Weekend of diving in Destin (8/28-8/30)

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JPENDERGRAST

Contributor
Messages
410
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Location
Memphis, TN
# of dives
100 - 199
This is a very long post, so consider yourself warned.

OK so I've been lazy about typing all this since I started school Monday, but my brother, brother-in-law, and friend had planned a trip to hit several Oil Rigs out from Gulfport, MS for some fishing on a boat belonging to my cousin's friend... or so we thought.

We left Friday night around 10pm taking a leisurely drive down I-55, with a plan to stop half-way to Gulfport to swap drivers (since we were planning to arrive at the boat dock around 4am). When midnight rolls around, I get a call from my cousin explaining that the guy who owns the boat was in a wreck, and didn't feel comfortable taking the boat out due to soreness in his back, AND since there were predictions of 3-5 foot seas. Wow, a serious buzzkill, but glad to hear the guy is ok. Not to mention, by this time I had about four Red Bulls in me and was already little agitated with the other three who were sound asleep. My cousin felt bad that we were already on our way down there, and so we agreed to just charter a boat ouf of Biloxi, but they didn't allow divers, just fishermen. When we roll into Biloxi to meet my cousin at around 0415, I wake up and call him to find that he's still asleep,,,, in Wiggins (more than an hour away), so at this point, I am borderline livid, left eye twitching, and right when I cool off, and begin to accept the fact that we're just going to have to wing it, he decides to tell me that the guy who owns the boat from Gulfport wasn't in a wreck, but actually got arrested for DUI, and was in jail. Hmmm, thaaanks cuz. So I hang up, and we decide at this point, it's best to just get some beer, and go fish off a pier somewhere.

While we're loading our stuff back up, I get a call from my buddy in Destin to bid us good luck since he was just waking up to go out that day as well. When I told him what happened, he said they had three people cancel, and offered to wait on us to get to meet them at the park they launch from in Pine Bluff. We agreed to meet them at 0630.

For the sake of time, I will skip the details pertaining to the homeless guy who jumped in the back of our truck when we stopped for gas in Mobile (while we were in the Gas station), begging us to take him out on the boat. We arrived at the boat launch around 0620, absolutely exhausted, but very excited at this point. When we cleared the Pass, we headed SouthEast about 11 miles to an unnamed reef. We splashed at 0738 into good visibility. As soon as I was in the water, I realized I was going to run into problems with my gun. I recently upgraded to a 52" SeaHornet, and with my camera mounted, it produced so much drag that I could barely hold it up while swimming. In addition to this, I ran into thousands of tiny Jellyfish around 20-30 feet deep which I've never seen before. They are worm-like, ranging from 3-6" in legnth, and definitely sting. Half way through the dive my face was burning like hell, but I finally got used to it, and carried on. When I got to the bottom, I almost landed on a shovelnose which I put in my BC pocket immediately. I had seen some fish on my descent, but nothing legal. I swam on the outside of the reef about 50 feet when I noticed two Black Snapper swimming in and out of a tire. I veered away from them since they took notice of me, and when they turned to check me out I turned and stoned the larger one right away. I loaded up again, and just as I turned around noticed a nice Gag swimming about 20 feet from me. I ascended on the relief to try and catch up with him, and conserve some air, but was never able to get in range of him. I ended up shooting two keeper Triggers, but that was it. Max depth was 107' and a bottom time of 19 minutes.

When we surfaced (all with no more than four fish) we found that the three non divers were carrying on about all the fish they caught. My stomach sank a little with the fear of them opening the cooler to show their bounty of Red Snapper, but to my amazement found they had caught a bunch of Porgies, three Black Snapper, a Gag that was 33", and a Red Grouper that made legal creel.

While talking back and forth on our surface interval, we were visited by a friendly Bottlenose which circled our boat three times (probably in search of food). Expecting the dolphin to leave immediately, we watched for a few minutes, but he never left. I decided to test my luck, and jumped in with my camera to take a few pictures which it allowed me to do. I'll post them later. I removed my camera from my gun until I can find a more streamlined method of mounting it.

We moved on to the second dive site which was another unnamed reef. We splashed into a plethora of fish, and lots of sand stirred up - SHARK!!!!... maybe. I neversaw the shark, but shot two Spades on my descent, and a Trigger when I got to the bottom. I was looking for Shovelnose in the ledges, but no luck there. I did manage to get two Almaco Jacks, and as I was stringing the second one, got swarmed by a school of 20-25" AJs, no shooters though. As Alex and I started our ascent (early since he got jipped on a fill, only about 2300 #s) we ascended into a school of Spanish Mackeral chasing Hardtails. We both shot one each that we strung up, and finished our ascent with quite a few fish, and no tax collections.

When we got back on the boat, we ate, and started our SI while the other three were fishing. The other divers ascended several minutes later with only three fish collectively, but agreed there were a bunch of fish on the reef.

We all decided to do our third dive here as well, and splashed about an hour later (since Alex was on air) into water that seemed to be significantly warmer, and dirtier than when we had splashed earlier - in the same spot. We swam the opposite side of the reef this time, and didn't see many fish, but Alex got a barely legal Trigger fairly quickly, and everything was going smooth. Alex also caugt a flounder off gaurd and put him on the dinner menu before I even saw him (usually it's the other way around). As he was stringing the flounder I shot a Gray Snapper that passed in front of the wrong guy. Almost as soon as I get him off the shaft, I look up and see him - shark. I don't know what kind it was, but naturally I want to say Bull Shark. He was swimming under, and behind two divers in the distance, and I remember thinking, surely they know he's there, but didn't see either of them watching him. I began swimming towards them, rapping on my tank, but neither turned to look at me. I couldn't tell whether or not they had fish on them, but when I finally got them to turn around, the shark had gone off to the right of me, swimming up and down the outline of the wreck. Neither of them had seen the shark, and at the closest point, Alex and I guessed it was no more than 3-5 ft from them. We all began the ascent then, and even though the shark followed us from a distance, he was never invasive, nor did he arch his back. We ended the dive with a bottom time of 29 minutes, and a max depth of 66'. With a cooler full of fish, and a feeling of accomplishment, we headed back to the dock with smiles on our faces.

We crashed at my friend's house, and had planned to dive Vortex, or the Jetties on Sunday, but ended up playing Call of Duty all night, and then heading back to Memphis early in the morning. We figured we should stop while we were still ahead with everything we ran into on the way down. All in all, the weekend turned out to be pretty damn good to us.
 
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haha Great report.... nothing like canceling dives due to a wreck..err.. DUI.

Glad to hear you were able to get on a boat.

Michael
 
Thanks for the report
 
Sounds like it was an interesting weekend.

A little too interesting... Hopefully the next trip will go a little smoother.
 
Here are the Dolphin pictures if anyone is interested. I had video from the first dive, but it didn't come out well enough to be worth editing.
 

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