Well Saturday I went down to West Palm Beach, Florida for a day of diving. First was a morning bridge/shore dive under the Blue Heron Blvd Bridge. This is probably one of the best shore dives in the state. Max depth was 19', avg depth @10' and 44 mins of bottom time. You enter the water 1/2 hour before high tide and exit 1/2 hour after, this way the current is so strong and you don't get swept out the intercoastal to the ocean. 
This bridge has the most diverse collection of marine life I have ever seen! Everything from giant pillow starfish, batfish, octopi, crabs, lobsters, sea-urchins, spotted eagle rays, angel fish, cudas, hog fish, pufferfish, gee I could go on all day! The dive was part of my training for DM. I was leading the dive, towing the flag, and we did ow check out dives with a student. After the dive I practiced some rescue drills on my instructor.
After lunch I met up with some girls from my dive club/group for our third "Chick Dive". A chick dive is when a bunch of girls get together without the boyfriends and husbands and go diving. Usually we charter a whole boat so the obly men on board are the crew, but we ended up on a mixed boat this time. We used the SS Minnow, because it has a female captain (www.ssminnowcharters.com).
The boat was very nice, the crew was very helpful. and they had pleanty of snacks, sodas, and fresh fruit for us on board. Also the boat has a fresh water hose to rinse off with. The only problems I had with this charter was we were limited to 30 min dives. The max depth on the reefs in West Palm is @ 60' so I don't know how they came up with that time limit. The divemaster was very good with keeping up with everybody. He made sure that he knew where everyone was and signaled us when he wanted to point out something of interest. One thing he did that bothered me was when he spotted a turtle. He made the turtle get out of its hiding spotted and basically encouraged contact with the turtle, who at this time was surrounded by divers wanting to touch it. All I could think of was poor stressed out turtle. The divemaster 'chased' the turlte for a bit and continued the dive, which brings me to the #2 thing I didn't like. In West Palm, for those that haven't been there, is drifting diving. The DM tows a flag and the boat basically follows the group. You are supposed to drift with the current. You shouldn't have to kick. Its like flying, I always think of superman when I'm drifting along. But for awhile the DM, while chasing the turtle, had us going against the current or diagonal with the current, so that bothered me a bit. Even my 13 year old dive buddy said something about going against the current. So other than those 2 things, the trip was a good one.
I saw lots of stuff on the dives. VIs was baout 40', not great, but it should improve as it gets closer to summer. Bonine is now my best friend. I took one in the morning for any potential sea-sickness and one just as I was boarding the boat, and I have never felt more comfortable on an ocean dive in my life! Sign me up as the official Bonine spokes-diver! The second dive was good, but I didn't think the vis was as good as the first and then there were the thermoclines that we kept hitting, dropping the temps by 6 degrees.
As a side note from this trip report, I would like to say to all divers, please be careful where you are kicking on a dive! I know we all can't have perfect trim and bouyancy and that accidents can happen, but face it, if you are in a vertical position during your dive and you are 5' from the bottom kicking stuff, you are killing stuff. It takes years for nice reefs to form and I saw so much damage on the reefs and witnessed even more occuring. I was in the back of the group on our dives and I kept passing recently kicked over purple fan corals that must have taken forever to reach that height and beauty. It was so sad. The reefs in that area are often dived by new divers, and they probably don't know any better, but to the instructors out there, please teach your students about conservation. Don't handle and molest the marine life, don't touch the coral. Wearing gloves may protect you but it doens't protect the reef from you, don't kick the reef with your fins. And its just not hands and fins that destroy thing, dangling sucba regs and computers do that same damage, and could easily snag on the reef.
Ok, mini rant over. Aside from my rant, I hope my report was a good one.
This bridge has the most diverse collection of marine life I have ever seen! Everything from giant pillow starfish, batfish, octopi, crabs, lobsters, sea-urchins, spotted eagle rays, angel fish, cudas, hog fish, pufferfish, gee I could go on all day! The dive was part of my training for DM. I was leading the dive, towing the flag, and we did ow check out dives with a student. After the dive I practiced some rescue drills on my instructor. After lunch I met up with some girls from my dive club/group for our third "Chick Dive". A chick dive is when a bunch of girls get together without the boyfriends and husbands and go diving. Usually we charter a whole boat so the obly men on board are the crew, but we ended up on a mixed boat this time. We used the SS Minnow, because it has a female captain (www.ssminnowcharters.com).
The boat was very nice, the crew was very helpful. and they had pleanty of snacks, sodas, and fresh fruit for us on board. Also the boat has a fresh water hose to rinse off with. The only problems I had with this charter was we were limited to 30 min dives. The max depth on the reefs in West Palm is @ 60' so I don't know how they came up with that time limit. The divemaster was very good with keeping up with everybody. He made sure that he knew where everyone was and signaled us when he wanted to point out something of interest. One thing he did that bothered me was when he spotted a turtle. He made the turtle get out of its hiding spotted and basically encouraged contact with the turtle, who at this time was surrounded by divers wanting to touch it. All I could think of was poor stressed out turtle. The divemaster 'chased' the turlte for a bit and continued the dive, which brings me to the #2 thing I didn't like. In West Palm, for those that haven't been there, is drifting diving. The DM tows a flag and the boat basically follows the group. You are supposed to drift with the current. You shouldn't have to kick. Its like flying, I always think of superman when I'm drifting along. But for awhile the DM, while chasing the turtle, had us going against the current or diagonal with the current, so that bothered me a bit. Even my 13 year old dive buddy said something about going against the current. So other than those 2 things, the trip was a good one.
I saw lots of stuff on the dives. VIs was baout 40', not great, but it should improve as it gets closer to summer. Bonine is now my best friend. I took one in the morning for any potential sea-sickness and one just as I was boarding the boat, and I have never felt more comfortable on an ocean dive in my life! Sign me up as the official Bonine spokes-diver! The second dive was good, but I didn't think the vis was as good as the first and then there were the thermoclines that we kept hitting, dropping the temps by 6 degrees.
As a side note from this trip report, I would like to say to all divers, please be careful where you are kicking on a dive! I know we all can't have perfect trim and bouyancy and that accidents can happen, but face it, if you are in a vertical position during your dive and you are 5' from the bottom kicking stuff, you are killing stuff. It takes years for nice reefs to form and I saw so much damage on the reefs and witnessed even more occuring. I was in the back of the group on our dives and I kept passing recently kicked over purple fan corals that must have taken forever to reach that height and beauty. It was so sad. The reefs in that area are often dived by new divers, and they probably don't know any better, but to the instructors out there, please teach your students about conservation. Don't handle and molest the marine life, don't touch the coral. Wearing gloves may protect you but it doens't protect the reef from you, don't kick the reef with your fins. And its just not hands and fins that destroy thing, dangling sucba regs and computers do that same damage, and could easily snag on the reef.
Ok, mini rant over. Aside from my rant, I hope my report was a good one.
