Dive Report: Saturday 9/6/03 PBCRRT dives Boynton Cooridors and Delray Ledges on Lady Go

Photographs:
http://www.geocities.com/tiswango/0309pbcrrt/

Report:
At 7:30 AM the majority of the team was loaded and ready to go. 16 people on that boat makes for a very comfy trip considering the long ride we have up to Delray. We left right at 8 AM and started working on our dive plan and teams.

Dive one on Boynton Corridors was perfect, we had a great drop into the rockpile with a moderate current of .6 knot. I had to work up to the South end and begin the trip. I had my choice of fish stations so I made sure teams hit the first two stations and then went to the third one on the North end to count fish for 10 minutes.

On the drift North I was surround by a squadron on of Rainbow Parrotfish dive bombing the limestone boulders for algae. They moved off as I approached and didn't let me snap a good photo. We hit station 3 and I hovered to count all the Striped grunts, Gray and Mahogany Snappers, a Bi-color Damselfish.

Water was 60ft vertical and 50ft of horizontal visibility. We tried to swim to the Bud Bar which is just NE of the last rock pile, but my buddy was low on gas and drifted our ascent. Bottom time of 27 minutes at 87ft max depth on 32% Nitrox and a water temp of 84 degrees.

After a 45 minutes surface interval we started the challenging dive. We always try to have a marked starting place in which people can navigate to fish counting locations. On a wreck or this rock pile its easy, on Del Ray Ledges its a problem. We only put down 1 out of 4 marks last time and that mark, #4, was on the back side of the reef. I'm sure you've heard of finding a needle in a haystack, well we needed to find a 4 inch square piece of bright orange plastic, nailed to bottom, with 6 months of growth on it. What we did have was accurate GPS numbers, which are great for the boat, but weren't much help underwater. We put together a team of 6 who would spread out and drift the backside looking for this marker. After 7 minutes of search time we would do a three minute ascent. Lady Go gave us a bigger lead into the numbers and we searched. The problem was the current wasn't as strong and as we surfaced we were just over the numbers, meaning we drifted over the spot while ascending. Life goes on!

This time the Lady go set us up for a drop on the Delray Ledge just south of the GPS mark. The ledge is easy to find and we placed markers 3, and 5 on the ledge 75ft or so apart and GPS'd them. Then we went due East from #5 and swam a good 4 minutes and placed #6 down. I stuck around and counted fish at this distant spot and by the end of my count the photo team and second assigned fish team drifted in to the location which gives me hope it can be found again.

There were cute little Purple Reefish, Sunshinefish, and Striped Parrotfish. I nice sized lobster was holed up near the mark and there were several others on the trip.

In the photos you can see Lin shooting invert photos near the orange square, that's the mark we were looking for. In 6 months when we return we can scout for 4 again, but we consider it lost after year of growth and we'll place a replacement off #3 on the ledge so that it can be found as well. I dove for 45 minutes at 65ft with a 8 minute ascent.

Another mission accomplished! If you see our orange markers on DelRay Ledges, please leave them alone. If you find someone has pulled it up and brings it on the boat, please let me know!

--Matt