Saturday was perfect weather for diving. Calm seas and sunny skies. It was the busiest weekend on the water I’ve seen in along time. Boats everywhere. We headed out in the late morning to take advantage of the down time for commercial dive boats over the noon hour, giving us less crowding on the reefs. For our 1st dive we went to Molasses buoy #2 on the SW edge. There was some current out of SW that reduced visibility. Dave and I invited a new diver to join us. We had met J at lap swimming and learned he was an experienced diver that share our love for diving the Keys reefs. We encountered many large schools of barracuda hanging just below the surface, common in this section of the reef. Hard to video with the sun behind them, but you will notice one with a hook and fishline hanging from its mouth.
Click below for the link to the YouTube video of this dive.
For our 2nd dive we headed to Pickles Reef and the Pickle Barrel site. Always challenging on busy days as there is only 1 mooring buoy available there. We were in lucky. The buoy was open even though there were lots of other boats in the area. A commercial boat came by just as we finished our dive and we gave them the spot. Although not as many large schools of fish as in past trips, there were still quite a few as well as a turtle and scorpionfish a nurse shark and other photo;/video opportunities.
Click the link below to view a video of the Pickles Reef dive