An interesting weekend overall.
Friday's dives to the
"Jim Atria" and reefs got blown out thanks to T.S. Noel not getting out of the way fast enough. Saturday's dives to the
"RSB-1" (how DO you spell that?) and reef went out ok, but had some interesting times on both dives. The
"RSB-1" had about 20ft of visibility, some decent life with schools of jacks, some barracuda and some angels. Then we went to
"Lighthouse Ledge" for a drift dive. Viz was about 6ft, at times hard to even see my buddy with her canister HID light! The surge was horrendous - we were constantly getting pulled out to the sand, then slammed back into the ledge. Navigating was definitely interesting to say the least. After about 20 minutes of constant beating, I
"thumbed the dive" and we did our ascent. I had to hold on to my buddy's BC the entire way up just to make sure we didn't get separated due to the surge and the bad viz.
On Sunday, things were a bit better ocean-wise. It was a brilliantly sunny afternoon with some 2-3 ft rollers. We even saw a large pod of dolphins (Mikey estimated 15 or so) breach the surface a few times. As we headed out to the
"United Caribbean" aboard
Parrot Island's "Fish Food", it looked like the perfect day of the weekend. After
DM Chris dropped down to tie-off to the wreck, he came back up and said; "Has anyone ever wondered what it's like to dive in the great lakes? You're gonna find out today!". And he was right! Viz was about 8ft on the wreck. Couldn't see things till you were right on top of them - I nearly missed a spotted moray that my buddy pointed out! After 35 minutes of trying to find something to shoot video of, I headed for the surface and hoped that the reef dive would be better. And it was much better than the wreck!
"Abbey Too" had about 25ft of viz and not as much surge as Saturday's reef dive, so it was an enjoyable relaxing dive. Did manage to shoot some video - not a lot as I was also responsible for the flag - and saw a couple of good sized lobster and the tail end of another spotted moray.
All in all, Sunday was the best day of the weekend. Thanks to
Dixie Divers and
Parrot Island for getting me out and re-wetting my gills! If there is any decent video out of this weekend, it'll be posted on the website soon.
and we shot video of the Ancient Mariner and Turtle Ledge for a client. Lots of fish in both places and the visibility is starting to get better (@ 50-60ft).
Sunday's boat ride was a lilttle more interesting - seas 4-6ft - and we took our cameras to the Sea Emperor once again along with Lighhouse Ledge. All the residents were out to play on the Sea Emperor, so more great footage has been added to the library. 
The Emperor is one of my favorite wreck dives because I can usually get the critters to come pretty close to the camera ("Baby" the green moray has actually bumped the camera a few times in the past! ).
