WHO KNEW?

If you received all the gifts in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas," you would get 364 presents. Their cost : $86,609

Chuuk Lagoon and Guam

We returned from the trip to Truk Lagoon (Chuuk) and Guam. The pictures are a bit slow in coming as there are sooo many. Please be patient and check back with us in a bit.

Santa Pics Under Water

Friday night, Sept 25th found Santa Claus in the pool allowing water bugs to take pictures with him. It was loads of fun, as you can see here.

Make it a point to come to Harry's Dive Shop on Saturday, November 14 when Santa returns for an encore performance. Cost is $10 per person photographed. Worth it baby!

Please bring your mask (defogged), weights and belt, and of course, notice that photos turn out better when you wear something in addition to your swimsuit.

Send the family and friends a unique holiday card this year. Blow bubbles with Santa.

Labor Day Weekend 2009

This is one of the best examples of some of the fantastic diving available locally. Everything and everyone seemed to line up in perfect unison; the stars, moons, fun people, comfortable hotel, marvelous restaurant, phenomenal visibility, flat calm seas, tropcial warm water and balmy air and the list continues…other than the traffic on Friday night, it was near Caribbean conditions all the way around.

In a conch (nut) shell,we saw three octopi, some garden eels, a gorgeous purple and yellow nudibranch, two Goliath Groupers, numerous Moon Jellyfish, large schools of Atlantic Spadefish, jumping dolphins, menacing mantis shrimp and just about every other indiginous Gulf of Mexico fish you can imagine.

Scuba Steve picked up a dead shell on the bottom and put it in his pocket. Upon surfacing and emptying his pocket, he found a teensy, tiny baby octopus inside his spare mask, which was also in his pocket. Relax, we put the baby back in his home shell and escorted him back to depth. Unfortunately for him, he now lives two miles away from where he was found.

The other octopi were very large and announced their whereabouts by the piles of shell carcasses stacked outside their home. Imagine how ticked off these creatures get when we humanoids keep taking the octopus’ trophies for our book shelves back home. The nudibranch was of a variety that I have never seen before. It was purple and yellow and all alone. Nature allows these creatures to be brilliantly colored because they are poisonous to anything that attempts to eat them. The fish swallow the nudibranch and then promptly spit them back out. Yuck!!!

And as you can see from the pictures, there was no shortage of baitfish to keep us company throughout both days. A diver could just hang on the down line and gaze for hours watching the flitting and swaying of the fish. Let us not forget the goliath groupers. They are huge and friendly but they know to keep their distance. Hopefully, all spearfisherman know it is a federal offense to shoot one of these giants let alone the fact that they are likely the breeders of the lot.

The three wrecks we dove on Saturday include the Accoceek, Mac’s Reef, and the hovercraft. Sunday’s dives took us to the Liberty Ship (a 400 ft WWII cargo ship), the Red Sea, and Bridgespan No. 12. Each one was better than the first so to say we were blown away is to be modest at best.

The divers who were fortunate enough to have been part of the experience include: Chuck, John, Cos, Russell, Wedon, Steve, Buddy, Drew, Jennifer, Justin, Daryl, Diane, Noreen, Julio, David, and Cindy with Peggy and Terry joining us for Sunday’s dives.

Know that this trip is planned for the end of May and the beginning of September each year. It is a package deal including two days of diving, air re-fills, dinner Saturday night and hotel accommodations Friday and Saturday night.

Join us next year. It’s never too early to make plans.

Cave Trip - August 2009

The last week of August found four friends on the road to north Florida to sample more cave diving opportunities. The plan was to meet our mentor and instructor, Paul Heinerth, for a few days of diving for fun — no classes to take and no students to watch. Unfortunately, Paul was ill and could not dive so…regrettably, we left him on dry land and off we went into the deep dark yonder. Check out topside photos here.

We stayed at Dive Outpost which is a centrally located tank filling and accommodation station. Our first stop was Peacock Springs followed by a trip to Ginnie Springs and ultimately on to “Eagle’s Nest,” a dive site near Crystal River.

The first day of diving in Peacock had us swimming against a strong current to get in. About the time we reached the area where we had to pull ourselves along the bottom, we had a couple of light failures and wisely elected to stop the dive and go back. The next dive was to the same cave but better preparations with regard to cameras were made.

We traveled to Ginnie Springs the next day and were met with bus loads of college kids from the University of Florida. Their fun was in tubing the Santa Fe River in swimsuits. Our fun was in full body rubber wetsuits and going below to venture into the spring water that feeds the river.

We dove Devil’s Ear, Devil’s Eye and Little Devil. The cave water was crystal clear while the river water carried tannic acid (dark brown) from the decayed swamp vegetation, aka mung.

The last dive was Eagle’s Nest, a cathedral cave that is simply unbelievable. You drive about eleven miles through deer and wild boar hunting grounds to arrive at a “pond” that looks like a cesspool from the surface. (It’s not always like this — lots of rain in Florida this year.)

Procedure: Drive many miles through no-man’s land. Park in the middle of nowhere. Unload truck of lots of stuff. Gear up for caves. Enter the water via ten stairs. Buddy check everyone. Descend ten feet and follow the line to the cave entrance. Re-group. Descend through a chimney one at a time. Drop into the clearest, darkest, most beautiful underwater cathedral this side of the border. It is 200 feet by 100 feet. There is a permanent line running top to bottom. Along each side is a cave tunnel, one upstream and one downstream — beginning at 180 feet. (We did not go there.)

Along the walls of the dark cave are fossils of sea biscuits, sand dollars and sea shells. A few eels and catfish joined us but other than that, the mere wonder of seeing for yourself that this was once covered with ocean water is flabbergasting. Sit back and think about it.

Global warming and oceans rising? Think again…

Underwater pictures soon.

Alligators Galore

Because we wanted to do something different yet still get folks together to have fun, we elected to go to Cajun pride Swamp Tours for a day of play with alligators, yay!

Eighteen people got up early on a Sunday morning and drove out to LaPlace for a 9:30 boat departure. The weather was marvelous — summer with a threat of cool rain. For the most part, we had beautiful weather . The rain didn’t hit until the end of the tour but when it did rain, it rained a lot. Sheets of it. But heh, it was all okay.

The alligators, like any living creature, have territories and favorite areas. When the boat passes, they follow it in hopes of a free meal of raw chicken or big and fluffy marshmallows.

We took lots of pictures but I pared them down to these few. It was a tough job but I had to do it.

As the saying goes,“Be a tourist in your own city.” If you haven’t ever done a swamp tour, you truly do not know what you are missing. Take a look at how the alligators follow the boat and how they literally jump up to retrieve the proffered reward.

Thanks Cajun Swamp Tours — we had a simply marvelous time.

August 8-9 Certification Trip

The August 8/9 certification trip was simply fantastic. The weather cooperated as did the visibility in both the Gulf of Mexico and Vortex Springs. See pictures here.

Eighteen new divers learned a bit about what lies beneath the surface in the Gulf of Mexico — a body of water rich and alive with marine life. At times, there were so many baitfish that we simply could not see 5 feet in front of us. At other times, the baitfish balled up and zipped to and fro as though in a dance of life set to music.

On our way out to the dive site, we were informed by radio that a whale shark was cruising the immediate area. We chose to take our chances and go to where the giant animal was reported to be. Unfortunately, we did not get to see the whale shark but we did get to see more fish in a single dive than most people will ever see in a lifetime.

In addition to the numerous fish, we saw a Loggerhead Turtle accompanied by remoras, a Goliath Grouper, Spanish Mackerel, Bonita, young Amberjack, and lastly, but most certainly not least, we saw and photographed a frogfish — not a toadfish.

When we arrived at Vortex on Sunday morning, we were the only folks there. That was testament to the beautiful conditions in the Gulf: Dive boats took all the divers out thereby leaving us alone to enjoy the crisp and "gin clear" waters to ourselves. The water was so nice and the crowd so small that we elected to do a night dive. That was fantastic too. The eels came out looking for us to feed them.

Skills were completed and divers left happy and wanting more.

Congratulations to Emily, Alex, Russell, Leson, Brett, Megan, Blair, David H., David M., Tyler, Orr, Paul, Tucker, Mark, Maria, Lindsay, Cheney, and Art.