Well...I know this thread is mostly "done", but the Venice beach dive was the START of my vacation (working vacation, that is) and I'm now finally back home.
I had a great time. Miss-D, Tracy, Debbie, Capt. Grumpy and many others names I've forgotten (I'm horrible with names and it's amazing I can remember that many...) it was great to meet you all and just generally fun to hang out with everyone.
Capt. Grumpy...sorry we got separated on the last dive. Sounds like you hit the "motherload".
I wound up with about 20 "keeper" teeth and several sand dollars which cleaned up very nicely....and let's not forget the "Titleist 1" I found. Remember...as another forgotten named gentleman told me, "If you find it underwater, it's treasure...if you find it in the parking lot, it's trash!". I'm sticking with that.
And in case other's in the area perhaps don't know about it...I dove the old "Palm Island Ferry" about 7-9 miles off Englewood beach the following Saturday. Wow! What a great dive for the gulf. There was already a pair of divers on the wreck when we got there but it was LOADED with thousands of baitfish...like you had to brush them out of the way to see! Nice soft coral growth as well as hard. Some MONSTER barracuda; seriously! Saw at least 5, six footers! The divers that were on site said they saw 5 Goliath Grouper, but they must've spooked them as we didn't see them. Vis was about 30' and it was in 52' of water. Very nice dive. Grouper, Bonita, Snapper and then lots of little reef fish as well. The only thing I really didn't see was lobster, but we didn't spend too much time on the wreck as we couldn't find the damn thing on our first descent and had to pop up and locate it from the top and then drop back down almost directly on it....yeah...my underwater navigation skills need some serious work.
Anyway, was great to meet everyone and hopefully I'll dive with some of you again in the future!
Dave
