Venice Beach 8/2/03 Report

[Walter]

I met Rusty (pchelp) at 9 this morning at the Alhambra site. We checked the water to find flat calm conditions, then geared up and got in.

Viz averages 2 - 6 ft at Venice. Today, the viz wasn't even close to that. We had to suffer with 25 ft of visibility. We recklessly negelected to use a buddy line, but stayed close together.

Rusty, in his first ever fossil dive, found 45 shark teeth. An excellent showing!

20 ft for 1 hour 58 minutes. Water temp was 91° F

I hope conditions hold for next week!

 

[ReefGuy]

Wow! Cool. I hope it's good tomorrow. I'm not so sure, it looked like Venice got nailed this evening pretty good.

 

[Walter]

Very little wind, it could be a good day tomorrow.

 

[Knavey]

Bummer...

Sorry to hear that you had to suffer through such lousy conditions. I sure hope that next week we can have the same lousy weather, water and number of teeth.

Thanks for the report, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone next week.

 

[The Chairman]

with the ducks. They need some encouragement! :tease:

 

[Harvo]

Walter- I came up from Cape Coral hit the beach at 1pm . I want to try a new beach so i went to stump pass beach. I did not take my scuba gear because I was not sure of the weather (should have) I just snorkled around. I found more teeth in the sand on the beach then in the water.

Next time I'll dive out to the 17-20ft
range and check around.

 

[ChrisF]

Some day when we have a free weekend, I'd like to get Amanda down there for a dive.

 

[pchelp]

Just a note of thanks to Walter, who was kind enough to show me the basics.

The ocean was dead flat, vis. was great, while swimming out you could see the bottom from the surface, which made for a nice leasurely swim out.

We also saw several blue crabs and popper shrimp, etc.

 

[rjdiver]

Now I am looking forward to visiting my mother-in-law, who lives in Port Charlotte.

 

[ReefGuy]

The conditions had deteriorated a little by Sunday, but was still 15'. The surface was like glass, and there was no wind. Took some pics, and will get them developed. If they turn out ok, I'll post them to the Venice Beach Dive Party thread. Saw lots of cool stuff, a cool puffer, some mantis shrimp, yellow starfish with orange tips, several stone crabs (and I took their addresses ). And several fish that look like a cross between a pipefish and an eel (pipefish head and mouth/snout, but body like an eel), around 6" long and a little thicker than a sodastraw. Any guesses? I have no idea. Lots of cool corals, too. Polups were numerous, as was some kind of barrel cactus looking softie (complete with a "flower" at the tip). Oh yeah, and 4 queen conch.