Flower Gardens, Mv Fling

[sea_ledford]

Flower Gardens didn't have any impacts from the oil spill.

 

[nolatom]

We went either right before or right after the spawn... would love to see it.
The later in the year you go the higher risk you are at of the waves being far too high--I think they auto cancel any trip where the average wave height is over 24 or 28 inches or something like that.
Honestly, above about 16-20 in and I'd probably be too sick to dive!


You mention your son... how old and how experienced a diver is he?
I went on this trip after 20 dives. I had done extra work in the pool and gotten several specialty cards beforehand but I'd say it's fairly aggressive to do Flower Gardens as a novice diver just because the ocean can be rough out there.

My first time was on the SPREE over a beautiful Labor Day weekend, in 1999. It was my 7th post-cert dive, so "novice" was a fair label for me. But conditions were perfect, and it went great. Good buddies helped, vis was 100 feet-plus, current slight to zero, seas calm. In these conditions, I would consider these "novice" dives, as long as you paid attention to your gauges and stayed near your buddy. And I grew up around boats, so rough seas wouldn't have bothered me. And as I recall their cutoff point for wave height is when it's higher than 3 to 5-foot seas, so even in 2-4 feet it can be pretty sporty getting onto the ladders at the stern.

But current would have bothered me. And has, in some later "more experienced" dives, where mid-level current once caused me to overbreathe during a free ascent and have to take my buddy's octo at about 20 feet in order to still have (very little) air left on the ladder (and they do check to see you can still breathe your reg at the end).

So I would agree that "on average" it's more of an intermediate-diver venue. Especially if you are doing free ascents, so don't do that if you're new or there's any current to speak of. But in mid-summer in the very middle of one of those big high-pressure areas, a well-trained novice can hack it. Trouble is you can't guarantee that weather unless you sign up just before, and maybe not even then.

Riding home from that first trip with twelve more dives under my belt, I felt much less like a novice, and I got to see coral in the States!..