Conditions

Winds: East 5 knots

Seas: Less than 1ft

Air Temp: 90

Water Temp: 76 bottom

Current: Slight North

Visibility: 60ft

Dive 1: Captain Harry

9:16 AM

S: Jody, Charlie and Matt

A: 21/35 and 50%

D: 120’ plan, 123’max

D: 30” plan, 25” bottom time, 46” run time

D: around the site

D: 90 deep, 70/3 60/1 50/1 40/1 30/2 20/5 10/3

PSI: 3300/1800

In the November 2003 revision of the Miami Wreck guide there was the addition of the Captain Harry and Merci Rabi, both listed as 90ft ships in 120ft of water. We were looking forward to checking out these new sites that have been down for 3 years, but unknown to the public at large. The Captain Harry was formally known as the Lady Philomise according to the guide.

Diving a new site always holds the promise of adventure and the risk of bust. As I pulled down the line I could make out a structure in the distance, at 80ft it was clearly a 90ft deck barge in the middle of the sand with a bit of hard bottom running North.

Once settled I went into macro mode looking for the little details and juvenile fish. Purple Reef fish and Sunshine fish schooled around the bollards. About 5 Purple mouth Morays stuck the heads out from under the barge looking at the strange visitors. Fish always act differently on sites that are not frequented by divers.

At south end of the barge, there was a school of baitfish hiding in the shadows. With my light, I tried to penetrate through the darkness to see what was behind them. Several fat Grasby revealed themselves. As I swam to the other end a large pitch black, Black Grouper darted out in a puff of sand from the ledge. JC probably could have hit this fish as it was at point blank range when I startled it. There was nowhere for it to go except the open sand.

Heading down the other side several Purple mouth Morays were sticking their heads out right next to one another. It reminded me of the Medusa, from Greek Mythology. After two laps around the outside, we swam up on top and noticed very little Growth and a few Ocean Triggerfish grazing on the meager menu.

In the sand, we saw an even larger Black Grouper checking us out, but this one was ghostly white with just a black fringe at the end of the tail fin. This fish’s ability to camouflage with the environment is amazing.

We headed back to the anchor to liftbag it up and drift with the ball over the North hard bottom. The regular sand dwelling Tobbacofish and Laterenbass were around. As the hard bottom shrunk there were fields of Blue Gobies, some reaching 8-12 inches long and diameter of around an inch, there were monsters!

After 25 minutes we thumbed the dive and headed up, as it was nothing but sand at this point.

Dive 2: Biscayne

I drew boat duty while everyone else dove. Andrea was supposed to take the camera on the dive, but she forgot. Charlie asked me to hand his down after entering the water and volunteered to take my camera to Andrea. I clipped the bolt snap on his camera to the open side of the double ender on my camera and handed them down.

After the dive I met Charlie at the bow of the bow, when he surfaced he said, “The camera are gone.” I checked him out to prove he was kidding me. I could see the seriousness in his face. “They are gone. I had them clipped off when I started down and they were not there when I got to the bottom.” He explained. Both teams did a bottom search, but Charlie’s camera was slightly positive and mine was slightly negative so together, they were neutral.

Both teams searched the bottom with no luck. I piloted with the waves for 10 minutes on the way in with people looking around all four quarters in a vain search. An offering had been made to King Neptune. It was time to more on.

–Matt