It's trips like these that make me remember why I took this job in the first place. 5 days of rock solid weather, 18 great divers, spawning coral, manta rays, lionfish, and did I mention great divers?

18 divers and 7 crew left Galveston on Thursday evening for a 5 day Flower Gardens coral spawn trip. Over half of the folks were repeat guests, some from years past, some here from Dry Tortugas. We headed out in a 2 foot chop with Captain Zach driving. Zach had never run a Flower Gardens sport trip, and wasn't too sure about pushing the engines up above 1500 RPM for the trip. In Florida, we rarely run harder than 8 knots unless we have an appointment at 2 Friends, the Karaoke bar. Then we push it up to 10. We ran all night and arrived at the West bank at daybreak.

After tying up to buoy number 1 and seeing flat calm conditions, clear visibility from top to bottom, I knew I would have to dive. I found the water temp to be 87 degrees, except at the very bottom of the reef cap at 125 feet, where it dropped to 84 degrees. After 2 dives on the West bank, we headed for the East bank where we set mooring number 1 and tied to it. East bank was a repeat of West bank, with top to bottom vis, no current, 87 degree water, and flat seas. The coral spawned a little that night, indicating that it was probably first night, as scheduled.

Coral in the Flower Gardens spawns on schedule, on the 7th, 8th, and 9th nights after the first full moon in August. Sometimes, when there is a blue moon in August, you will get both an August and a September spawn, but usually one is all you got. The coral spawns according to the following schedule:

You can pretty well set your clock by it, although conditions do play an important role. I think that the water was a little too warm this year, as the corals are showing some stress. About 30% of the Montastraea Cavernosa are paling, a precursor to bleaching. Our Photo Pro, CP, was onboard to specifically photograph the Cavernosa females releasing their egg packets. He did see some, but not in the volume of years past. The other thing affected by the warm water is the number of fish and sizes at the Flower Gardens. We saw very few groupers. I saw a couple of tigers, Mel saw a yellowfin, but al in all the fish life was sparce. I think that they are all deep in the colder water. Mel thinks that they have been fished. In any event, fish populations were very small compared to other years. As an aside, the NOAA ship Nancy Foster is at the Flower Gardens right now completing a deep reef fish census. That data will let us know definitively if we have fishes deep or another cause for the lack of fish.

We dived EFG#1 on Saturday for the first dive, then went looking for a rig. Fling called HI-389, so I went walkabout. We ended up at HI-379B which had good growth and good fish life, but not too many sharks. conditions were perfect for a rig dive, and we made the best of it. Seas were flat, but winds were 5-10 and there was no current. After the platform dive, we headed back to EFG for the rest of the day. We ended up on buoy 5, right near the sand patch, where folks could set up their cameras on tripods and other silliness.

The coral spawn spectacular would prove to be on Saturday night. Divers got in around 9 PM to see Franksii and Diploria doing their thing. Those who stayed later saw Cavernosa, some didn't see any spawning, but they saw a big old loggerhead turtle, so they were happy anyway. Sunday morning we got up to the coral laying about, smoking cigarettes, and relaxing after their annual orgy. We headed to HI-389 to do a rig dive.

HI-389 is the platform owned by W&T offshore that is inside the boundaries of the sanctuary. It was installed the same year the Spree was built, and hasn't been cleaned since. The growth on the platform is phenomenal, with sponges and corals and barnacles and blennies and small stuff and big stuff and sharks and turtles. We didn't see the sharks or the turtles, but we knew that they were there. Many photographs were taken, and lots of oohing and aahing were noted, and I got a radio call from the NOAA ship Manta. The Manta was on the West Bank hanging out with a whale shark.

I've never successfully chased a whale shark, those guys go pretty much where they want, but the customers all asked to go to the West bank, so off we went.

Back on the West bank we tied to buoy 5. No whale shark, no evidence that one had been there, but we made a couple of dives anyway and saw the final night of spawning. Not too exciting, but CP finally got his Cavernosa female shots. We got up in in the morning also, and did it all over again. Weather was now slick with no wind. Not too conducive to rig diving, but we gave it a try anyway. We tied up to HI-573B and promptly walked into the rig. I put an engine in reverse before we hit, backed away, and promptly walked in again. The weight of the rope was enough to pull us to the rig, so we wandered off to Stetson to finish out the trip.

We got to Stetson where it was still slick calm. current was very mild from SE to NW, and seas were flat as can be. Stetson is covered with an ugly filamentous algae that is really ugly and not too cool. The Stetson critters are all there, trying to make a living amongst the algae. The diadema urchins are really healthy and fat, the farmers (damselfish) have kept their farms clear, the Murex shells are doing their best, but it's hard to keep ahead of that stuff. I didn't see any lobster, but I saw some antenna, so they are either shedding or someone has had them for lunch. Deer cowries were out in force, as were decorator crabs and hermit crabs. Spotted morays abounded, and the babies were everywhere. Baby damsels, baby sergeant majors, baby angelfish, lots of babies. Colm and I saw a manta ray go by on the surface, and 2 of the divers just happened to be looking up, so they saw it also. The manta ray was the big fish of the trip.

It was a great trip all around, and I'm glad Irene decided to go up the East coast. I'm here for 3 more weeks and don't want any hurricanes messing up my trip to Texas. Sorry, Nema.