 Date:
Saturday, May 5, 2007, Somewhere west of Sanibel
Finally, we found a way to get back into the Gulf. Honestly, if you
don’t have your own boat or you don’t know someone with a boat, you are
probably not going to be diving in the Gulf. That’s unfortunate because
it is some of the best diving around for people who have done it all.
The Gulf offers a variety of very large fish and although it is not
typical Florida Keys scenery, it is most unusual. When you leave the
safety of the “jug line” you aren’t always sure that you are going to
find the ledge. If you are navigationally challenged, like I am, you are
not sure you are going to find the boat again. If you get lucky, you
have a Captain who can put you on the spot each and every time. We got
lucky.
Our trip into the Gulf began early, at least Gary thinks 7:00 am is
early, and we met calm weather and water as we headed west of Sanibel.
We had mixed goals – two photographers who just wanted the opportunity
to dive in the Gulf for the first time in almost a year and two
spearfishermen who are known to bring home the bacon. You would think
that this type of mix wouldn’t work but it turns out that it works very
well. We discussed the theory that if the photographers went in the
water first, it might scare off the big fish, or it might just make them
believe that divers were no threat to them. In the end, we ended up
diving totally different sites – some better for hunting big fish and
some just interesting for photography. In at least one case, the hunter
decided to return to the site that one of the photographers had visited
earlier.
So on this special day in the Gulf of Mexico, just somewhere west of
Sanibel Island, we found Nirvana (and I’m not talking about the Grunge
group from Seattle). The Gulf temperatures are warming up although the
visibility leaves some room for discussion. Our captain told us that we
should get over our fascination with the wrecks and that he could put us
on some great breaks and ledges. He didn’t lie. It’s a good thing for
him that he didn’t promise great visibility because wasn’t in the
picture for this weekend. Nonetheless, the seas were calm, the fish were
cruising over interesting ledges and were undisturbed by the presence of
our cameras.
Our first dive was on a spot called the “Smoke House”. Now, don’t ask
me how these ledges get named. My guess is that someone else calls this
ledge the “Hole in the Wall” or maybe the “Long Curve”. It’s possible
that it was named the Smoke House because there were lots of fish and it
was considered “Smokin”. There was a fair sized Goliath Grouper that
followed us around for a while until it discovered that photographers
are boring and we didn’t have any fish for it to steal. I’ve always been
told that if you know where to look, there are lobsters in the Gulf. I
never believed it because, until now, I had never seen a lobster in the
Gulf. Big surprise for me - as I peered into a little hole in the ledge,
there it was! It wasn’t big and definitely not legal even during lobster
season but if I could just figure out where we were, I would be headed
there next year after the season opened again.
The next “photo ledge” we visited only had a notation on the GPS that
said “Doug”. I think it meant that Doug had been here, or Doug had
gotten a good fish here, or Doug just liked this ledge. I called it a
“photo ledge” because only the photographers went in the water here.
This was a great ledge despite the lousy visibility. We had a choice of
two directions to head once we got to the bottom- at around 70 plus
feet. Our captain always tells us that we just don’t move around enough
to find good stuff but we are easy to follow because we stay in a small
spot for a long time. We just watched the big fish and headed in that
direction. A big red grouper was the first vision once we settled on the
bottom and we knew that the spearfishermen would be sorry they gave this
dive to us instead of jumping in themselves. There were also lots of
nice Snapper on this ledge. If only the visibility had been better I’m
sure I would have had the “prize winning” photo in the 2007 Caloosa Dive
Club Photo contest. Unfortunately, I only came back with a nice photo of
a Starfish and a fuzzy big red grouper just out of the range of my
camera. And I begged and whined to our Captain to change his notations
to say “Cherri” because I loved the spot (Sorry Doug).
Our spearfishermen didn’t bring up anything to report as far as
records go but they did bring back breakfast for Sunday morning. We
photographers didn’t bring back any award winning photos but we did get
to enjoy some of the best Florida has to offer. The Gulf is fantastic
and very challenging for photographers. If it was easy, anyone could do
it couldn’t they?
The Caloosa Dive Club Underwater Photo Competition is ongoing and
dive club members need to sign up by June 7th. Members who join after
June 7th, have 2 weeks to sign up. The contest is an amateur contest and
covers everything from “Point & Shoot” to Underwater Video. It’s
intended to be fun and to entertain. It meets both of those goals. |
