Sunday, August 3rd afternoon dives in Boynton Beach

[Chip]

We haven't been back to Boynton Beach this year. I'm setting up a trip for this Sunday. It's going to be a shallow wreck and a reef or 2 reefs.

[Chip]

We're going to change this to a Sunday morning trip.

[Chip]

I booked 5 divers for Sunday morning dives on Starfish Enterprise.

http://www.idivestarfish.com/

[Chip]

When we left the hotel on Sunday it was pouring down rain. We loaded gear in an underground covered parking garage. We all got soaked signing in and loading our dive gear on the boat called Starfish Enterprise. Captain Paul headed north to an area which was rain free. Seas started out at 2' - 3' and later they became flat rollers. We got a rare treat on this trip by diving a site called Horse Shoe. Most boats don't head this far north and this is a very pretty area. We saw lots of moray eels, fish and corals. The water temperature was 80 degrees on this dive.

Our second dive was on Casino reef. This area is a little further south of our first dive site. Our two new divers were working on their Underwater Naturalist Advanced Adventure dive. They needed to identify 2 aquatic plants, 4 aquatic invertebrates, and 5 aquatic vertebrate animals. I was hoping we would see something that was easy for them to remember. Yes, we found something. They were hoping for a turtle, but we didn't find one on this dive. We found an 8' nurse shark sleeping under a ledge. I stopped approximately 5' away from the shark and summoned the others over to see what I found under the ledge. The girls wouldn't come closer. Jim was on the other side of me. The shark woke up and started to swim my way until it noticed me. It then thrashed the other way and took off. Jim said he got some great video of the shark, so maybe he will be kind enough to share it with us. The water temperature on the bottom was 82 degrees on this dive.

I can't wait until next weekend!! We're swapping out 3 divers in the group and we're headed to Boynton again. We currently have 9 active divers in our ORCA group. We're looking for others to join us. We have lots of fun on our trips.

[ccampo]

It was a great experience, specially for my daughter who for the first time saw a shark in the wild, and it was a big one, she was a little scared but enjoyed it.