Blessed with acceptable dive conditions the 2nd day in a row, Scott and I were joined by Dave Rufft. Winds were running around 12 knots and it was a little bumpy. Both Dave and Scott wanted to do a wall dive, so we headed to Conch Wall, which starts at around 55’ depth and then drops steeply to 105’ or more. All the buoys were taken by fisherman, so we moved inshore to the shallow reef for our 1st dive. Decent dive with what has been a rare sighting of a Stingray and good photos of the resident Moray Eel and also a French Angelfish.
Conch Wall
The Bottom at 105’
After the 1st dive we went back to Conch Wall about 1/4 mile away. The fishing boats were gone and we tied up to the eastern most buoy. Very little current at the site today and visibility was excellent. Our boat could be spotted from the bottom below, which is unusual and makes for an easier time returning. Normally, one always make your deep dive 1st, (leaving you with more margin of error on air supply) which wasn’t an option today. We went in with about 3/5ths of a tank of air, so I knew we need to carefully manage our bottom time. The reef starts at 55’ and plummets down a wall to over 100’. At those depths, you use your air supply much more quickly. We would have only minutes at the bottom of the wall before we would have to begin our slow ascent up the wall and include a safety stop at 15’ for 3 minutes. We also had to account for time to find the boat again when we reached the top of the wall.
Colors were deep dark blue as light was filtered at depth. Lots of barrel sponges on the wall and few fish, other than a small Queen Angelfish and a Moray Eel. We also spotted the invasive Lionfish in a sponge on the way back up the wall. I successful navigated the group up the wall and back to the boat with air to spare (but not much!)
Click the link below for a 3 minute video of both the wall dive and the reef dive.
