Dive Report: Hibiscus Street Night Beach Dive 9/10/03

Photos at:
http://www.geocities.com/tiswango/0309hibicus/

Team: Matt Hoelscher, Alex B
Seas: Less 1ft
Temp: 86 surface, 83 5ft plus
Depth: 18ft
Bottom Time: 1 hour 28 minutes
Gas: 32%
Current .02 knot south
Visibility: Poor @ 10 ft

Location: Hibiscus Street is 2 blocks South of Commercial Pier, its the next block South of Datura. Meters enforced 24hour, NO 9 PM night parking limit. Shower and bench available. Only about 7 parking spots.

Report: Alex and I showed up at 6:15 PM for a quick afterward night dive. We have dove the heck out of Datura Street and wanted to explore further South. The concrete cylinder I use as a mark to turn West and head home also has a swim further South and I was guessing it marked Hibiscus. I never surfaced to check, that would be cheating :) We swam out on our backs past the swim buoys and then dove.

The first reef line was really nice, it was twilight so we could look around. There was a lot of bottom structure for stuff to grow. The first reef line is really nice between these two streets. A manytooth conger eel popped out and there were Ocean Surgeonfish all over the place.

Perhaps our pace was slower, but the trip over the sand to the second reef line seemed a lot longer. When we did get there, we swam right into the concrete cylinder I call the "alien probe" Andrea was telling me she "heard" that these cylinders were mock bombs the Navy used for training. I would love to hear if anyone else has an opinion? I have gone North of the probe previously. The reef is really good for 10 minutes, then flattens, then gets really good again as you approach the Datura street probe. Even though we were going with the current, we drifted South to explore new area.

This section of the 2nd reef is excellent! There were large corals all over and tons of fish. At one point I found a small Mountain star coral colony flipped over. I'm confessing right now to a misdemeanor of touching a coral colony, which is illegal. But it was only to flip it over and place it back in the sand. You can see the white area where the coral bleached and died. I bet 90% of the white area will come back. I tried to make a mental note of the large Mountain Star Coral colony next to it so I can check back and see how its doing in a couple of weeks.

After a few minutes dinner swam by, or I mean a hogfish, and me without my gun? I swam up to him and told him it was past his bed time and he should go to sleep (my only chance to knife him), but he didn't listen. We also found a couple of bugs in the ledges. After drifting 22 minutes South Alex passed a wetnote to swim over to the first reef and swim back North. I agreed for a change a pace.

The first reef line didn't have much to see. I remember one huge dead coralhead that was probably only 5 feet from the surface. Alex tried bare-handing a lobster out for a walk and only touched his tail before it shot off. We didn't have a place to put him if we caught it. There were several large Porcupine Pufferfish out swimming around. One wouldn't stick around for a Kodak moment. The green water was foggy. Several times a school of silvery fish was reflect the HID light in the distance. I always wonder what is chasing them? There were also two schools of Glassy Sweepers hunting above the reef. There were also a lot of Stoplight and Redband Parrotfish asleep on the reef. I couldn't get close enough for a photo before they would wake up and take off.

Since Alex had been to this site before I had him lead with the flag. I like to lead dives due to my supervised type A dominate personality. I had a hard time following Alex and slowing to his pace. With a 20 minutes drift I figured we would need 30 minutes swim North to get back to where we started. When we started heading North I lost my internal sense of where we were at and resigned myself to trusting Alex to get us back to the spot or we might be going for a walk up the beach back to the car.

Once we got off the reef and into the sand I found the last Yellow Stingray of the dive. It was just a baby lying in the grooves of the sand. We swam East and hit a few Flagfin Mojarra before the water got noticeably warmer.

Alex and I surface a good bit North of Hibiscus. We floated on the surface and drifted back to the exit point.

**Soapbox on**
The first 5 ft of water was a dark chocolate brown. I know that South Florida Water Management was empting lake Ochachobee. I believe the water is pushed down the Everglades and then pumped out to the ocean through the canal system. FOS had pictures of black water running through the Indian River and heading out to the ocean. I know there is a balance between living here and managing the environment, I hope we can get closer to equilibrium in my life time.
**Soapbox off**

--Matt