MRXRAY
Contributor
Went to Vortex Early Saturday morning with my dive Buddies Brandon and Larry with the thought of beating the crowds since all the boats trips had been blown out and the crack head weather man said 5-7 foot seas. But upon our arrival at Vortex it seemed the entire diving community had the same idea, it was a zoo of people so we headed over to Morrison's to spy it. Yikes! It is still bad with viz less than 1 foot from what I could tell from the dock. So we went with plan "C" and called Panama City Dive Locker and asked them about the Jetties, they told us they were supposed to have high seas but they had students going in about an hour. Students going? Enough said, we headed for PCB and St. Andrews State Park.
We paid our $5 entrance fee and headed back to a packed parking lot. We ended up getting lucky and found a spot open near the pavilions and made our way to the beach for a look. Yup, Nearly Flat calm! Man I hate NOAA, they've screwed me out of so many dives....... Well not this time, We geared up and splashed at 12:18, and even though high tide was at 4:00 we had fairly good viz under 20 feet. Via was all over the place in the 10-20 foot range with tannic water, salinity issues and a thermocline playing havoc on your sight. Once under it though visibility opened up to 20-25 feet. We turned right and went deeper toward the gulf and saw quite a few nice Sheepsheads, lots of reef fish, arrow crabs, giant angelfish, spades, just a massive amount of smaller snapper, a few nice red snapper, a couple of hogfish, a couple nice sized grouper, some huge red fish, lots of macro stuff for photographers like myself and one horseshoe crab hung up in fishing line. We freed the crab and watched him scurry off. We did two dives the second had a bit less viz as we hung a bit shallower and tried to stay off the bottom for some more bottom time and to allow us to see a bit more stuff. The amount of fishing line in the 20-40 foot range on the gulf side is unbelievable though. It is turning into a real hazard as we got caught up a couple of times! All in all a nice day of diving and weather, followed by a good dive debrief at hellnbacks (sp?) in Destin. We ended our first dive with a max depth of 66 feet for 45 minutes and temp of 69*, and the second dive was 50 feet for 47 minutes with a 69* temp too. It looks the the water temp is fianlly making a recovery!
Some pics:
5-7 foot seas:
We paid our $5 entrance fee and headed back to a packed parking lot. We ended up getting lucky and found a spot open near the pavilions and made our way to the beach for a look. Yup, Nearly Flat calm! Man I hate NOAA, they've screwed me out of so many dives....... Well not this time, We geared up and splashed at 12:18, and even though high tide was at 4:00 we had fairly good viz under 20 feet. Via was all over the place in the 10-20 foot range with tannic water, salinity issues and a thermocline playing havoc on your sight. Once under it though visibility opened up to 20-25 feet. We turned right and went deeper toward the gulf and saw quite a few nice Sheepsheads, lots of reef fish, arrow crabs, giant angelfish, spades, just a massive amount of smaller snapper, a few nice red snapper, a couple of hogfish, a couple nice sized grouper, some huge red fish, lots of macro stuff for photographers like myself and one horseshoe crab hung up in fishing line. We freed the crab and watched him scurry off. We did two dives the second had a bit less viz as we hung a bit shallower and tried to stay off the bottom for some more bottom time and to allow us to see a bit more stuff. The amount of fishing line in the 20-40 foot range on the gulf side is unbelievable though. It is turning into a real hazard as we got caught up a couple of times! All in all a nice day of diving and weather, followed by a good dive debrief at hellnbacks (sp?) in Destin. We ended our first dive with a max depth of 66 feet for 45 minutes and temp of 69*, and the second dive was 50 feet for 47 minutes with a 69* temp too. It looks the the water temp is fianlly making a recovery!
Some pics:
5-7 foot seas:
