Down too long in the midnight sea…

“You guys want to dive in this?” – Capt Dan gave the guys from Diver’s Den a way out, but they decided to power through to the Immaculata in the 4-6 foot seas with rain and wind to match. Not half an hour earlier we were all smiling at the fact that we proved NOAA didn’t know what they were talking about in the flat seas within a few miles of Manasquan Inlet. It wasn’t that bad, but enough to make things a little more interesting than one of those lazy summer days we get spoiled by.

Conditions on the bottom at 100 feet were actually quite nice with about 15 feet of visibility and fairly bright considering the lack of sunshine up above. The wreck is like a virtual aquarium with different critters living in each window sized cubby hole of the ribs. Going down the side of the wooden hull seems to alternate between lobsters, big rock crabs, eelpouts, and sea bass, all framed by beautiful anemones. Lots of small lobsters and females with eggs were spotted and harassed but only 2 keepers found their way to the cooler. Lots of BIG seabass up in the machinery “area” of the wreck. In fact this was the first time this year I’ve seen any nice bass. Water is warming pretty quick and was up from the 43 a couple weeks ago to 47 F with a thermocline near the surface to boot.