wjefferis
Contributor
I made it back out to Ft. Pickens today (8-23-09) around 7:00 am. The weather was perfect although the water conditions looked at first to have changed for the worse. While walking into the water I noticed that the water was clear, but with a tannic stain color to it. I figured this would make things dark at depth and the fact that the sun was still coming up didnt help. I went ahead and splashed in to investigate what things looked like. The first 20 feet looked tannic and a bit dark with about 8 feet of visibility. At 20 feet I hit a nice warm thermocline of 85* water and the visibility opened up to 15 feet with no particulate. I first headed to the West over to the large monster truck tire and found an octopus hiding in the rocks. After checking him out for a bit, I made my way down to the organ and saw what I thought may be a fishing pole on the other side that someone lost from above. When I looked on the other side I was amazed to find the largest Southern Stingray I have ever seen. What I thought was a fishing pole was part of its long tail. I just sat there checking it out for a while until the ray had enough of me and gracefully did a loop around and took off. I then went out to the tank and culverts and found the resident French Angelfish and Blue Angelfish hanging out. From there I took a North westerly course that brought me to some rubble I have not seen before. It looks like a large motor (maybe part of the old airplane rubble?). From there I went north and went out to a circular drum of some sorts (maybe part of an old washing machine) at around 47 fsw. From there I headed back in towards the main rubble pile and over to the golf cart. Once returning to the main rock pile I made my way to the top where I did my safety stop while checking out some huge stone crabs and one rather large blue crab. On our way back up the thermocline had moved to about 12 feet and the colder bay water kind of sucked to get into after leaving such warm water. Once on the surface I did a 45 minute surface interval and then did another dive taking about the same course. It ended up being a pretty decent weekend of diving at Ft. Pickens even with the neap tide conditions.