28 May 2020_Fish Camp Rocks by way of the Big Coral Knoll

I got up early this morning around 5:00 am to walk Mia, load the Jeep and head to the beach. After the drive from Laurel back to Fort Lauderdale, it seemed strange to pack an empty Jeep. Hard to remember wetsuits, soap, towels, and the flag, but we fixed what we had to and made do with the rest.

We got to the beach at 8:24 am, geared up and entered the water in front of Tower 17 at 7:55 am. We walked out to the sand bar and swam East to the reef then descended at 8:33 am. 

There were no buoys off the beach to alert us to a current, but once I was in the water I could feel that we had a South current. I tried to compensate for the current but overcompensated and ended up just 10-15 feet South of the Big Coral Knoll. The Knoll has taken a beating during the past eight months while we have been in Laurel.  

We headed to the Eastern edge and then turned South to the Fish Camp Rocks. This area looked much more like I remembered, but it, too, has changed. We made a quick sweep of the Rocks then continued South to the Columnar Coral. When I first saw this coral it was covered with 3 inch coat of  that looked like sheets of grain waving in a breeze. Now it is just a bare rock and has been for several years. 

We returned to the Fish Camp Rocks and spent some time exploring each of the several larger rocks. We were looking for more turtles or maybe some nurse sharks, but there were none to be seen. We swam West the Rocks towards the beach. We surfaced at 10:24 am, but it took a while to get out of the water and on the beach. I fell a few times and had to work my way into deeper water to get my legs under me so I could stand up and try again. Once out of the water, I took the gear off and walked back in to help Martha climb out. I held out my hand for her fins but she took my hand for balance and walked out on her own. She later confided that she had vomited during the dive and that she felt nauseous at the end of the dive.

Our dive time was 111 minutes and the maximum depth was 20.4 feet. My actual consumption rate was 25.03 psi/minute; my surface air consumption rate was 16.85 psi/minute and my residual minute volume was .43 cubic feet.