Captain Sl8r Charters, United States

Orlandosjm

21/05/17 at 13:08

Loggerhead Reef: This dive was a little more exciting in terms of marine life. I saw a couple of more loggerhead turtles which were of a large size. One minute I was glancing around and noticed a large reef shark swimming towards me and you came under me about 4 feet away. He came back around and then swim off into the open water. Later, I also noticed a large nurse shark who just went past me and went on his way. It was fun to see the sharks and it was my first time actually seeing shark here in Florida waters. The current here was probably about the same though we all got disbursed again. I came up alone but when I hit my 15 foot safety stopped up I noticed another set of divers doing their safety stop also. Both dives I seem to be working through oxygen a little faster than I normally do probably because I'm doing a lot more paddling. This dive I started ascending at around 600 and got on the boat with 500. I still had a good four minutes left on my dive computer due to the nitrox. I surfaced and of the boat was right there picking up some other divers so I just paddled my way over and boarded.

Orlandosjm

21/05/17 at 11:05

Spadefish Reef We splashed in and I entered the water negative so that I would immediately to send it to the seafloor. The visibility was not as good as I was expecting. What more than made up for it was the abundance of marine life. We were on a extensive reef system that had several tears and descended from 65 feet to 85 feet. As with my experience last month there was an abundance of life on the reef area. I had the go Pro device going again that recorded much of it. The currents were much stronger than I've seen and we were pushed across the reef. I had to paddle my way over to the ledges and used up a decent amount of oxygen getting there. I was able to dive a good 50 minutes which was great as I have my bottom time was 40 minutes plus while I was down there. I saw a barracuda and a moray eel sticking out from under a ledge. I also saw a loggerhead turtle with his head stuck up I'm under a ledge taking a nap. This was the largest loggerhead turtle I had seen and it was quite an immense. As the current was pretty strong we all got pretty disbursed well we are underwater and I ended up alone not seeing anyone else. I also got a bit chilly down there as I was only wearing my 3mm Shorty wetsuit. I still had time on my computer though my air was down to around 700 so I decided to send. I got up to about 30 feet and deployed my surface marker buoy which dragged me up to my 15 foot safety stop. I'm getting better at deployed by SMB and I just hung there in 15 feet for the requisite three minutes. I surfaced and found myself a bit of distance away from the boat and the nearest divers. I was fine with that though and just relaxed floating on the surface holding my safety sausage so that the boat captain could see it. I was probably in the water for about 15 minutes when he made his way over to me.