Viv:

> After commenting to Lee's post earlier on I am so peeved I listened to a
> certain ex-american of a well known dive shop in Exmouth Dive & dropped
> Florida from one of the places I would have visited on my last US bound
> trip :-(

It's certainly worth a week's time from your life to dive West Palm or Boynton.
Two quick dives on any given day can cause you the get an undernourished feeling,
but over a week you'll see enough to be convinced.     Of course, the Asian Pacific
has the best diving in the world,  but from personal experience I'd say the SE coast
of Florida is as good as anywhere in the Caribbean.

>
>
> >Tomorrow is spiny lobster miniseason (2 days) so preoccupied until
> > Friday.
>
> Another lobster hunter .. how did you go?

Brief report at:

http://www.wadespage.com/ubb/Forum10/HTML/000008.html

Lee dives out of Boynton Beach, one of my favorite scenic dive areas in Florida, but
not conducive to big lobsters.  Big in WPB and Boynton terms is 2 pounds.  I've
caught hundreds of them there.   To get really big lobsters, (we've caught some 11
pounds) you have to get out of the warm clear water of SE Florida and move a bit
north up that coast.    The water is too easy to work in the scenic areas, so
they're hammered each season and never get really big.   A dozen miles or so north
of that area the Florida coast turns northwestward, while the gulf stream continues
north.  For the next 200 miles the reefs are broken and further offshore, the water
is green and colder, the bottom silts up if you merely look at it, and the lobsters
grow unmolested to great size.    Conditions are difficult, so they're not
overworked.  We took one of our SE Florida dive buddies out up there once, which
produced the quote, "you don't really catch lobsters up there, you just wrestle them
into the bag and slam it shut."


Wade