Mauifish:
That is a lot to brag about no doubt about it, you have seen much, what my Op was about is which species did you find that stuck out as the biggest of it's kind, the most amazing in the marine world you have observed.
Sorry your question was:
Mauifish:
What is the biggest marine species you have observed on a dive and what was it? .
… and I misunderstood your intent, the plural vs. singular construct of the question being a bit fractured. In any case I’d have to split it between the Arctic Jelly which made me feel like I’d swum though a microscope and been shrunk down … it was really weird … looking through your mask at structures that you're not used to seeing except with a dissecting scope; and the Tunas … they are avatars of power and speed.
We were servicing some current meters, tide gauges and continuous plankton recorders out on Aden rock in the Gulf of Maine. The bottom there’s about 110 feet. It was a great day; one could just make out the surface from the bottom. A lot of herring were in the area for their late summer spawning. Down we went through a loose school to the tide gauges. It took about ten minutes to dump the data and reset the gauges; the light level was low enough that we needed our dive lights.
Our tasks done, we were getting ready to leave … in the blink of an eye there was a snap from an eerie deep green to pitch black. Mounds of herring pressed close in. I was blind. No gauges, no buddy, not even my dive light was visible. I raised my light, pointing straight toward my mask. The beam burst into a million mirrored reflections off the herrings’ scales. I took a slow deep breath and began to ascend. Carefully I maintained slight positive buoyancy. Neither could I see my gauges nor judge my upward progress by anything except the scintillations of my light reflecting off the herring that had closed tightly in upon me.
As quickly as the dark had closed in on me it suddenly was gone. My eyes were momentarily dazzled. I exhaled sharply and sank back into darkness. Another breath started me up slowly and this time as my head broke out of the tightly packed herring school, I exhaled gently and stopped my ascent. From my chin down and out as far out as I could see, there was a black mass of squirming fish so closely packed that there was little room even for water.
I rotated to my left through about ¾ of a turn. I could see one of my three comrades coming up out of the herring mass, perhaps twenty feet away. She ascended about ten feet and pitched back to horizontal, leveling out and smoothly neutralizing her buoyancy. A circular shaped motion of her light indicated she was fine, had seen me and inquired as to my status with that unique economy of the underwater “OK”. I brought my seemingly detached left hand up out of the darkness and responded with a circle of my light.
Suddenly she pointed jerkily to her left, arm stiff and outstretched. I swiveled my head right, and there is one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever witnessed. Six Giant Bluefin Tuna are moving toward us, in formation, the pass right between us. Each fish is the size of a dinner table that would seat eight. They’re moving fast yet appear to not be moving a muscle. They glide past us, each with a huge left eye that stutters on me for a fraction of a second and then moves on to seek it’s normal prey. We watched them almost disappear, circle right, and move to the other side of the herring school. Then they came right back by us and then went left to the other side of the sea mount.
The black shinny mass beneath us started to break up, the herring resumed more normal individual distances expanding their school upward and outward, once again enveloping me in darkness that slowly lighted to the deep green of the first part of out dive. I swam up to my teammate and trimmed out. We moved to the down line and ascended to our deep stop. Being well out of the lee of the sea mount the current was rather stiff so we tied off our Jon lines, waited a minute and then ascended to our 20 foot deco stop.
Decompression complete we signaled the Zodiac, the Coxswain waived us off as he was already heading to pick up our other two team mates at the alternate surface float. Once we were in the Zodiac everyone was talking excitedly about the Tuna, there had been a big school of them working the herring and every one of us had been blessed with a good long view of at least several of them.
