City of Athens - Memorial Day Weekend 2012 - With video.

On Sunday, May 27th, I was able to get a much desired spot on the private Manni-Yunk II sport fishing & Diving boat out of Cape May, NJ.  I was diving with Sean, Kevin, Jeremiah, and Andy.  We left the dock at about 8 am, after Kevin did a shallow no-vis dive to tighten the right prop. at the gas dock.  On the way out, we decided to hit the City of Athens. The "City of Athens" was a liner that was built in 1911, and sank in 1918 with 67 casualties after a collision with the French Navy cruiser "La Gloria".  It sits on the bottom at about 110' about 24 miles off the New Jersey coast.  I dove this wreck last year with these same guys, and we had 50' viz.  I was hoping for the same today, but was not that lucky.  It was 15' at best.  We left under clear sunny skies and flat seas.  We hit a patch of moderate fog for a little while, but that burned off.

After the hour + ride out, and a quick tie-in, it go time.  I descended with Jeremiah, but spent the majority of my time around the boilers taking video.  I left my spear and bag on the boat, and hoped I didn't come upon any keepers.  There wasn't too much in the way of sea life for me to bring up, but I did see a monster eel stuck down in one of boilers.  You can see him on the video that I will post here soon.  I kept my two dives relatively short and conservative, with a total dive time of 1 hour exactly, and a maximum depth of 97'.  Bottom temperature was 54 degrees, and viz. was 10-20 feet.  There was a distinct thermocline at 55' which separated the warm blue water with the colder and murkier green water.

Logged dives #419 & #420.  As always, diving with the guys on the Manni-Yunk is a great time.

Link to the video: Youtube Link

Ocean dives blown out - Went to Dutch :(

Sunday's planned dive to hit some shallow wrecks in-shore was blown out with 20+kt winds and 4-7' seas.  I ended up hitting Dutch Springs to test out the new neck seal I installed on my drysuit.  I met up with Nick, Frank, and a new dive buddy, John.  We did two dives for a total of about 90 minutes under water.  The bottom temp. was 46 degrees, and the viz. was 30+, unless Frank was there first.  I took some video using my Liquid Image HD wide angle camera mask. 

Here is the shortened video...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNyAqGBNUlo&hd=1

Cranford Ferry - May 5

My first dive of the season was on Saturday, May 5th, with Anthony C.  We signed up with Jim Wilson on his 50 foot Evans dive boat, The Gypsy Blood, from Brielle, NJ.  This boat can easily hold over a dozen divers comfortably, and probably more.  I don't think there were more than three paid divers, plus crew, for this dive.  We pretty much had the boat to ourselves.  We left under fairly flat seas with moderate fog to the artificial reef "Cranford Ferry", which was sunk as part of the Sea Girt reef in the 1980's.

We hit the water for a 45 minute tour of the reef remains.  Not much to see in the way of fish, except for the largest blackfish I've ever seen, probably over 10 pounds.  Too bad they were out of season, as well as black sea bass.  The only things we could bring up were flatties or cod, which I saw none of on this dive.  We hit a max. depth of about 67', and had viz. of only 10' or so.  Water temps were in the mid 40's with no thermocline.  Conditions deteriorated during this dive, and we headed in after only one dive.  We were back at the dock by 10:00'ish