Diving the Yankee Clipper Jacks

The ocean was calm when I got to the South Beach parking lot.  Large rollers were breaking near the beach, but otherwise calm. I geared up and walked out to the beach, got in the water and was swept to the South by the current between the beach and the sand bar.  I finned up to swim out, but had to walk across the sand bar. Then I swam out to the swim buoys and descended.


Visibility was terrible and there was very little life on the algae patch. I took a very few pictures, but nothing good. This shot of a Gray Angelfish was the best of the lot, and that's not saying much.

 Or maybe this picture of a small transulcent hermit crab in a moonsail shell.

I kept this picture of a Sand Perch to demonstrate how bad the visibility was.



I went up at 45 minutes to find that I had overcompensated and was way North of where I should have been.  I was also cold, very cold. I wore the 3 mm jacket this morning, but it's a bit big and water flows through it or at least within it at strange times. I warm up on the surface.

Water temperature was 71 degrees; consumption rate was 30.27 psi/minute at an average depth of 19 ft; SAC rate was 19.21 psi/minute; RMV was 0.5 ft3/minute.

I got tangled up in the flag line on the surface. The North wind was fierce and there were large waves traveling East, but the flag was going West, then Southwest.  I untangled the mess and descended well North of the Jacks. I swam SW across the 3-tiered reef, then headed West but let the current push me a little to the South, too. I was hoping to find the juvenile reef squid or the nurse shark, but no such luck. I got to the sand and hung around killing my tank then swam in to 10 feet to ascend near the beach. I swam in on the surface, but had some trouble getting my fins off, the flag reeled in and my camera secured.  I wobbled around coming out of the surf and a large wave came along, picked me up and put me on top of the shelf. Probably could not have done that myself.

Water Temperature was 71 degrees; consumption at an average depth of 19 feet was 31.88 psi/minute; SAC rate was 20.23 psi/minute and RMV was 0.52 ft3/minute.