Cordova Dive Blog

Saturday, 11 May 2019

Martha and I dive the Fish Camp Rocks

Martha swimming with an adolescent
Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)

After getting stuck on the Causeway Bridge yesterday morning, we left the apartment at 6:45 am and got across the span before 7:00 am when it would open for boat traffic. We were parked behind Tower 17 by 7:00 am. I had time to test the housing on my Mark iv before we got geared up and in the water at 7:20 am.

Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)

I fell getting in the water and crawled/rolled over the sand to get into the water. I needed to crawl quite a ways before I was in deep enough water to let me get my legs under me.

Once I stood up, I finned up and we swam out past the buoy line to descend. We headed East towards the Fish Camp Rocks and I photographed a small Green Sea Turtle who was curious about us. We followed the turtle South for several minutes before he left us.




I lost track of where we were while we swam with the turtle, but I  recognized the Big Coral Knoll as we swam by on it's Northern edge. We then headed South to the Fish Camp Rocks and discovered that the SeaFan organization had securely placed markers on seemingly every one of the Green Monsterous Corals of the Rocks inviting people to "take photos of this tag and coral" and upload that information to the SeaFan website.

Spanish Grunt (Haemulon macrostomum)

We spent a good deal of our dive on the Rocks and I got lots of pictures:  including this shot of a couple of Spanish Grunts on the Rocks,

Gray Snapper (Lutjanus griseus)

this shot of a Gray Snapper,

Juvenile Schoolmaster (Lutjanus apodus)

This shot of a Juvenile Schoolmaster,

Add caption

Bluehead (Thalassoma bifasciatum)

This shot of a Nurse Shark resting under one of the coral heads at the Rocks (left) and this shot of a Bluehead (below)

Unfortunately, Canon's 5d mark iv has dual pixel technology which confounds Picasa3 so that I cannot use Picasa to edit the pictures. I am struggling with Canon's own Digital Photo Professional 4, which makes little sense to me right now.



We left the Fish Camp Rocks and swam over to the Gray Mid-way Rock, then swam West down the gun sight to the beach. We surfaced just inside the vessel exclusion buoys.

Dive time was 101 minutes, maximum depth was 18.50 feet and the bottom temperature was 80.8 degrees. My SAC was 16.70 and my RMV was 0.43 cubic feet per minute.

My pictures from this dive are posted at the following link: 11 May 2019_Fish Camp Rocks