Down too long in the midnight sea…

Quite the interesting weekend… Saturday we tried to head out to the ROCKLAND COUNTY on the Sea Girt reef with a group of newer divers, a good amount of which were attempting their first dive off New Jersey.  Despite the forecast the seas ended up being reasonable however there was no visibility.  Capt Dan gave the group the option of heading out and sending in crew (Terry) to check it out and if it was zero we would just head back at no charge.  Everyone was eager to try, but it was not to be and we ended up heading back in after Terry reported he was barely able to differentiate the chain from the mussels it was sitting on…

Saturday

On to Sunday and what a difference a day makes!  We scratched the original offshore plans and opted to head to the “parking lot“… an artificial reef area about 16 miles out with big intact wrecks that come high off the bottom in the hopes we could get out of the stirred up bottom this recent string of storms has caused.  Off to the ALGOL it was, and we quickly found the bottom hasn’t been the only thing getting stirred up.  Apparently the Atlantic was thrown through the blender because the conditions were incredible… water was bath warm (by Jersey diving standards), with 69F  on the bottom at 140 fsw and actually a little cooler at 67F above about 60 feet.  Visibility was easily 30 feet on top of the wreck and still a decent 15-20 on the bottom.  Bill and I tried for a 2 for 1 and headed off in search of the nearby APL-31 but either our navigation or intel was bad, but Bill did get a decent bag of scallops.  Weather was about perfect and awesome day of diving, just goes to show that sometimes persistence pays off!