My first dive in the gulf!
See the report below the pictures:
First off I would like to thank Tim O'Leary and his team of divemasters at AMERICAN DIVING for a great day of diving in the Gulf on the DIVER 1.
When I was done with work on Friday I was close to Corpus Christi so I drove to the Texas State Aquarium ( http://www.texasstateaquarium.org/) to familiarize myself with some of the local fish. Aquariums normally have areas that try to recreate local sea/ocean environments and the Texas State Aquarium did that well. I looked at fish and tried to learn their names in the shallow sandy environment, the oil rigs and the Flower Gardens. What amazed me is that we are talking about tropical fish....the same waters that wash around the rigs and the Flower Gardens also wash through the Caribbean!
My hope was to find a boat going to the rigs from Corpus Christi on Saturday, but that was not to be. So I moved on down to South Padre Island on the southern most tip of Texas for a scheduled dive with American Diving on a wreck called the Texas Clipper.
The Texas Clipper was originally commissioned as the U.S.S. Queens in 1944, a troop transport ship that served her country well in World War II. She ferried fresh troops into battle and shuttled the wounded from Iwo Jima. She was also part of the American occupation at Sasebo, Japan. She was decommissioned in 1946.
From 1946 to 1958, she was commissioned the S.S. Excambion and served as one of the post-war aces from American Export Lines. As a cruise liner, she sailed to ports throughout the Mediterranean Sea.On March 31, the Texas Clipper will find her final place seventeen miles east of the South Padre Island jetties in 134 feet of water with the wheel house and cabins in 50 to 70 feet of water. This will become the largest fish attracting device in Texas. Barnacles, corals, sponges, clams, bryozoans, and hydroids will soon take their station on her surfaces and fish and mobile invertebrates such as rock crab will come to feast on the bounty she attracts.
So I arrived on the American Divers dock at 7.00 am and began to unpack my gear and get ready to go. I know that I am going to be diving between 85 and 105 feet and all my CA and AZ lake diving experience tells me that is is always 'cold at depth'. Therefore, as I stand by my truck I have a quandary...drysuit or 7mm wetsuit. I also have my 5mm for good measure but surely the water could not be as warm as they say (65-68 degrees) all the way to the bottom. As people start turning up, I chose to ask someone and his response was....I am going to wear my 5mm today because it is cold. '5mm' and 'cold today' did not really compute with me so I asked again and was eventually convinced to take the 5mm...which I did not regret.
After a 45 minute ride to the site we hooked into the wreck and dropped down. There was not very good viz...5-8 feet and a big current so I did not see a lot of the wreck, but I did see lots of snapper and trigger fish as you will see from the pictures. It was warm and comfortable underwater, but not the best diving conditions. Between dives we chatted on the boat....other than a breakfast burrito, there was no food on board (I certainly missed the Lois Ann dive food!) and after the second dive we raced home. All in all a good day, but I am looking forward to going back to the Texas Clipper with more viz and to my first rig dives.
After the dives I talked with Tim O'Leary and found out that he is the Technical Director for NAUI and a co-developer of the Reduced Gradient Bubble algorithm. He wrote the manual and was generous with his time talking with me.
All in all I am looking forward to getting out into the gulf again. Let's all pray that those British guys find a way to stop that oil from spilling into the Gulf and that it does not reach down into Texas.
Andy
