After not booking a Tenneco trip fast enough with RJ, Ralph F. and I decided to finally go for the "Grand Traverse" at Lauderdale by the sea. We dropped all our gear at Palm Street in the portal. Lots of shade and sand free wall space to gear up. I parked the Escape at El Prado and walked back. We gear up with double AL 80s and headed out.

I"ll post more details later as I took notes, but the best areas to dive are Hibiscus to Palm and Datura to El Prado.

Heading North from Datura on the 2nd reef line, I always ended up turning at the "Big Dipper" a huge Star Coral with about a 10ft diameter base and several more colonies right next to it. That actually is the beginning of the BEST part. I found a Brain Coral of about equal size and very high coral density. It was incredible and I can't believe after 100 dives at LBTS I was missing the best part!

Once the portals are done I will write up some new shore dive plans for making the shorter transverse from Datura to El Prado out in front of the pier.

We saw about 10 lobster, caught several and only one was legal.

We didn't notice any concentrations of red algea!

Good Stuff!

Dive time 180 minutes (3 hours) beating my previous record of 2 hours and 45 minutes. We averaged about 20 minutes per block for 6 blocks plus the 20 minute swim out and back in.

Distance: Approx 1 mile.

Gas: Ralph and I both had 500 psi left of 32% in dub 80s at the end of the dive.

Photos, Panoramics, and more to come.