Two new dive sites, a wall called Shark Tease and a pinnacle called Thick Finger Reef

John and Terry back from Kansas City to dive with Ocean Fox Cotton Bay, they are becoming regulars and both very good divers. Last Saturday I did a fly over the south shore line in a small plane with my friend Jim looking for possible dive sites. On Wednesday morning I get a call, hey it’s John and Terry and we want to go diving today. Ok let’s go. Both are good divers so I suggested doing some exploration dives on an area I saw on Saturday from the plane; sure why not but we have never done that before, no problem.

Was not long before we got our first visit from the Reef Police, the men in the gray suits, looking for dive cards.

The wall at our new site is quite vertical, with some nice canyons. There appeared to be a sand fall, but we will have to determine the exact location on a subsequent dive.

Swimming back on the top of the wall, the reef police must have called for back up, there were three of the reef sharks escorting us on our dive. A video of one checking John out, just making sure to take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles.

PICT0247

Dive one was a good one, 31 minutes with max depth of 84 feet, water temperature 82 degrees, seas less than a foot and visibility 100′. As customary, on exploration dives the divers get to name the site if we find one, this wall is now called “Shark Tease”, only Terry knows why.

Dive 2 was a shallower exploration dive to check out 2 of 3 pinnacles as seen from the air a few days earlier. The first pinnacle was ok but not great, there was some nice but small coral formation. The second site, now called Thick Finger Reef, because of the abundance of Thick Finger Coral on the pinnacle. This one cluster of Thick Finger coral is about 5-6 feet across.

This is a view of part of the top of the reef, the reef is dominated by Thick Finger coral, but there are numerous other types of coral as well.

This is the Social Feather Duster, looks like an underwater butterfly, about 3-4 inches across. Lots of other fish on the reef as well, a very nice find.

Well I was looking for an excuse to go diving when John called this morning, we almost canceled because the weather was not supposed to be good. Having just made the fly over and then to get to do two successful exploration dives with two good divers, well, it just does not get much better than that.

If you have the skills, we can find dives to match those skills and have some challenging fun at the same time,

,,,”Ocean Fox Cotton Bay diving……..anything else is just a surface interval”