We were back on Riley's Hump for another full moon. This time
we were looking for spawning black grouper for the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission. I always knew that Riley's is a really cool place, but
this trip taught me how cool it really is. We took the trimix qualified and
certified divers of the University of Puerto Rico with us too. Turns out they
would be the key to sucess this trip.
We left on Thursday evening for a 5 day mission to Riley's during the "Super
moon". The moon is as close to the earth as it will get anytime soon, not that
that factoid has any bearing on this mission, but as the prince of useless
trivia, I just thought I'd throw that in there. The current theory is that black
grouper spawn on the full moon in the late winter/early spring months. That's a
theory, because no one's actually seen it happen. There have been aggregations
(grouper gatherings) seen in the upper keys as well as Gulf of Mexico and a few
select other locations, but it turns out that black grouper are bashful. They
don't like voyeurs during their spawning activity. So, we weren't really looking
for spawning, we were looking for a grouper gathering. We looked first where the
mutton snapper were seen spawning in years past. We saw one black, not a rousing
number of grouper. Then we looked on grouper ledge, a dive site where we've seen
lots of black grouper in the past. Nothing but a bunch of lionfish this time. We
went and looked out in the deep (150 foot) water where I'd seen loads of fish on
the sounder. Goose egged. We looked all over Riley's hump. Not a black to be
seen. We always see blacks on Riley's Hump, and this is a valuable clue in our
mission, actually. If the blacks aren't where they usually are, all we have to
do is find them.
On day 3, Paul (one of the FWC biologists) says we're going to go look over in
this spot where the bathymetry lines look interesting. I've lost hope by then,
and I say sure, whatever, let's go over there. He picks a spot and we put the
UPR divers in the water. There are fish, mostly dickey fish, but nothing
spectacular. BUT - while picking up divers, the divers drifted a long way on
deco, I saw some very interesting things on the sounder. After picking up the
divers, we headed back to the interesting spot and threw an ROV over the side.
Turns out, it's really hard to control a boat and ROV in 20 knot winds, but we
tried hard anyway. We saw something. We waited around until we had a reasonable
surface interval for the rebreather divers, and put them in again. Can you say
Jackpot? We had black groupers coming out our ears, which is a funny place for
black groupers if you ask me. But we found the missing blacks of Riley's Hump.
They were all in deep water hanging out with the Mutton snapper, Cubera snapper,
Scamps/Yellowmouth grouper, and Margate snapper. We found the mother load.
Hundreds of blacks (remember, we're looking for blacks), tens of silky sharks,
and the silkies were very "buzzy", tens of hammerhead sharks, hundreds of
cubera, basically, we found a fish brothel. Maybe an orgy, whatever, the only
thing missing was whale sharks to eat all the spawn.
Oh, yeah, conditions. Conditions were a bit challenging, nothing we couldn't
handle, but not so much fun all the same. We encountered 2-4 foot seas to start,
and they were 4-7 by the last day. Winds started out 10-15 knots, and were 20
and steady at the end. Vis and current were excellent, with top to bottom
visibility and very little current. Sea water temp was 75 degrees at the
surface, and shivery at the bottom.
Thanks again to the folks from UPR for helping make this mission a success.
Without the rebreathers and helium, we'd have thrashed about smartly, but
wouldn't have seen near what we did. Now, to work on those video skills....
And oh, by the way. If you go looking for this spot, it's about 10 miles due
west of the fort. Yeah, that's it. |
Capt Frank
M/V Spree
Stock Island, FL |
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