Jupiter dive report today: Ocean was lit up!! +

[Chuckitall]

Went out today with Capt. SL8R Charters on Kyalami. What a difference two days makes. Thursday's visibility was 4-5 feet and today was around 70 ft. Water temp was 70-71 degrees and there was a mild north current.

Dive one: Monkey's ledge. There were at least 15 different reef sharks that made some close passes. One reefie had two cobia that were nearly the same size as the shark at about 5 ft. in length. There were about a dozen goliaths as well as several black and gag groupers. To top things off, a mola mola appeared.

Dive two: Shark Canyon: Another dozen reef sharks, more cobia, turtles, stingrays, goliaths, green morays, many nurse sharks.

I don't know anywhere you can dive and see all of this in a day.

Angie: you picked a lousy day to stay home cleaning house. BTW, everybody loved your homemade peanut butter cookies. They were gone in about two minutes.

 

[sportxlh]

Chucktall: that was great vis at those two sites: I was out with JDC and vis was not nearly as good at the Bluffs and Scarface. Then again, I was on the east side of Bluffs looking for lobster so don't know what the main ledge looked like. Did not have much luck with the lobster: lots and lots and lots or shorts!!! Honey holes full of shorts. The divers on the main ledge at the Bluffs said they saw many reef sharks. Did finally score a couple of bugs on the main reef on Scarface: only about 20 feet east of the ledge, an area that is normally well picked over! There were several reef sharks: probably four but maybe more (wasn't sure if sharks were circling back or if new sharks were passing by since the vis wasn't so hot).

I heard that there were a number of bulls on the Bonaire (and maybe a tiger or two?!?!).

 

[reebok]

it was a great day. I am uploading my video now and will work on editing it asap.

 

[diveprof]

Looking at a Jupiter trip soon. How much do the tides impact off shore dives such as these? Hoping to work out a plan for great vis off shore yet allows for Blue Heron Bridge dive in the afternoon (unfortunately that likely means an outgoing tide for the a.m. boat.

 

[purepursuit]

diveprof I wouldn't worry too much about the bridge unless you are a hardcore macro photog. Also you should be fine for vis as long as the wind/current swells cooperate, we usually have decent enough vis (Except for Thursday as Chuck mentioned). Hit me up when you're closing to the trip.

 

[acteg]

Great day of diving. Cookies were excellent. Video upload tomorrow hopefully. Introduced 2 more divers to Jupiter diving. Another great day on the water with Capt. Sl8tr. Plan to be on the boat again this Friday.

 

[deeper thoughts]

thnx for posting

 

[sportxlh]

Looking at a Jupiter trip soon. How much do the tides impact off shore dives such as these? Hoping to work out a plan for great vis off shore yet allows for Blue Heron Bridge dive in the afternoon (unfortunately that likely means an outgoing tide for the a.m. boat.

I'm no expert, but from my observations, the out going tide has some impact on the diving, but normally not much. Since the gulf stream is flowing northward, the inlet's out-going dirty water is usually swept northward with the current. The boats then dive south of the inlet where clean ocean water is present (the sites mentioned in this thread are south of the Jupier inlet). Occasionally when the gulf stream has wandered far off shore and there is not much near shore northward current, the ugly inlet water and run-off will impact the diving, especially the sites that are just barely south of the inlet. Sometimes super heavy rain storms have an impact on vis too. Cold water upwellings can also impact vis.

Tides have a huge impact on Blue Heron Bridge: its a slack tide dive. Even if you are not hardcore macro photographer, the dive still might be fun since you stand a good chance to see some things that you'll see less frequently in the ocean (eagle rays, yellow rays, star gazers, flying gurnards, batfish, manatees, etc.). I've only seen two flying gurnards and one batfish in the open ocean but these are fairly common at BHB.

 

[acteg]

To add to Chuck's dive report. Here is some video, so you can see the actual conditions. Watch it in 1080p (clickthe gear icon on the youtube window) if you have a highspeed connection, it makes a big difference.

[video=youtube;r6ZS4JLt1sE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6ZS4JLt1sE[/video]

 

[kelemvor]

Thanks for the report! I'm going next weekend, and was wondering what conditions were like there.