In Reply to: How was Osborne Banks? posted by MarkL on June 18, 2006 at 17:32:11:

Osborne was neat. I have a big imagination and over the years I had imagined it to be this place of 3' tall coral heads of various shades of pink and purple and covered with so many fish that it would be hard to swim around. The coral turned out to be similar to Farnsworth. It may have been a bit shorter and was all the same purple that we see at Farnsworth. The geography of the site we dove was interesting. It was a big plateau in the 125-135' range with sand filled channels on the edges dropping to about 150-160'. I was dissapointed at the absense of fish. With the exception of dead Mola, I hardly saw any fish over 6" long. Claudette, who has been recently trained by ReefCheck to do fish ID surveys, reported that there were lots of baby rockfish. I admit that I appreciate the big fish a lot more and tend to ignore the little guys. I did find an old fishing sinker on the bottom so the fishermen obviously know where the spot is.

My dive plan was 25 mins @ 140 on air with about a half-hour of deco on 50% O2. My max depth was 148' and I probably spent most of my time in the 130's. Deco was tough with so many people on the line. It had been about 3 years since I was on a commercial boat so I had forgotten how busy the line can be on the big boats. I opted to swim a few feet away from the line during deco to avoid the crowd. The surface current that Tim mentioned really kicked my butt above 40'. I finally relented and used my spool as a jon line to complete my 10' stop. I blew through my deco gas about 2X as fast as planned due to all the swimming. I still had plenty, but it was a good lesson. Next time I'll tie in sooner.

I know we only saw one little spot of an area that is several square miles, but based on this one little peek, I wouldn't rate it as any more spectacular from a coral, fish, or geography standpoint than Farnsworth. I would like to try it a few more times though just to make sure that my observations are valid, though.

The Great Escape did a good job of keeping us safe, happy, and well fed. The weather couldn't have been much better. All in all, it was a great trip.

Cheers,
Ross-O

• May get better there, hopefully Roger 19:27:18 06/19/06 (0)