Dive Report: East Span, 2/11/10
Weather this past week has been rain and wind. In most cases, this would create poor vis... Today's dive met every expectation for poor vis.
Vis: 5-8'
Temp: 72-73F
I was testing my video camera with +5 diopter shooting macro...
Bridge construction condition: East Span...
South to the far east they have placed a safety screen around the pylons in an attempt to save the feeding areas while construction continues. They avoided the small wreck that hangs against the southern most pylon while doing this work. Depth at this area is 5-6' and a electrical pipe runs east-west at this point right to the pylon. This area had a number of soft coral and a yellow seahorse has been spotted in that area for a good 3-4 months.
It is impossible to say whether construction or the cold weather and water have destroyed the soft coral in this area (Note: there is no major damage other than soft coral dying out - If construction were to blame I would expect to see the entire area disturbed and other vegitation in the area missing or damaged... this was not the case). Other soft coral around the entire area has died in its normal life cycle where the water becomes too cold for long enough to destroy the coral. Other areas such as mooring balls that used to have the same soft coral are all missing the soft coral as well. These moorings are well out of the construction area
Under the bridge itself:
There was no noticable destruction under the bridge. There are bits of concrete scattered where they have taken down the middle north section of bridge, but that concrete is small and will easily become part of the reef system. I noticed some crabs, octopus, shrimp and drums already making homes in these bits of concrete
There is little else to report where construction is concerned. Areas north and south of the bridge area have been losing soft corals to the cold weather this year. It happened last year too, but the weather was milder and the damage was not as noticable (unless you had creatures you had tagged for viewing and went to those locations and noticed the corals were no longer there like I did)...
Vis was poor, I read March 11th tide table on the fly and dove the incomming tide for 2 hours 24 minutes. I have some video where I tested the diopter and camcorder with two subjects... a few seconds of a Bumblebee shrimp and 20 minutes of a sailfin blenny fighting itself in my mirror
Video to be edited later
