Dive report - 25th and 26th...morning, night and both Destin and Panama City

[Puffer Fish]

Managed to get a lot of diving in this last weekend... morning trip out of Destin, night dive out of Destin and off shore dive out of Panama City.

Water is sort of ok vis, but terrible for photo's... have never had such difficulty with backscatter.

Sat morning dive involved lots and lots of small jellyfish, which seemed to sting really bad. Doing a safety stop involved a lot of dodging...or getting stung...or both.

We went way to the east for the first dive.. a reef I don't get to very often....then back to Amberjack reef. Night dive was the Liberty ship and the east stack.

Images may be mixed up a bit...but this was, for some strange reason, a octopus weekend...but before getting to those images... the required nudi image:

For some odd reason, have suddenly been seeing spotted scorpion fish up here (they are common in the keys)...this is the second weekend were I got images of one:

Our normal one looks like this (from the night dive):

 

[Puffer Fish]

Here some of the octopus images.....

I gave this guy the shell..

Here are some of the others:

Had several frog fish, but I liked this one the best:

This is my attempt at being artsy... I found this red sponge, then went and got a crab and put it there... and then waited for the slippery dick to get into position....it was hard work:

After that success, I decided to train some peterson shrimp to do tricks...

Here is standing on it's back legs...

And then the leaping thru a hoop... Only I did not have a hoop, so it was just leaping:

Tough guys to train, but once you do, boy to they do a nice job.

Found these crabs (and tiny shimp) off of Panama City on an off shore wreck:

suspect these are an unidentified species...

Found some very odd.. well I don't know what..

And then the normal stuff:

Don't usually post toad fish pictures, but also don't get to see them from the side very often.

Great diving, only down side was the ripping current Sat night and Sunday morning....

 

[Hoos'ride]

how deep were the peterson shrimp

 

[Puffer Fish]

how deep were the peterson shrimp

Low 80's...

 

[DocCarl]

Great pics! I've got to start paying more attention to find the scorpion fish. .

 

[Puffer Fish]

Update - The "shrimp" are actually a type of squat Lobster, just don't know which one. The white round stuff is a solitary Grogonian Hydroid and the anemone is some sort of club-tipped anemone, that does not live here and is way too big...

 

[MRXRAY]

Great photos as usual. Love the Artistry and the circus tricks.

 

[atlas750]

Great pics. Who did you dive with out of Destin? I will be there in September.

 

[Puffer Fish]

atllas750, I was on scubatech's boat, but both boats go to the same sort of place (the other being Emerald Coast). Good people at both places.

 

[atlas750]

Thanks!