Paul's Shrimpboat 8-25 & West Beach Paddlewheeler 8-26-9 Dive Reports

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SuPrBuGmAn

Contributor
Messages
12,436
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Location
Tallahassee, FL
# of dives
500 - 999
Paul's Shrimboat on Tuesday night

After a long day at work, I was pretty much spent and decided to talk my dive buddies(DogHouseDiver and diverman82) into postponing the dive until the following night. Course, they weren't having it and I got talked into going anyway :p We left my house around 7PM and we made it to Fort Morgan before too long. Pulled over and walked out to the beach. The gulf was flat and I shined my light right through the water, like it was glass. It seemed the dive Gods were smiling on us tonight and I was glad I had come.

We geared up and hit the water, lined up with my landmark and headed out. Visibility was 20' or so at first, but as we got deeper, we found a layer of yellow/brownish tinted water that was slightly cooler and noticably murkier(10' or so). No big deal. The bigger problem was that we never found the wreck. As I had hoped it wasn't, it seems the wreck is under sand at the moment. We swam around for better than 40 minutes underwater trying to locate it, but no such luck. That being said, we made the best of the dive and saw a tremendous amount of life. Lots of crab, including one that tried to attack me, rays, skates, catfish, kingfish, needlefish, a single moon jelly, about a half dozen stinging nettles, and lots of stuff I couldn't identify. I think the high point of the dive was the large school of squid that followed us around in our light. They flashed and jetted around, seemingly having a great time. We had a great time too, with a max depth of 15'.

It was late when we got out, diverman82 wanted to head over to the Paddlewheeler to pick off some flounder, but I managed to get him to hold out a day for us to head back to it on Wednesday.

West Beach Paddlewheeler on Wednesday night

Feeling much better this afternoon, not nearly as worn out, we even headed out a bit earlier. Leaving at 6PM, putting us at the water shortly after 7. The gulf was still flat and seemed very clear. We geared up and found that the deeper water, again, got a bit nasty with lots of particulate, cutting visibility down to 5-8' this time. It took me a little while to find the wreck, but we were on it before too long. The relief seems to be holding stable and there was plenty enough for us to explore for a dive. I ended up taking 3 flounder and pointing out 2 more for diverman82, before we called it a night. We were also treated to seeing many skates, rays, pinfish, pigfish, mangrove snapper, spadefish, puffer, blue crab, and some really large stone crab. Made for a great 66 minute dive with a max depth of 14'.

Fresh fish tomorrow night :)
 
I don't plan on making a map, so it may be a long wait :)

I've got GPS#s incase my landmarks get wiped off the face of the planet, so I feel confident enough to find these wrecks when they aren't buried in sand, whenever.



I'll make it easy for ya though, one is located in Gulf Shores, the other is located in Fort Morgan! :D
 
Great report Mat. But man your diving too much LOL..
 
It is when your not being invited!!!
 

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