What was your most memorable dive?

[100days-a-year]

Yes,it's a corny question.I'll go first so as to take the blame!New Years Eve 1999 at Looe Key in Florida.My wife,friend Tom and I splashed in after a view of the tropical sunset and some choice victuals.We went in about 11:45 pm and stayed down 30 min or so playing with squid who let us get very close to them.We counted down in the sand to new years/new millinium.As we surfaced we floated on our backs back to my boat watching the fireworks still going on in Key West,Marathon and on Little Palm Island.As we slowly dodged lobster trap floats home Tom and my wife enjoyed some cuban Cohibas brought along for the ride.I've dove the world inside out in the time I've been granted on this earth and I'll always treasure that night.Any takers ID or Atomox?How about you Mario? I'd like to see what you'all remember.

 

[Caron]

Except it was New Years Eve in San Diego--man the water was cold. I couldn't see fireworks either--but at he time the water was so cold all I cared about was getting back to the boat.

I think my mot memorable dive is a tough one. I could say my first dive because it is one of the few I rmember clearly for the entire dive. Then, once, dolphins showed up and surrounded ME--if that wasn't something. I once came back from a dive with a broken tooth and I still don't know how (I had no fillings so it wasn't a tooth squeeze). That dive was also my first wreck dive too.

Sorry, there are just too many.

 

[allwet]

Mine was just two weeks ago. We were wreck diving and had thoughts of spear fishing. 5 Baracudas changed my mind about spear fishing. This made me explore more of the wreck, its inhabitants and the quiet beauty therein. The three 250 pound plus Jew fish were quit interesting, especially when I came around the bow of the wreck and there was the opened mouth of what was about a 300 pounder Jew fish...I blew a few bubbles then. Then comes a sea turtle, which I swam with. One or two nurse sharks went bye. Funny thing was, I wasn't afraid, I was in awe of everything! I think when this stops happening to me, the feelings about the dive, then it is time to stop diving. I found something I've never seen before. It looked like a giant caterpillar, about 9 inches long and about 4 inches in diameter. It was alive, because I touched it with my spear gun and it did slowly move. Any one have any ideas. I was only in about 35 feet of water and I was not drinking-so there goes thoses theories. Bye the way, I was in the Gulf of Mexico about an hour north of Tampa, only 2 to 3 miles off shore.

 

[ages]

There are two. Both of them wreck dives. The fist was on the wreck of the Princess Kathleen. She is an in-tact passenger liner laying on her side. The bow is in about 30' and the stern in 160'. I will never forget the first time I descended on her and tryed to mentally grasp something so big being there. She just didn't belong.

The second was on the wreck of the Princess Sophia. All 300+ human lives were lost when she went down 100 years ago. There are still many bones on her (most of the ones left are horse bones) and the sea makes the bones beautiful and colorful. It is very strange to dive such a grave site. You can almost feel her ghosts.

ages

 

[NJdiver85]

BVI - Wreck of the Rhone - Night Dive! Noone around but myself and 2 others. Absolutely incredible!

 

[sea nmf]

It was a day time dive in Puget Sound about a year ago. I have been diving for 11 years and I have never witnessed all of these things together on one dive. We always decend down the anchor line. There was a large Pacific Octopus just hanging out on the sand next to the anchor. When it saw us, it "crawled" over to the wall and tried to hide in the wolf eel den. The large male wolf eel came out to defend his home and won the day. The octopus moved on. We gave the octopus a wide birthe so as not to stress him out and continued our dive. About 15' later, there was a second large octopus stretched out on the wall. We were amazed because it is rare to see one out during the day, let alone two. We continued our dive to the end of the wall. I signaled my buddy that I was cold and was going to head back to the boat. I decided to stop off to check on the 2nd octopus and saw that the two of them had met up and were evidently "fighting" about something. They were engaged in some sort of "arm to arm" battle. I forgot I was cold and signaled my buddy with my light and he came over and we watched this battle until one of the octopus' inked the other and jetted off. This activity evidently caught the eye of a seal that swam by to check out the rucus. This is only the third seal I have seen while underwater in this area. When we got into the boat, my buddy told me that he noticed a third octopus under the other two. We figured that one of the three was a female and that the two males were fighting over her. Anyway, it was a sort of National Geographic type of a dive in cold water with low visability. I would do it again daily.

 

[Heads Up]

Originally posted by ages
The fist was on the wreck of the Princess Kathleen

You make this sound so surreal - where is the wreck? Habe you any images? I have always wanted to dive something like this (the humility you must feel is incredible).

 

[BetterLateThannever]

My most memorable dive to date was my 3rd confined water dive when I was finally able to successfully equalize and meet everyone at the bottom.

Jimbo

 

[Jonathan Starr]

Perhaps due to excesses of youth causing failing memory, my most recent dive is generally my most memorable. On the other hand, perhaps my existance here on Maui with my own boat means that I am generally living pretty well.

I had two great dives in the past few days. Most recently, I went up near the north tip of Maui, near Honolua and Slaughterhouse bays of winter big-wave surfing fame, and anchored for a dive in the preserve off a place called Hobbitland. It's usually very rough with a strong current called the Molokai Express making diving there a challenge, but the day dawned very mild.

It wasn't very deep, my computer maxed out at 42', but the bottom had intense colorful coral of many varieties, carved up by distinct long sand channels about 6' wide. the Coral stuck out and into these channels, so they made wierd shaped appendages overhead. The place was teeming with morays sticking up from the coral and rocks and waving their teeth around, and octopusses were crawling all over the place. I saw an inhabited rainbow colored nautilus shell about 18" long, wedged in a creviss. Too nice to disturb. We found a very old anchor, mostly buried in the sand. We cleaned it off but left it in place. It looked like a whaling remnant, it was so old. Water visibility was at least 300'.

A few nights before I went out after a hard day of work with my buddy Lyle on an evening shallow beach dive off the Ahihi preserve in Makena. We hit the water in time to watch a great sunset from a ways offshore, as we back swam out around the point to the La Perouse lava flow. It was getting dark as we descended, and finned for over an hour in a true wonderland of color and structure. We saw sharks, and turtles, and big lobsters, and while parrotfish sleeping in their cocoon are a common sight, we came across a huge one that was in transition from red-brown male to green female. At least that is what I suspect, because it looked tie-die psychedellic, and at first I was sure it was a fish shaped bag of man made material. I never saw anything underwater with as many different colors.

Of course the dive a few days before that, 100' down at Molokini was pretty good too... But I think I do remember the last one the best.

Aloha,

Jonathan
kalepa@maui.net

 

[BetterLateThannever]

Sheesh! What a show-off JS.

I swear I heard in the background....Na Na NaNa Na.

Jimbo