First Dive of 2010

The first dive of 2010. The weather was on the edge but with a cold front pushing in during the afternoon this was going to be the only day of this week that I could get out. Winds were in the 10 to 12 mph range when I left the dock, they were in the 18 to 19 mph range when I came up.. Visibility was poor to say the least, but I didn't expect it would be good. The dive site was North North. This site is marked as horseshoe on the charts and is just north of Grecian Rocks (Christ statue). It has 2 mooring balls that run basically north south, one is at the horseshoe end and the other is at the south end of a straight line reef. Nice easy dive to navigate. This site has large coral walls with breaks and caves all along it. There usually are tons of silver sides in the cracks and crevices and therefore lots of grouper and other fish trying to get a easy meal of the silver sides. I went there because as I left the south creek the winds were picking up out of the west, this would have made Molasses quite rough. Usually when there is weather like this the sites on the north side of Key Largo have poor vis but are less rough, and so it was today, but at least it wasn't that rough and almost no current. I don't think that would have been the case on Molasses. The water temperature is really dropping, I was getting readings in the 72 to 73 range and even saw some form my boats depth finder that showed it below 70.. It definitely is wet suit time in the keys.

Found a lot of very small lobsters (and a few larger ones ) on the outer edge of the reef line out in the sandy areas. The small rock out croppings had 6 or 8 small lobsters crowding together underneath at several of them.

"Three-Rowed Sea Cucumber", haven't seen one of these in a while.

Still trying to figure out what this is for sure. I'm pretty sure it is a juvenile Parrot fish of some sort, just never seen a yellow headed version of one.

Even though it was pretty windy and the water is really starting to get cool, it was an ok dive for the first of the year.