20200817_Ledge at Tower 18

Martha and I drove to the beach at 7:30 am to meet with Chris, who came about 7:45 am. We first changed the o-ring in his tank, which reminded me that I need to replace the o-rings in several of my tanks. We talked about the dive yesterday and the importance of good buoyancy control. I got face to face with him and tried to get him to take a breath and rise in the water column, but he couldn't. 

We swam back to the beach and exchanged the 3 lb weights Chris carried for 2 lb weights which helped him control his buoyancy. We swam back out past the buoy line and descended at 8:02 am.

I then had him swim out to the Eastern Ledge on a 90 degree bearing and we swam with him, though I had to get him to slow down and focus on his buoyancy. He held the bearing well, but there were moments when his focus wandered.

Along the way, we swam with a small Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) who swam with us for 5 or 10 minutes. 

We also encountered several Spotted Goatfish (Pseudupeneus maculatus).

I got a shot of this  Ocean Surgeonfish (Acanthurus bahianus)

and this  Blue Angelfish (Holacanthus bermudensis). We were now 35 minutes into the dive and we went over the ledge and down to 34 feet. We swam North along the Ledge for a few minutes. Martha and I had short fill tanks, and were getting down to 1500 psi, so we used our buoyancy control to rise up onto the reef and head West towards the beach.

As we left the bottom I got this shot of a Bar Jack (Caranx ruber) who swam by just to see what we were doing.  

Above us in the water column was a small school of Ballyhoo (Hemiramphus brasiliensis). I took several shots, but I was shooting into the sun and most of the shots did not turn out well. 

We swam West and got inside the buoy line as we surfaced at 9:27 am and swam to the beach. 

Dive time was 85 minutes at a maximum depth of 34 feet. My Actual Consumption rate was 25.16 psi/minute; my Surface Air Consumption rate was 16.28 and the Residual Minute Volume was .42 cubic feet per minute.