Boynton Beach, Florida

Well, there I was in Florida. What could I do? Catch a ride with Splashdown divers of course.

I had called the dive shop at Two Georges Harbor in Boynton Beach days earlier to make sure I could rent what split fins were available. I wanted this to be a chance to plan what I might buy. I had a pair of Atomics and some ScubaPro Split Jet Fins... of all the novel concepts.

The trip out to the ocean was its usual excitement of blasting through the narrow channel that goes from the inland waterway to the ocean itself. People must get wiped out in that channel as a regular thing.

Most of the divers were just finished with their basic scuba class and their experience was in quarries. I figured that they were in for something special, seeing the ocean for the first time. It's a short trip out to the Gulf Stream and only a bit further to where we were going to dive. Due to heavy boat traffic in the area, the law there is that you must have a dive flag and that you must ascend at the flag. So they give a float flag to each group and the flag carrier is never lost, only people that leave the flag. Terry (boat DM) asked if I wanted to solo or go with a group. I just wanted to take pictures and so said that I would follow a group. What that means is that I would follow their flag, maybe. As Terry pointed out, if I passed one group, there would be another group a bit further on. I noticed that the first person off was an older gent in a drysuit and full gear, that was referred to as 'Uncle Peter'. Most of the rest of the divers entered in groups of 4 as did the last group, who I followed.

I don't think I had ever done a group dive before. It takes good conditions and vis for it to be feasible and I'm usually hunting, so whether there is a group or not, I'm strictly solo. It was interesting to notice though.

The last group of 4 went in, three new divers and a leader. I followed behind, but at 40 feet, they turned to go up, so I just cruised on to the next group. Vis was about 80 feet or so, so the other divers were very easy to find. It was a Florida coral garden with lots of corals and sponges, but most of all, the various type of sea whips that make it so much seem like a garden. While I don't consider Florida the most spectacular coral diving I have seen, it is pretty and there is lots of life.

There was almost no current and everyone was doing a very leisurely swim. I had my new lens on my camera and was looking for subjects. Using a close-up lens like this one, I was having to get closer than I had ever tried before, but it is really hard to shoot some small sponge when it is surrounded by sea whips sticking up a few feet all around it and you don't want to touch anything. There are lots of colorful fish there if you look closely. I saw red barrel sponges that were bigger than any I had seen here before. I was seeing small pale blue sponges that I assumed were the beautiful lavender sponges I had seen in Belize.******

There were the bright yellow and the dark blood red sponges that are common in the Caribbean. There is about as many little things to look at as you want to take the time to find. Since I was set to photograph pretty small stuff, I was traveling slowly and looking closely at what was under the sea whips. Look closely at them and you will see a delicate beauty.

We were all traveling along the inner side of the reef and I was slowly moving along, but that was still fast enough to pass the groups and come upon Uncle Peter. He was moving very slowly in front of everyone and it seemed that he took an occasional large sweeping kick with his fins, between pauses to absorb what he could see.

It was time to go up, so I went to the nearest group at the time and started drifting up their flag line. Lo and behold, it was the group I had started with and that was now the farthest out in front of all the divers. As usual, as soon as I got to the surface, Lynn had the boat right there to pick me up. This dive had been very pretty and was what I considered typical Florida diving. Diving in the sea whips.

A little while later the boat had moved some and we were starting the routine again. When I got down though, I saw an immediate difference. This was still a coral garden of sea whips, but this place was far prettier than anything I had seen in Florida. There was just more life here and it looked happier. I saw the usual brain and other corals, as well as many sponges. Here though, they were bigger and there was far more color. A huge pair of dark gray Butterfly Fish were in a small coral canyon. Again, I was seeing some of the pale blue sponges.

I was amazed and pleased. This was better than I had expected. I was mostly focused on looking at every little thing to see if it would make a good shot when another diver came by and handed me a camera to take their picture. I obliged and then just for good luck, took the picture of some other divers that had come to watch.

I was using the ScubaPro Split Jet fins on this dive. The Atomics on the last dive had fit poorly and I didn't much like them. I've never liked ScubaPro Jet Fins in the 20 or so years that they have been selling them ... but these split jets worked really well. You don't notice when you are going slow, but a couple of speed runs showed that these worked pretty good. Well, what do you know!

I was getting to the end of the dive when, son of a gun, there was one of those pale sponges, but here it had the beautiful delicate lavender pastel color and slight iridescent blue highlights. It was under a large pink sponge and I figured I had gotten my picture and made my dive. Just a bit further on though, was another one and then on to the surface.

Addendum: As usual, I really liked how Splashdown Divers ran their trip. I don't know that I have ever taken such a casual dive before. It was odd for me and it was different to see a group of divers that close. Being made of mostly new divers, it never dispersed much at all. Vis was great, the water was warm and the people I talked to were very nice. I managed to rib Terry enough about how much I like cold water, to get him to shiver just a bit.
Later that night, I came back to the harbor with the wifely and had the pleasure of meeting Michael Brady, from the DiverLink Board, over some beer and good munchies. That was fun conversation and was the first time that I had been able to get together with someone I had met through the dive boards.

As I mention elsewhere, the one downer of the trip was my horrible photography. There is an awful lot you can do wrong down there and I did a fair amount of it as far as poor lighting and even poorer framing. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to go back.

Enjoy the diving, seahunt