out to the gulf. This is the first time I have seen an eagle ray at St. andrews - - and I was quite surprised! I got dwatt's attention about the same time I realized that I didn't have a really good, concise hand signal for 'spotted eagle ray'. Anywho, the resulting babbling through my regulator combined with what I can describe best as the 'underwater chicken dance' eventually got dwatts to stop laughing at me, and instead to turn and catch a glimpse of the 'ray just before it disappeared. While I tried to explain the situation to Tess after the fact, and large school of crevalle jack came by, also headed out into the gulf. Tons of small gag grouper, dozens of toadfish outside of their usual holes and the aforementioned fearless flounder rounded out the dive.

After topping off tanks at Panama City Dive charters, we headed over to Red Rose's for some fantastic Calzones for lunch. Great dives and excellent company!

I haven't had time to go through all the pictures yet, but here are a couple of them:

Stegastes variabilis, the juvenile coca damsel hanging around some coral

More lookdowns than you can stand ( Selene vomer )

Purple gorgonian!

Wrasse. Can anyone help with ID'ing the species?

dwatts on flag detail:

TessUnderwater . . . . under water!

Stenorhynchus seticornis

I think this toadfish may wind up looking pretty good if I get a chance to do some tweaking on it. .

Carl

 

[Hetland]

fourth photo is a slippery dick wrasse if I am not mistaken....

 

[Dave C]

The shot of the slippery dick with the sea pork next to it is fantastic. It's very hard to get a good photo of these because they are never stationary. To capture this one next to the sea pork is a double whammy.

 

[MRXRAY]

The shot of the slippery dick with the sea pork next to it is fantastic. It's very hard to get a good photo of these because they are never stationary. To capture this one next to the sea pork is a double whammy.

Agreed. I have 100's of pictures of slippery Dick Wrasse that are blurred, or of just a tail. Nice shot!

 

[dwatts]

TessUnderWater and DocCarl, I had a blast and want to thank you both again for showing me around the Jetties. I'll definitely be back there. You both were great to dive with and the lunch talk afterwards was excellent.

That large spotted ray was awesome. Although, Carl's underwater snoopy dance over seeing it may have been even better! Excellent dive reports from both of you. I look forward to diving together again.

 

[gmoney0308]

Thanks for the dive report & pics.

 

[jhayes75]

Nice Report, I need to get out there again soon.