Venice Sea Life encounters

[dkramer]

I had a run in with a remora this morning. It took a good 20 minutes before I could finally convince him that he wasn't gonna get a free ride. I also saw a bat fish which surprised me because I didn't know we had them here.

 

[H2Andy]

remoras can get very aggressive ... i had a buddy nearly go into a panic over one

 

[dkramer]

This one was a bugger! No matter what I did, he just wasn't givin' it up. Finally I tried yelling at him through my reg & it was kind of funny cuz, all the rest of the fish in the area,as soon as I yelled, poof, they were gone. But not him. That bad boy just hung there looking at me & swishing his tail as if to say "yeah, what else you got."

 

[Mmm Scuba]

I just got back from Alhambra. On our first dive we were out in waist deep water getting our gear ready for the swim out.

My wifes eyes get as big a saucers and she starts pointing and shouting 'what is that, what is that'.

I turned around and about 10 yards behind me was decent sized manatee just chillin.

I dipped down and tried to approach him but he didn't want to play. I never new they could move so fast when they wanted to.

 

[sglake]

Today by the artificial reef we saw quite a few small hogs and grouper, lots of star fish a sea cucumber, 3 nice flounder and a small baracuda.

 

[loquat149]

There was a goliath grouper yesterday off Service Club, hiding behind a sunken trolling motor. It was probably 3' or so in length and delivered a nice sonic boom when I approached too close. We were also met with a pod of dolphins during our surface swim back to shore. It also seemed that every time I turned a rock or shell over last week during our second dive a juvenile moray eel popped out...

Dave

 

[fisheyeview]

Did Alhambra yesterday for the first time. Found a couple of sea hares, two nice sized Coneys, and the smallest octopus I have ever seen. It was maybe a 1/2 inch long.

 

[H2Andy]

oh, nice on the octopus

amongst my favorites

 

[BHB ScubaTroll]

Did Alhambra yesterday for the first time. Found a couple of sea hares, two nice sized Coneys, and the smallest octopus I have ever seen. It was maybe a 1/2 inch long.

Dude... get out of the "macro" mindset to search for teeth!

Actually, there is a lot of micro and macro life off the Venice beaches. The biggest problems we have with getting photos is task loading!

When I dive the Venice beach area, my mind is set on finding teeth (not on finding pipefish), but there is a VERY diverse macro life there (as well as big life!). I've seen everything from micro-octos to "GIANT SEAHORSES"! But, to be honest.. I've only taken my camera on one dive (To shoot a special project for ScubaBoard)...

To be honest, I've seen things on VB dives that I've never seen before (or since) and heard things I've never heard before (Sorry Mindy... those were the sounds of Grunt fish )

If you lay still in the artificial reef off Alhambra, the Gruntfish will begin to circle you... If you wait too long to move something, some of the grunts will actually push rocks with their snouts....

Truth be told, there are as many sites to be seen on the Atlantic side for beach dives as there are for the Gulf side.... Unfortunately, on the Gulf side we look for the meg... on the Atlantic side, we look for the reef!

 

[thegulfer]

Did Alhambra yesterday for the first time. Found a couple of sea hares, two nice sized Coneys, and the smallest octopus I have ever seen. It was maybe a 1/2 inch long.

Hello to all, I just found this site and it looks to be right up my alley.

Was this the guy??? I sort of felt bad because I found him attached to one of my "finds" when I got back in the boat. He did swim off so I hope he was OK. (I hope the picture thing works)