As I’ve previously mentioned, I try to go diving once a month and it is a special tradition for us to dive together on our birthdays when possible. I did miss going out in August and Hubby was scheduled to work yesterday on his birthday which is commonplace. I was committed to covering a community event for the day, but was able to switch some stuff and go on Thursday with him. Since it was only morning boat and he didn’t have to do paperwork after, that allowed us our favorite combination which was dive and lunch after. (We did have an evening double commitment so it wasn’t quite as leisurely a lunch as at times).
Conditions were a bit bouncy on the trip out and visibility is recovering to about 45-50 feet; not to out “preferred standard”, but good. This is another case where that kind of visibility is excellent for people who are accustomed to diving in other parts of the country where 20 feet is about the best they ever get. Anyway, we went to two sites with natural wrecks – as in real shipwrecks rather than deliberately deployed to create an artificial reef. As an aside, one of the criteria for deploying a vessel (or whatever structure/items) is the location must be in a wide, sandy area specifically to not impact any existing natural reef. In the case of where we were diving and similar sites, each ship involved went down in the early 1900s and have been subject to storms and more than a century in warm salt water. That means the wreckage is quite scattered and little is recognizable as a vessel, plus some of it is close to nearby natural reefs. Marine creatures don’t care, as a large section of twisted metal/timbers is much like a rock outcropping for their purposes. Early on the first dive I found a large puffer and I hadn’t seen one for quite a while. While there was nothing else “big”, there were plenty of fish of bright blue chromis, three different kinds of butterfly fish, my angels, and several lobsters. I came back to the boat apparently about two minutes before the others saw a turtle. The one woman did get a photo of it and Hubby got footage on his GoPro.
The second dive brought a pair of file fish nibbling a big jelly, an eel tucked way under a rock, and a reef shark moving pretty quickly. We did lunch after at Buzzards Roost, one of two restaurants close to the docks. In consideration of having seen lots of them on the dives, we had hogfish.
Two puffers from previous dives; don;t remember when.
