Diving with Ryan O'Connor off Tower 17

Ryan O'Connor and I decided to made a night dive early in the morning. Ryan sent me a text at 4:45 am with new parking instructions. I was just leaving. Got to his place and parked in the Northern guest parking spot. He sent me a text saying he would be down soon with a guest parking pass. He came and we geared up and hiked over to Tower 17 to get in the water. I was barefoot and the pebbles and construction did a job on my feet. Took several days for the cuts to heal.

We swam out more or less on the 100 degree bearing in line with the Tower, but we could not find the blocks so we just headed East. Lots of fish and got some photos. Ryan's light was very bright and maybe scared some of the fish away. Got some pictures, including this shot of a Flamingo Tongue,

 this shot of an Orange Spotted Filefish, and

  this shot of a Purplemouth Moray Eel.


We came up after 60 minutes to see where we were, as I had not seen anything I recognized for much of that time. We were in fact almost as far North as Tower 18 and had seen a number of Staghorn Coral patches.


Water temperature still 73 degrees; dive time was 52 minutes; consumption was 27.92 psi/minute at an average depth of 16 feet; SAC rate was 16.75 psi/minute on an aluminum 80.


Took 7 minutes at the surface, then returned to the bottom and headed to the Eastern Ledge. We were at 35.7 feet of water and swam South along the Ledge until I found what I thought was the landmark for the Fish Camp Rocks.  We headed West towards the beach

We swam to the Columnar Coral and then went North to the Fish Camp Rocks, where I got the picture of Ryan, above.  I also got this shot of a Scrawled Filefish












and this shot of a Caribbean Spiny Lobster.

We then headed West to the beach, though we ended up getting set way to the South. We ran out of air and had to surface well before we got to the beach. We swam in the rest of the way on the surface.


Water temperature still 73 degrees; dive time was 52 minutes; consumption was 27.92 psi/minute at an average depth of 16 feet; SAC rate was 16.75 psi/minute on an aluminum 80.




Spent a lot of our surface interval talking to Mike, the Chairman of the condo board, who, as usual was concerned about parking on the condo property. I can't imagine why he is so obsessed about me parking there. After almost two hours, Ryan and I got geared up and got back in the water. This time I wore sandals across the road and onto the beach. I left them under the Tower.

Ryan and I got in the water and fought the current to stay on the 100 degree bearing off the Tower. Could hardly remember where the swim buoy was supposed to be to look for the blocks, but we eventually found them, descended and headed up the gun-sight. Got a nice shot of this little Blue-eyed Hermit Crab in a small Conch Shell.







We ended up at the Green Mountainous coral near the Big Coral Knoll and easily found our way to the Perpendicular Rocks, the Swept Rock and the Knoll. Lots of fish on the Knoll, including this Doctorfish with a Cymothoid Isopod attached



this shot of a Goldentail Moray Eel,

 this shot of a fingerprint Cyphoma,

and this shot of a Shark Sucker which followed Ryan into the beach and attempted several times to attach to him.

 I also got this shot of a small Green Sea Turtle. It's been a long time since I've gotten to swim with a turtle.

It was nice to just float over the knoll again and hang with the fish. We also swam over to the Fish Camp Rocks, before we headed to the beach.


When we surfaced we were almost at Tower 16. Still, it was a nice dive, but the ocean was no longer the calm ocean we had entered. Wind came up and drove the waves onto the beach, stirring up sand and making it difficult to walk ashore.

Bottom temperature remained at 73 degrees; dive time was 118 minutes; consumption was 24.81 psi/minute at an average depth of 16 feet; SAC rate was 16.71 psi/minute on an aluminum 80.