MysteryDiveBuddy
Contributor
We (baydive20, kchFLA, knight1989, photohikedive, and myself) dove the St. Andrews State Park jetty yesterday, ostensibly in search of the several known cephlapod inhabitants and/or the sea hare and of course to see fish. Our 3 non-SB companions bailed on us so it did end up being a "chick dive" after all. Unfortunately I forgot to bring a sarong so PHD did not have to wear one. The tide was going out so we ladies (we left poor Knight to deal with PHD and his camera) dropped through the break inthe rocks and oriented into the current which was coming from the bay. The current wasn't too strong but did involve some concentrated kicking and dissipated as the sand bottom sloped upwards parallel to the jetty. For those who have not dove this jetty the topography is pretty interesting: the beach side inside the jetty is very shallow, usually not over your head, and there are a few breaks in the rocks to get to the channel-side. The main break spits you into scattered large boulders in about 50' of water then as you follow the jetty back toward the bay it gets shallower with many crevaces and caves among the rocks. Both sides of the jetty are noted in books and magazines for the abundant sponges and other interesting invertebrates. Once you get far enough along the jetty to the point where the rocks are 2-3' below the surface it begins dropping off again and the scattered boulder landscape returns. The current seems to come from a slightly different direction here and all the dives I have done here there always seems to be a lot of schooling fish, usually small snapper, sometimes other game fish. As you look down at the boulders you see a lot of discarded line where a hooked fish has sounded and woven it around the rocks several times before breaking free.
Anyway back to our dive: as we dropped in we saw a large number of good-sized gag that seemed to be consumed with some sort of intraspecies aggression. As we progressed along we saw:
arrow crabs
blue tang
yellow tang
some other surgeon, a light brown color similar to the blue tang in morphology
spotfin butterfly fish
foureye butterfly fish
various flavors of snapper
cocoa damsels
purple urchins
something that may have been a mantis shrimp
mullet
jacks
sheepshead
red drum
bluefish?
remoras
scrawled cowfish
needlefish
Since this was an octopus-inspired expedition there was much meandering and poking of heads and lights into holes with piles of shells and stone crab claws in front of them. Suddenly baydive20 grabbed my fin and made hand signals to the effect of "come here and see the big octopus" so I in turn yanked on kchFLA's fin and we converged on the octo lair, taking turns peering in. I could see it moving around but I couldn't see the whole animal and he didn't much like us shining lights on him. We then continued with our dive seeing more of the aforementioned interesting fish doing interesting fish things. Eventually Knight and PHD caught up with us. At first I thought it was a class dropping onto our heads, a problem we had last weekend. Then I recognized PHD
Since he insists on good buddy communication I wrapped him on the head and pointed out a foureye butterfly fish posing prettily behind some purple sponge and went to get out of his way. Then I shook my fist under his nose for good measure. He shook his fist under my nose in turn and wrote "BAT" in the sand and then drew a slash through it and waved his camera around. Like it's my fault his batteries are dead?
Knight and PHD went one way and we turned on the agreed pressure and went back to the break in the rocks to get back into the shallow "tide pool" on the beach side of the jetty. Swimming back with current was pleasant. There is a unique sponge on a rock near the exit point. It's round and encrusting a rock and is a foot or two in diameter and looks like somebody punched a hole in the center of it (natural formation). According to baydive20, who pretty much lives at the St. Andrews jetty, when you see that sponge you have 25 splitfin kicks to get to the exit. This is important because when we got to the exit the current had picked up to rollercoaster speed but fortunately we got through the break without incident.
We decided to blow down our tanks some more doing a "snorkel dive" on the shallow side. We saw Knight and PHD walking back through the shallow water from the other end of the jetty. I have no idea what was up with that. We meandered along the rocks watching the fish. There was a lot of intra and interspecific aggression going on between the various surgeon fish. We also found two bucktooth parrotfish again. Toward the end of the dive baydive20 and I stumbled across a curious fish: a small eel with protruding nares buried in the sand. It wasn't a moray and it wasn't a conger so I think it was some sort of snake eel. Our dive was 67 minutes with 17 spent in the shallow section.
On a less pleasant note some bozo was breaking the law and trying to spearfish. I say "try" because he wasn't sucessful and I found a really small <6" snapper swimming around with a fresh spear wound. Fortunately it wasn't in a vital place.
IT IS ILLEGAL TO SPEARFISH IN FL STATE PARKS, IN FACT IT IS EVEN AGAINST THE LAW TO POSESS SPEARFISHING GEAR INSIDE THE PARK UNLESS IT IS STOWED IN YOUR VEHICLE. IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NOT AN EXCUSE. BREAKING THESE LAWS SPOILS IT FOR THOSE OF US WHO FOLLOW THE LAWS, WHICH ARE STRICT ENOUGH ABOUT SPEARFISHING IN LEGAL AREAS! THIS JUST GIVES SPEARFISHING A BAD NAME, WHICH IS UNDESERVED
Knight bailed for the second dive due to previous obligations so we were stuck with PHD (sans camera fortunately) so we made him the Flag Wench. The water was a cool 80F so he was actually wearing a wetsuit for once. We followed the same dive plan for the second dive: drop through the rocks swim into the current turn on half tank pressure for whoever gets there first. This time the current at the entry was much stronger and I was scared. I don't like underwater currents even though I used to spend a lot of time snorkelling in rivers. I had to kick really hard and I decided the best strategy was to kick up behind a boulder and hide in it's eddy to catch my breath then proceed foward. Had this been my first dive in the area I would have called it because I was having trouble catching my breath and the current was making me nervous and I didn't want to hyperventilate but I knew that if I got up to the shallow area I'd get out of the current. I found some fish to look at while I was hiding behind a boulder and calmed myself down and proceeded with the dive. The vis was worse this time. Previously it had been 10' or so but it dropped to less than 10'. Not bad by Northern standards but it could have been better. Notable for this dive were a pair of cowfish. They were having some sort of interaction and were flashing different colors at eachother. The cowfish around here seem to be skittish though so they took off rather quickly. There was also a large school of small jacks, horse-eye jacks I think. We got out to the bouldery fishing area and then turned the dive. In a few minutes PHD reappeared (before you think about tearing me a new one keep in mind that he's a solo diver so back off!) with the flag and signalled me to surface. Apparently he'd swam away from the jetty and almost into the anchor of a nearby boatload of fishermen and popped up to chat with them. He came back looking for the rest of us because he was afraid we'd followed him into the dangerous area. We decided it would be best to swim over the rocks and continue the dive on the beach side of the jetty. This dive was about 40 minutes long. PHD spent the remainder of the dive sneaking up on me and grabbing my feet, which I am used to by now :shakehead However a snorkeller sitting up on a rock was startled when he saw a black shadow glide up behind me underwater and grab me and then I started sqwaking about it facetiously. We concluded our dive and packed up our gear. We dwadled at the gator pond and at the dive shop that was having a sale then adjourned to dinner at a buffet that serves: Chinese, crab legs, shrimp, and sushi. Over dinner we discussed the critters we'd seen. Baydive20 had seen a peculiar creature that she described as "looking like an :mooner: hole with fronds" I thought about it for a minute. Well PHD doesn't have any fronds so it must have been a sea apple, which is related to sea cucumbers. :evil: All in all lots of fun and good dives.
The End
Anyway back to our dive: as we dropped in we saw a large number of good-sized gag that seemed to be consumed with some sort of intraspecies aggression. As we progressed along we saw:
arrow crabs
blue tang
yellow tang
some other surgeon, a light brown color similar to the blue tang in morphology
spotfin butterfly fish
foureye butterfly fish
various flavors of snapper
cocoa damsels
purple urchins
something that may have been a mantis shrimp
mullet
jacks
sheepshead
red drum
bluefish?
remoras
scrawled cowfish
needlefish
Since this was an octopus-inspired expedition there was much meandering and poking of heads and lights into holes with piles of shells and stone crab claws in front of them. Suddenly baydive20 grabbed my fin and made hand signals to the effect of "come here and see the big octopus" so I in turn yanked on kchFLA's fin and we converged on the octo lair, taking turns peering in. I could see it moving around but I couldn't see the whole animal and he didn't much like us shining lights on him. We then continued with our dive seeing more of the aforementioned interesting fish doing interesting fish things. Eventually Knight and PHD caught up with us. At first I thought it was a class dropping onto our heads, a problem we had last weekend. Then I recognized PHD
Since he insists on good buddy communication I wrapped him on the head and pointed out a foureye butterfly fish posing prettily behind some purple sponge and went to get out of his way. Then I shook my fist under his nose for good measure. He shook his fist under my nose in turn and wrote "BAT" in the sand and then drew a slash through it and waved his camera around. Like it's my fault his batteries are dead?Knight and PHD went one way and we turned on the agreed pressure and went back to the break in the rocks to get back into the shallow "tide pool" on the beach side of the jetty. Swimming back with current was pleasant. There is a unique sponge on a rock near the exit point. It's round and encrusting a rock and is a foot or two in diameter and looks like somebody punched a hole in the center of it (natural formation). According to baydive20, who pretty much lives at the St. Andrews jetty, when you see that sponge you have 25 splitfin kicks to get to the exit. This is important because when we got to the exit the current had picked up to rollercoaster speed but fortunately we got through the break without incident.
We decided to blow down our tanks some more doing a "snorkel dive" on the shallow side. We saw Knight and PHD walking back through the shallow water from the other end of the jetty. I have no idea what was up with that. We meandered along the rocks watching the fish. There was a lot of intra and interspecific aggression going on between the various surgeon fish. We also found two bucktooth parrotfish again. Toward the end of the dive baydive20 and I stumbled across a curious fish: a small eel with protruding nares buried in the sand. It wasn't a moray and it wasn't a conger so I think it was some sort of snake eel. Our dive was 67 minutes with 17 spent in the shallow section.
On a less pleasant note some bozo was breaking the law and trying to spearfish. I say "try" because he wasn't sucessful and I found a really small <6" snapper swimming around with a fresh spear wound. Fortunately it wasn't in a vital place.
IT IS ILLEGAL TO SPEARFISH IN FL STATE PARKS, IN FACT IT IS EVEN AGAINST THE LAW TO POSESS SPEARFISHING GEAR INSIDE THE PARK UNLESS IT IS STOWED IN YOUR VEHICLE. IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NOT AN EXCUSE. BREAKING THESE LAWS SPOILS IT FOR THOSE OF US WHO FOLLOW THE LAWS, WHICH ARE STRICT ENOUGH ABOUT SPEARFISHING IN LEGAL AREAS! THIS JUST GIVES SPEARFISHING A BAD NAME, WHICH IS UNDESERVED
Knight bailed for the second dive due to previous obligations so we were stuck with PHD (sans camera fortunately) so we made him the Flag Wench. The water was a cool 80F so he was actually wearing a wetsuit for once. We followed the same dive plan for the second dive: drop through the rocks swim into the current turn on half tank pressure for whoever gets there first. This time the current at the entry was much stronger and I was scared. I don't like underwater currents even though I used to spend a lot of time snorkelling in rivers. I had to kick really hard and I decided the best strategy was to kick up behind a boulder and hide in it's eddy to catch my breath then proceed foward. Had this been my first dive in the area I would have called it because I was having trouble catching my breath and the current was making me nervous and I didn't want to hyperventilate but I knew that if I got up to the shallow area I'd get out of the current. I found some fish to look at while I was hiding behind a boulder and calmed myself down and proceeded with the dive. The vis was worse this time. Previously it had been 10' or so but it dropped to less than 10'. Not bad by Northern standards but it could have been better. Notable for this dive were a pair of cowfish. They were having some sort of interaction and were flashing different colors at eachother. The cowfish around here seem to be skittish though so they took off rather quickly. There was also a large school of small jacks, horse-eye jacks I think. We got out to the bouldery fishing area and then turned the dive. In a few minutes PHD reappeared (before you think about tearing me a new one keep in mind that he's a solo diver so back off!) with the flag and signalled me to surface. Apparently he'd swam away from the jetty and almost into the anchor of a nearby boatload of fishermen and popped up to chat with them. He came back looking for the rest of us because he was afraid we'd followed him into the dangerous area. We decided it would be best to swim over the rocks and continue the dive on the beach side of the jetty. This dive was about 40 minutes long. PHD spent the remainder of the dive sneaking up on me and grabbing my feet, which I am used to by now :shakehead However a snorkeller sitting up on a rock was startled when he saw a black shadow glide up behind me underwater and grab me and then I started sqwaking about it facetiously. We concluded our dive and packed up our gear. We dwadled at the gator pond and at the dive shop that was having a sale then adjourned to dinner at a buffet that serves: Chinese, crab legs, shrimp, and sushi. Over dinner we discussed the critters we'd seen. Baydive20 had seen a peculiar creature that she described as "looking like an :mooner: hole with fronds" I thought about it for a minute. Well PHD doesn't have any fronds so it must have been a sea apple, which is related to sea cucumbers. :evil: All in all lots of fun and good dives.
The End
