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Well, the weather forecast was iffy, but
Melanie had a gut feeling that we should go.
Since it was the last scheduled trip for the
2008 Spring Flower Gardens season, I though
we’d give it a try. When we got to the west
bank, the weather was just as Melanie had
predicted…god I love that woman. Seas were 2
feet, water temp 74, air temp 81, visibility
was great. The sharks had left, but the
divers saw very unusual yellow mouth grouper
behavior. The question is whether or not
they were spawning. Besides yellow mouth,
there were black and yellow fin grouper, and
a spotted eagle ray. We only did one dive on
the west bank before heading to HI-389. We
got to HI-389 for the second dive, tried the
southwest corner, tried the northwest
corner, then we tried the southeast corner,
then the wind completely died, so off to the
east bank we went. When we got to east bank
buoy #7, we threw all the divers in and
started the crew’s buoy wrangling
extravaganza. The seas were slick, water
temp 74, air temp 86, visibility 100+ (you
could easily see the reef from the surface).
As noted in the last trip report, some of
our buoys had been cut off by marauding
workboats. Since the Fling was going out on
a research trip and needed the buoys that
had been cut off, we made it our mission to
get new buoys set. The crew set buoys on
east bank #2, east bank #4, and east bank #5
during the divers’ surface intervals. We had
to take off some existing buoys to have
enough—boy did the crew have a good time
with stinky buoy parts and dingy rides. The
divers were treated to an enormous school of
crevalle jacks, amberjacks, black jacks,
tons of grouper, and the ever present
barracuda grinning at the divers during
their safety stops. As no sharks were
sighted on the east bank, we offered a night
dive and had 6 takers. At 3:00 am we got
underway for Stetson and arrived at 7:00 for
an 8:00 am dive. On Stetson we found the
hammerheads, plus spotted eagle rays, silky
sharks, and something big looming in the
distance that was never identified. I got in
to poke around, as this was my last chance
to dive Stetson before August, and saw
dozens of very small yellow mouth grouper
(6-8 inches)., scorpionfish everywhere I
looked, a small very cold octopus, monster
lobster (don’t poach my lobster, dammit),
and bunches of very cold divers. Water temp
71, seas less than 2 ft, air temp 81,
visibility 60-80 ft. I looked for a frogfish
but couldn’t find one. I want to thank you
all for a tremendous spring season. This may
have been the best weather we’ve ever had
for running spring trips. We leave for
Florida
on Sunday the 4th, and will be in the Dry
Tortugas through July. There are still some
spaces available on our
Dry Tortugas
trips; we hope to see you there! Captain Frank
M/V Spree
Freeport, Texas |
