Second dive.
Hello Wakulla
I am continuing on from last week’s diving to our second dive site. We pulled anchor and the boat captain moved the boat to the second site: the Dan Safety Barge.
I have written a little about the barge in earlier articles but every time I dive that site I’m always greeted with something a little different. On this dive I didn’t have to worry about students so I decided I would take my nearly new GoPro Hero 9 camera in the GoPro underwater case. I have to say at this point that I am not an underwater photographer by any stretch but I bought a GoPro 8 and case last May during the Amazon Prime days for $150. I used it one dive and the videos were pretty good. Unfortunately when I went on a very memorable dive later in the summer and saw the biggest stingray in my life the camera wouldn’t come on when I pressed the on button. I sent it back and within a few weeks they sent me a new GoPro 9 to replace it.
Now back to my dive. I had the GoPro 9 mounted on an aluminum frame that allowed me to hold it with both hands to keep it steady so I made several pretty good videos at the DB. The fish I saw were incredible, the were thousands of feeder fish that swam in a large dance so when they swam over the top of you it would literally block out the sunlight.
There where several species of parrot fish and many different species of Wrasses (yes I had to look up the spelling too). There where several different colored starfish but the one that stands out was a black and white one the size of a dinner plate.
I was swimming to the top of the barge and several of the sea fan soft coral looked very healthy and seemed to have grown a few inches since my last visit. I believe this is attributed to the boat captains and divers staying well above the top of the wreck as not to damage them with their fins.
After taking some video of the top of the wreck I started down the other side, as I was descending another diver got my attention and we went back to the top of the wreck to look at an unusual pair of snails with white shells with black spots on one of the sea fans. I have never seen this type of sea snail there before. I got some video of them so if you come by the dive shop on a Tuesday or Wednesday I can show you and you might be able to identify them.
I swam around the wreck again to see if there was anything else that was unusual when I noticed that I was the only one down there because the other divers had ascended back to the boat. I decided it was time for me to ascend back to the boat to end our afternoon of diving.
Until next time keep making bubbles.
– Russell Miller, NAUI instructor #59999