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Surface interval:45 mins
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Temp: Surf 29°C Bottom 27°C
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Dive type : Recreational, Wreck
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Visibility: Average
Water: Salt
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Dive Profile
- 1. Air
- 10L Aluminium
221 → 83 bar
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- Average depth: 13.2m
Data provided by EOL.org
Species Identified
Ginglymostoma cirratum (Bonnaterre, 1788) (Nurse shark)
During the day the nurse shark is a sluggish animal, spending most of its time resting on sandy bottoms, or in crevices in rocks and coral reefs. Often several nurse sharks may congregate when resting, sometimes even pili...
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During the day the nurse shark is a sluggish animal, spending most of its time resting on sandy bottoms, or in crevices in rocks and coral reefs. Often several nurse sharks may congregate when resting, sometimes even piling on top of one another . At night however, the nurse shark actively roams the sea bottom and reef for prey. It feeds on bottom invertebrates such as spiny lobsters, shrimps, crabs, sea urchins, squid and octopi . It is also feeds on fish, its nocturnal nature enabling it to prey on resting fish that would be too active during the day to capture . The nurse shark's small mouth and large pharynx enable it to feed by a unique suction method, effectively making the nurse shark the 'hoover' of the ocean floor. By cupping its mouth over a hole or crevice and expanding its throat, it creates a vacuum that sucks prey out of their hiding . This suction-feeding is also useful for extracting snails from their shells , and it will dig in sand to root out prey sensed by its fleshy barbels . The nurse shark is one of few sharks in which courtship behaviour is relatively well known . The male swims alongside the female, grabs one of the pectoral fins in his mouth, rolls her over and they mate . A large number of males will often try to mate with a single female, and females often bear numerous bite-scars and bruises received during mating attempts. It is therefore not surprising that females frequently try to avoid males by swimming in very shallow water, where they can bury their pectoral fins in the sand . Nurse sharks are ovoviviparous , a method of reproduction whereby the young develop inside a weakly-formed egg shell within the mother, receiving nourishment from their yolk sac, for five to six months . The females move to shallow seagrass beds and coral reefs to give birth to 20 to 30 pups in late spring and summer . Like many sharks the nurse shark is slow growing, with males not reaching maturity until 10 to 15 years of age, and females 15 to 20 years .
Epinephelus itajara (Lichtenstein, 1822) (Giant grouper)
The goliath grouper may be solitary or occur in groups of up to 50 or more individuals. Home range appears limited and the fish produces a booming sound when threatened by divers or large sharks. Variations of these voca...
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The goliath grouper may be solitary or occur in groups of up to 50 or more individuals. Home range appears limited and the fish produces a booming sound when threatened by divers or large sharks. Variations of these vocalizations also undoubtedly have intraspecific communicative properties . During the breeding season from July through September, goliath groupers gather together at breeding sites in groups of 100 individuals or more, for periodic spawning. The fertilised eggs are scattered in the water column of the ocean and develop into kite-shaped larvae with long dorsal fin spines and pelvic fin spines . About a month or more after hatching, the larvae mature into juveniles of just 2.5 cm long and settle preferentially into mangrove habitat . These fish are very long-lived with a slow growth rate and late sexual maturation. Males begin breeding at four to six years and females mature at six to seven years. However, if goliath grouper are like most other groupers, they may undergo a sex-change part way through life, starting out as a female and becoming males at some later time, but this has never been observed in this species . Goliath groupers feed on crustaceans, such as spiny lobsters, shrimps and crabs as well as fish including stingrays and parrotfish, in addition to octopuses and young sea turtles. Despite having teeth, the fish engulfs its prey and swallows it whole. Before the goliath grouper reaches full-size it is susceptible to the attack of barracuda, king mackerel and moray eels, as well as sandbar sharks and hammerhead sharks . Once fully grown, humans and large sharks are the goliath grouper's only predator .
Dasyatis americana Hildebrand and Schroeder, 1928 (stingaree)
The southern stingray is an active swimmer that feeds primarily at night, on a diet of invertebrates and small fishes. They feeding by flapping their wing-like pectoral fins to disturb the sand, and expose their prey . T...
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The southern stingray is an active swimmer that feeds primarily at night, on a diet of invertebrates and small fishes. They feeding by flapping their wing-like pectoral fins to disturb the sand, and expose their prey . This bottom-dwelling species is often found singly or in pairs, except in the summer months when it migrates in schools to higher latitudes . Very little is known about the natural mating behaviour and reproductive biology of the southern stingray. Mating stingrays are rarely encountered in the wild; during one such rare occasion, the male was observed closely following the female, and then biting her before grasping the female's pectoral fins with his mouth, and then copulating. It is thought that southern stingrays are polyandrous, as a female was observed mating with two males in quick succession . The southern stingray is ovoviviparous, a method of reproduction in which the egg develops within the female's brood chamber. The pups hatch from their egg capsules inside the mother, and are born soon afterwards . In captivity, gestation lasted 135 to 226 days, after which a litter of two to ten young were born .
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Morgan
United States
Date: 2014-06-16 - 14:15
Max Depth: 19.8m Duration: 40mins
Dive with Robert from Pompano Dive Center
Dive buddies:
Liz Fidler
My first wreck dive, and what a fun one it was! We had a guide to show us around the wreck, which was sunk incorrectly and is upside down with rubble piles to the east. The wreck is N-S oriented. Visibility was reduced a little from storms earlier in the morning churning up the sand and sea. First we explored the rubble next to the east side of the wreck, where we saw a goliath grouper hiding towards the north end. Then we swam through four chambers of the barge, which was a lot of fun and home to several schools of fish. We had some time left so we went a little further east of the wreck to some more rubble/rocks, and there we saw a huge nurse shark (probably 8 or 9 ft)! Overall a very good dive.