Tim Metcalf and I went out for my last day of diving for this trip to Florida. We dived two ledges 29 miles offshore of Hurricane Pass and Anclote Key called 8ft ledge and 5 ft ledge. It was so calm that we only took about an hour to get 29 miles out in Tim's very fast boat. Power trim tabs rule. We cruised out between a large thunderstorm to the South off Indian Rocks and another fading thunderstorm to the north off New Port Richey. We quickly found the 8 ft ledge, covered by a large school of bait that came up 20 feet from the bottom at 70 ft. We went ahead and started our first dive even though the light was poor with a large cloud from the remnants of the thunderstorm. It was dark and the visibility was only about 30 ft vertical and 20 ft horizontal on this dive. We saw one good sized shark tail - I was taking a picture of Tim and the school of bait over the ledge and saw a four foot high shark tail going past behind him. Not sure but I think it was a hammerhead. I was sorry he was too shy to hang around long enough for a picture.
Our second dive was in 63 ft of water on the "five foot" ledge. Visibility and light were much better, more like forty to 50 ft of visibility and again, lots of bait fish. This ledge went on and on in both directions from our anchor and we started seeing lots of grouper, including some nice sized Gag Grouper. We were forced to surface by our nitrogen saturation instead of exhausting our air like usual, first time I've had this happen diving here, but 80 cu ft tanks give you enough additional bottom time compared to our 71 cu ft in the old days....Safety stop was important! Great dive.
We started looking for new rock to dive on as we started making our way back toward Hurricane Pass. Tim realized he could see bottom from the boat and we were soon cruising in 40 ft of water and could see patches of rock and sand in every direction. We snorkeled on an enormous school of sardine then dived again on a different part of a nice ledge we'd found several weeks earlier.
A great final day of diving off Florida for this trip. Great fun.
Below are some pictures from these dives, for more, please go to:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110159573286645489662/albums/6158555884876580465?authkey=CJTn44D0oY-7OA
The first dive was deep, dark, and not very clear. Lots of baitfish!
A Belted Sandfish in the left foreground, an Arrow Crab just right of center.
Triggerfish
A Red Grouper with bait school over the ledge.
Making our way up from 70 ft to Tim's boat.
A nice sized Red Grouper and his friend the Soapfish welcomed us to the 5 ft ledge. Light and visibility were double though we were still at 63 feet.
A Beau Gregory with beautiful gorgonia soft coral. No algae "gumbo" on these dives!
Tim over the five feet high 5 foot ledge....
In all my diving in the late 60s and 70s I never had so many baitfish on the ledges we dived. Wonderful to see. The Gulf is back to nearly what it was when I was a kid rather than how it was when I finished college and moved to California.
A beautiful loggerhead sea turtle.
Tim with amberjack and a beautiful ledge.
A Hogfish and a butterfly fish show off their color.
A lonely Spadefish matches his stripes to the sponge he was hiding in.
A pair of Key West Grunts face off. I could stay to try to get better closer pictures because I was sucking the last of my air out of the tank at this point.
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