diving Saturday

[stevemc]

Lynn and I went diving Saturday and did find some nice coralline covered Astrea snails, emerald crabs, arrow crabs and some coralline covered rock mussels. Last trip(last week) we got some of the same, and a 2" jack knife fish. I have always wanted to catch one, since my last one jumped into the overflow 5 years ago or so. We had to slowly decompress him for a hour, and all is good with him. We let him acclimate in the aquarium for a day, and then gave him some live adult brine shrimp the next day. He gorged! Another feeding or 2 with those, then we introduced flake food. He ate it right up with gusto. Now he is trained like all the other fish to come when I tap on the glass. Off topic, when are we going to do a snorkel trip? Visibility is not great right now, but the water is very warm at 89-90 degrees.

[a2fire2i]

steve, where did you guys go out to??

[stevemc]

Corey, we went out about 15 miles off the middle of Casey Key, in 60 feet of water. Week before we were 15 miles off Sarasota. Natural ledges and reefs.

[stevemc]

Everything is encrusted with coralline and the edges have fire coral, and tubeastrea corals basicly on everything. There is lots of branching coral heads(not sure what types exactly) and round coral heads, but many nice fish are around them. Also star coral and other corals all doing well. The dead zone apparently did not get out off this area. Supposedly it was, but I havent found where it was. The State finally stopped dumping phosphate sludge and ammonia into Tampa Bay in April or May. I hope they never do that again as it was the worst 3 years of red tide ever. There were more dolphins, manatees and sea turtles killed in those 3 years, than in the last 20 years from all reasons. The State sure does know how to screw up the water! I have lived here for my whole life and that was the worst, by far. Steve.