OP
Today's viz was kind of icky... and the water was a little chilly... But there was no current on the Castor.
Of course it was a great time with Kev and a boat full of friends
DivingPrincessE
Hey that new lens works great!
The water was icky, but there was still some interesting stuff going on out there. The nutrients brought in by the upwelling cause a chain reaction the results in lots of fish, and when I dropped down to tie off on the Castor Sunday morning, I was in a cloud of bait from the time that I hit the water until I got back on the boat. I had fun showing Princess E around the wreck too!
There were lots of critters.
The second dive ended up being Clubhouse backwards, and it was a bit more sad than the first dive. Onespeed found a nurse shark that had some type of bungee or something around it's neck. His head was stuck up in the reef, so we didn't see the bungee until it was too late. I wish we could have seen it while he was still in the hole, I would have tried to cut it free. I'll keep an eye out for him. It absolutely amazes me what some people are capable of.
The nurse shark. You can see that the bungee is digging into it's skin where the pectorals meet the body.
The afternoon trip also went out to the Castor. I was pretty mad when I saw an entire boat load of divers dropping onto the wreck after we were already on it. I'm actually still mad about it. Anyway my apologies to my passengers. The viz was still rotten, which made it so dark down there that the cup corals were coming out! The most interesting event of the dive for me though, came towards the end, when partially digested fish started raining down on me. I don't know from where, or what, and I can only speculate that the other divers must have startled something on their way up in the super cloudy water. The only reason why I think this, is because I was directly underneath where their down line would have met the surface. Who knows? I know this, whatever it was eats 12" long fish whole.
One of the partially digested fish. Yum!
Even though it was the middle of the day, the viz made it so dark that the cup corals were putting their polyps out.
The last dive of the day was supposed to be on Briney Breezes, and that is where we started out, however, I noticed as we were traveling along on the ledge that we were right on the edge of much better water! Finally! It was about 2º warmer, and much bluer, but still kinda cloudy. Actual visibility probably went from 25' to 35 or 40', but at that point it was a very welcome improvement. So, we hopped up on top of the reef and scooted over to Gazebo for most of the dive.
Blue water! Hey, Richard is a supermodel too!
