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- 5,884
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- Location
- Lake Worth, Florida, United States
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
I dove Wednesday and Thursday this last week, on Pauls's Reef, Horseshoe Reef and Breakers Reef...these being the top 3 shallow dives Palm Beach has....35 to 37 foot deep crowns, inshore ledges that fall to 55 to 65 feet from the 40 foot deep crown intersection, and these being reefs with far more life on them than you will find in the Keys, or any other part of Florida.
Another cool aspect of each of these three reefs, is that you can begin the dive on the offshore ledge as deep as 95 feet, see some more pelagic forms of marine life, then after 5 or 10 minutes, swim up the wall like outer ledge to the crown at 35 to 40 foot depths, and begin drifting along comfortably looking for turtles, lobster, big green morays, and all the X factor appearances that can happen at any time.
In these dives I did last week ( my trip report), we had some 80 foot plus vis on a couple dives, then a thermocline came in ( again!!!%^&*) and vis dropped to around 45 feet. More turtles all over the reef than you can imagine. On the first surface interval on Wednesday, I decided to freedive ( I should add that the 1st dive was only 30 minutes long, and primarily at around 30 feet over the crown). Almost each freedive drop had me coming down litterally on top of big loggerheads, and sometimes being able to "freedive with them" for a minute or so before I'd have to surface. One of the small hawksbills I did this with, actually followed me up to the surface, and stayed with me for a while.Ultimately, I think he became embarrassed for my lack of breathholding ability compared to his own comfort levels, and moved on
The reason for the shallow first dive ( crown only) was that I was shooting video of a group from Bonnier corp ( they are responsible for Scubadiving Magazine, sport Diver, and I believe the Padi Undersea Journal). Their ScubaLab crew was testing BCD's, for the Gear Tests in the magazine. They needed lots of shallow so they could test more BC's ( make more repeititive dives). Breakers, Pauls and Horseshoe ended up being perfect for them. While there were no Halcyon set ups being tested, if I had one of the new adjustible cinch Halcyons to let them test, I actually think they would have given it a good review--their criteria was very good.
Logistically, when you have 10 testers having to constantly put on a new BC, getting it to fit correctly and getting weighting optimized is a real issue--and one not so dissimilar from the issue of a new diver getting a rental bc from a shop, or of a new diver being "directed" into a new bc....the amount of time it takes to get the BC fitted and trimmed optimally, plays a HUGE PART in how well it will perform for them, or how well they will like and review it.
Some of the Bc's tested were just not good at adjusting or trimming, and with little excuse, being traditional or hybrid designs.
Back to the Trip Report, since the diving was awesome, and this is the type of reef I want to bring a bunch of you here for on a DIR Adventure/fun dive, I am posting the url to the Video I shot from the first day--it is only 3 minutes, I am now close to the bottom so you can see colors in the reef, and I think it is a good showcasing of the kind of dive experience you can have here....
YouTube - ‪Scuba Lab testing BCD's in Palm Beach, Florida‬‏
Another cool aspect of each of these three reefs, is that you can begin the dive on the offshore ledge as deep as 95 feet, see some more pelagic forms of marine life, then after 5 or 10 minutes, swim up the wall like outer ledge to the crown at 35 to 40 foot depths, and begin drifting along comfortably looking for turtles, lobster, big green morays, and all the X factor appearances that can happen at any time.
In these dives I did last week ( my trip report), we had some 80 foot plus vis on a couple dives, then a thermocline came in ( again!!!%^&*) and vis dropped to around 45 feet. More turtles all over the reef than you can imagine. On the first surface interval on Wednesday, I decided to freedive ( I should add that the 1st dive was only 30 minutes long, and primarily at around 30 feet over the crown). Almost each freedive drop had me coming down litterally on top of big loggerheads, and sometimes being able to "freedive with them" for a minute or so before I'd have to surface. One of the small hawksbills I did this with, actually followed me up to the surface, and stayed with me for a while.Ultimately, I think he became embarrassed for my lack of breathholding ability compared to his own comfort levels, and moved on
The reason for the shallow first dive ( crown only) was that I was shooting video of a group from Bonnier corp ( they are responsible for Scubadiving Magazine, sport Diver, and I believe the Padi Undersea Journal). Their ScubaLab crew was testing BCD's, for the Gear Tests in the magazine. They needed lots of shallow so they could test more BC's ( make more repeititive dives). Breakers, Pauls and Horseshoe ended up being perfect for them. While there were no Halcyon set ups being tested, if I had one of the new adjustible cinch Halcyons to let them test, I actually think they would have given it a good review--their criteria was very good.
Logistically, when you have 10 testers having to constantly put on a new BC, getting it to fit correctly and getting weighting optimized is a real issue--and one not so dissimilar from the issue of a new diver getting a rental bc from a shop, or of a new diver being "directed" into a new bc....the amount of time it takes to get the BC fitted and trimmed optimally, plays a HUGE PART in how well it will perform for them, or how well they will like and review it.
Some of the Bc's tested were just not good at adjusting or trimming, and with little excuse, being traditional or hybrid designs.
Back to the Trip Report, since the diving was awesome, and this is the type of reef I want to bring a bunch of you here for on a DIR Adventure/fun dive, I am posting the url to the Video I shot from the first day--it is only 3 minutes, I am now close to the bottom so you can see colors in the reef, and I think it is a good showcasing of the kind of dive experience you can have here....
YouTube - ‪Scuba Lab testing BCD's in Palm Beach, Florida‬‏
