Monday, December 13, 2010

Howe Sound Boat Dive 28/11/2010

Jason and I decided to go on a boat dive with the Topline. Mike Jurren was on board helping out Kevin. On the trip I asked Kevin about diving in the Florida keys, around Marathon since he has a house down there, and had a lot of dive contacts.

The two dives we did were off of Hutt Wall, and then down at Wolcomb Island. Hutt wall was nice, and we saw the two big cloud sponges. I brought my scooter along for this dive just for fun. I wanted to see how it performed using a single cylinder versus doubles. It really didn't have any change in it's performance. Just before we hit the sponges, I was going to bring us up shallower because I had forgotten about seeing them. Good thing Jason remembered, as just over the next rock outcropping there they were. We would have missed them. Again, the sponges were noticeably dying, with lots of brown sections.

The Wolcombe Island dive was also good. We found a nice octopus on this dive. However, it was 2 degrees colder here, at 7 degrees. We were both frozen at the end of the dive. I left the scooter behind this time. We changed our dive plan a bit, and headed along the rock wall out until it started to peter out, then we turned around and came up shallower and explored the south section of the island near the cove there. It turned out to be a good way to do it. The other times we'd spend all the time on the rock wall. The shallower section in the bay had a lot of nice boulders and rocks, with lots of places for things to hide. I remember seeing a very large and interesting rock chunk, much like the prow of a ship.

Visibility was good on both dives as well. All in all a nice set of two dives.

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