I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for your dive report from this weekend! Did you just throw the rebreathers in the drink at sunrise and come back at sunset to pick them up????
Oh, baby! What a fun weekend!
Saturday started out a little bit choppy, maybe 2-4', which caused a little sickness in the morning. Mother nature smiled on us down below though, because even though the water was pointed and unclear, there was lots of cool stuff. As the day went on, the waves dropped of a bit.
We did four dives, The Castor, Delray Ledge (sort of), The Capt. Tony, and Black Condo. Viz was about 35-40' all day long. We had a pretty stout current rolling north on the Castor, then a slight south current partway through the Delray ledge, switching to a slight north about halfway through and remaining slight north for the Tony and Black Condo.
The coolest part of my dive on the Castor was when a 9 or 10' pale colored shark came flying into the cargo hold through the blow out. It was so pale it was as if it was glowing. I was inside, just aft of the break. He zoomed in, turned and saw me, hit the brakes and coasted by, then zoomed out again. I snapped a picture, even though my camera wasn't set up yet. On my camera monitor it was all black but I was hopeful that I could pull out an image in photoshop that was good enough to ID it, or at least to prove that I saw it. Oddly enough, the photoshop worked pretty well, but no shark! Creepy.
The eerie and supernatural ghost shark photo.
Next we did the Delray Ledge. This was actually kind of a mess, which I apologize for. We somehow failed to realize that there was, instead of a hard north current a slight south current and dropped everyone on the southern tip of a reef. Luckily everyone was very experienced on this trip and handled it very well. Eventually, about 30 minutes into the dive the current was going north again. Highlights from Delray were the giant and tame hogfish that swam three feet away from me for half an hour, and the raccoon butterflyfish.
Brian illuminates the giant but tame hog.
Here's the raccoon butterfly-fish. I couldn't get very close to him without sending him into a hole.
Next was the Captain Tony. I think this was my favorite dive of the day. The current was downright pleasant. The resident Goliath groupers were hanging out. Debby diver swam for a long time with one of them and Net Mage, Packet Sniffer and I ran into Big Momma in the engine room. She was pretty mellow. The sun came out and Tas found a golden crowned sea goddess!
The golden crowned sea goddess.
The final dive for Saturday was on one of my favorites, Black Condo. There were nurse sharks and eels and fish mating everywhere. I think we can expect to hear the pitter patter of little fins before too long here in south Florida. Someone found a gold spotted eel, which I think I may have accidentally cooked with my strobe. I toned it down a bit in photoshop, but it's still pretty burnt.
The gold spotted eel.
