Wednesday, October 15th:
Bioluminescence and Bait fish. These words describes the main characteristic of Wednesday nights Shark River inlet dive. Stephan and Yasuko organized a group to dive the Shark River Inlet, that included Joe (x2), Me, Rob Infante, and a couple doing a “Discover Local Diving”. While standing on Ocean Avenue, I saw the waves crashing onto the beach and noticed something I’ve never seen before. The caps of the crashing waves were a glowing greenish blue color, a produce of bioluminescence. When Stephan put his hand in the inlet and moved it back and forth, the bioluminescence created was amazing. In all my years of diving, I’ve never seen this in New Jersey to this extent. This is something that I think of when doing a night dive in the Caribbean. You could also see the baitfish breaking the surface all along the south side of the inlet.
With the incoming tide slowing down from the ripping current we saw when we first arrived, Rob and I got in the water. Not wanting a cluster of divers knocking into themselves, Rob and I began our dive. The current was westbound, and it was a moving at a solid pace. It was reminiscent of the drift dives in the St. Lawrence Seaway. We stayed against the south wall and let the current do the work for us. The bioluminescence was amazing. Any movement created a wash of moving colors. Rob’s fins created a greenish/blue vortex; the baitfish (millions of them), that were so abundant that they were literally bouncing off of our faces, would create a bioluminescent trail, which was amazing to watch with our lights out. The baitfish were so abundant that you had to tightly hold your regulator in your mouth or they would bounce their way in. I could actually hear them hitting my drysuit and mask. At times they were so thick that you literally could not see beyond them. At one point, I saw a crab reach our and grab a baitfish and pull it in for its dinner. It was quite amazing seeing this little claw snap out and grab this passing silver morsel and begin chowing down. In addition to the quadrillions of baitfish, I also saw several eels; one big one and at least four smaller ones. Other sealife included a flattie, dozens of crabs, a pair of horseshoe crabs in the process of making some puppies, and lots of small fish. Unfortunately, I missed the butterfly fish that Yasuko saw.
Rob and I let the current take us for about fifteen minutes and then it just stopped dead. Ahhh….slack tide. After about three of four minutes of slack, the tide turned to the east, and it was time to ride it back to our entry point. Along the way, we passed by another dive who was looking for specimens, and had bottles, jars, and nets hooked to his drysuit. We also managed to find the rest of our group. When Rob and I were near the bridge, we could hear the siren sounding to advise that the bridge was being raised. We also heard the motor of a large boat motoring underneath the drawbridge. Lucky for us we weren’t in the middle of the channel. Uh…maybe I spoke too soon. Rob and I were now at 30’ and had a sandy bottom, surrounded by fish carcasses. We weren’t exactly in the middle of the inlet, but we sure weren’t by the wall. We ended up about 30 feet off the wall, but were able to work our way in to our entry/exit point even with the current where we were met by a bubble watcher (Mike Galvin).
The viz. was lousy; Five feet on the top end, less if you’re a pessimist. I can’t give you a temp, because I didn’t even notice any coldness in my Oceanic drysuit. We got a late start, and as a result, ended the dive late. Having to get up at 4:30 am, I cut out as soon as possible and made it home by 11:00. Just in time to catch the last few innings of the Philly’s beating the Dodgers to capture the top spot in the National League for the first time since 1993.
