Dive Report - USS Mass 8/22/09

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Hetland

Contributor
Messages
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Location
Gulf of Mexico
# of dives
500 - 999
The Saturday plan was to dive both sides of Perdido Pass. I was tasked with doing an early recon of the area, so I checked out the SW seawall first. Viz from the surface was dismal, so I made my way to the SE bridge piers. Things on that side looked a little better, but I lucked out and spotted two divers at the surface. They advised me that I would be wasting my time if I put my gear on, so I got on the phone to XRay and told him we would need to switch to plan B.

We ended up switching to plan "C", which turned out to be the USS Massachusetts. I met XRay, Recharge and Brandon at the launch, and we made quick time to the dive site.

Viz varied from 10 to 25, and the water was comfortably warm. Barry spotted a requiem shark (possibly a sandbar) and was twice buzzed by a nurse shark. Barry and Brandon each shot a few mangroves, but I needed a break from the gun, so I took my camera and strobe, and went about tearing down a few cast nets that were killing fish for no good reason. On my second dive I saw a huge, curved, broom tail. I was quick enough to get into position and take a photo, and a little video of the resident goliath grouper, which I guess was a tad shy of 400 pounds. I could easily have fit my head in his mouth with lots of room left over. Before I could get anyone's attention, he eased his way back into the wreck, and out of sight. We also recovered two anchors, two fishing reels, a snorkel, a pair of sunglasses, and a wristwatch LOL.

Good times as always.

Photos now, video later:


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Damselfish
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Mangrove Snapper
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Damsel & Urchin
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Cowrie
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Cowrie
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Cowrie
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Decorator
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Scorpionfish
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Goliath Grouper (I'm guessing about 400 pounds)
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Thanks for the report
 
Great report. I'll add that there was an unusually large amount of white flower like material growing in a couple of areas mainly on the bow, and it appeared to be being eaten by the local inhabitants of the reef. Alex has a nice picture of it and I have a few here as well. Any ideas what it is? Dave C.?

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Scorpion Fish seemed to like it for camo.
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More Pics:

Scorpion Fish:
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Trigger Fish:
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Spotfin Butterflyfish:

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Puffer Fish:
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Just you wait 'till next year...
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Now everyone knows how much I like blennys: So here is where I spent most of my time on the Mass.....At the Blenny Condos! Here are a few pictures of the over 100 Bleeny photos I took.

One section of the Blenny condos:
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Now that last picture got me thinking....Haven't I seen this guy somwhere before? I scrathed my head on that for a couple of hours after I had been home and processed my photos and finally it hit me......


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I have some video coming too ( With my Nurse Shark video), as soon as Vimeo stops processing it.
 
Here's my long video....Over 11 minutes! Nurse Shark is close to the beginning. Mainly looking at the growth on the wreck not so much the wreck itself. Almost like a macro video? I didn't really care for it, but thought I'd share it anyway.

USS Massachusetts 8-22-09 on Vimeo
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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