I was diving off of Florida with Dixie Diver's. First dive was a nice wreck called the RV Castor that I believe was in the Boca Raton area. The depth of the bottom was right about 100 ft.
We then went and did a "drift dive" in a place they called something like "Fink's Big Grouper Hole," although they had another name for it. Unfortunately for me I got caught with an instabuddy who was probably pretty experienced as he was on a rebreather and local. The only reef I saw went west to east (definitely not north south) so I followed him as we went towards the shore. I got under the reef and swam there for a minute or so and much to my surprise when I came up from under it he had taken off. He said he didn't want to waste his oxygen but I would have followed him anywhere and I had plenty of nitrox for the depth as I was wearing a 120 cuft steel. I have an SDI Solo card so it's not like I was going to hold him up -- I thought I was following.
In any case I decided to follow the reef towards the shore after I came up and waited for him for 5 minutes and didn't see him. I noticed that there was what seemed to be a VERY, VERY large chain grid that was on the bottom. If I had to guess it was probably a square grid with each side being a couple kilometers but it was hard to judge.
Has anybody seen this grid? What is it for? The only thing I could find on the internet mentioned something possibly done by the military but there was only one mention and it wasn't specific enough to make any conclusions as to whether it was even talking about the same thing. Again, I looked at the log of my dive and most of the dive was 60 ft but towards the end there seemed to be a rise towards 50ft. Given some thought I probably should have stayed deeper and looked around but it seemed like I was on the only reef and it was weird as it went East-West. Any info would be appreciated as I am very curious.
We then went and did a "drift dive" in a place they called something like "Fink's Big Grouper Hole," although they had another name for it. Unfortunately for me I got caught with an instabuddy who was probably pretty experienced as he was on a rebreather and local. The only reef I saw went west to east (definitely not north south) so I followed him as we went towards the shore. I got under the reef and swam there for a minute or so and much to my surprise when I came up from under it he had taken off. He said he didn't want to waste his oxygen but I would have followed him anywhere and I had plenty of nitrox for the depth as I was wearing a 120 cuft steel. I have an SDI Solo card so it's not like I was going to hold him up -- I thought I was following.
In any case I decided to follow the reef towards the shore after I came up and waited for him for 5 minutes and didn't see him. I noticed that there was what seemed to be a VERY, VERY large chain grid that was on the bottom. If I had to guess it was probably a square grid with each side being a couple kilometers but it was hard to judge.
Has anybody seen this grid? What is it for? The only thing I could find on the internet mentioned something possibly done by the military but there was only one mention and it wasn't specific enough to make any conclusions as to whether it was even talking about the same thing. Again, I looked at the log of my dive and most of the dive was 60 ft but towards the end there seemed to be a rise towards 50ft. Given some thought I probably should have stayed deeper and looked around but it seemed like I was on the only reef and it was weird as it went East-West. Any info would be appreciated as I am very curious.
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