I arrived in Destin for my annual June vacation and went snorkeling at the jetties the next day, Wednesday, June 16. Gulf conditions were fairly calm, but the water around the jetties was a murky brownish-green at high tide with a visibility of at most 15 ft. I know a lot of you locals sometimes report limited vis there of 5-10 ft, but when I go in June I've found 20 ft is usually the norm, sometimes better. I like to take available light photos when I'm snorkeling, but limited vis just doesn't cut it for this. If you dove down to only 15-20 ft, it became quite dark. In terms of fish, most of the usual suspects were there. The most interesting things were one fairly large barracuda that I saw through the murk and a school of smallish amberjack that were cruising along the outer jetty. Another person on this board mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there were few damselfish this year, and this was my observation too. I saw only a few tiny bluish-yellow juv. cocoa damselfish when other years there were always 1000s. I only saw one or two of the drab adults. The water temp was extremely warm with no thermocline as deep as I free-dove. I'd estimate it was in the upper 80s because I was too hot in the eighth-inch wet suit I was wearing. It is not fun to be too hot in the water! Perhaps the bay water wasn't completely flushed out which caused the murk and hot water.
The big event was what happened after I packed my gear and started back along the death march. I suddenly realized there were tar globs everywhere along the wet sand and in the small waves that were breaking on the beach. Luckily I noticed the globs just in time before I stepped in them. Thus, I had the "fortune" of experiencing the BP oil spill first hand. There was no tar on the beach when I first arrived; it must have come in while I was snorkeling. The tar globs were quite thick along the middle two-thirds of the walk. It was rather surreal experiencing this after I had heard so much about the spill. Hardly anyone was around because it was late in the afternoon except for the Sea Cobra boat anchored nearshore, my nephew and I, and a couple of families with kids. One family at the shower on Gulf Shore Dr. had to throw their kid's aqua shoes away because there was so much tar on them. I don't know if the oil has been cleaned up yet because I haven't been back. There was absolutely no oil today on beach near my condo on Holiday Isle.
Here are some photos to document this day:
The only halfway-decent uw photo I got (female stone crab with eggs):
Oil photos:
Tar blobs close-up:
The big event was what happened after I packed my gear and started back along the death march. I suddenly realized there were tar globs everywhere along the wet sand and in the small waves that were breaking on the beach. Luckily I noticed the globs just in time before I stepped in them. Thus, I had the "fortune" of experiencing the BP oil spill first hand. There was no tar on the beach when I first arrived; it must have come in while I was snorkeling. The tar globs were quite thick along the middle two-thirds of the walk. It was rather surreal experiencing this after I had heard so much about the spill. Hardly anyone was around because it was late in the afternoon except for the Sea Cobra boat anchored nearshore, my nephew and I, and a couple of families with kids. One family at the shower on Gulf Shore Dr. had to throw their kid's aqua shoes away because there was so much tar on them. I don't know if the oil has been cleaned up yet because I haven't been back. There was absolutely no oil today on beach near my condo on Holiday Isle.
Here are some photos to document this day:
The only halfway-decent uw photo I got (female stone crab with eggs):
Oil photos:
Tar blobs close-up:
