Last week two NEDs, Mika and Lee, and one Shark-L/Elasmo-L denizen, Jeff
Trotta, showed me how good the diving could be on the Southeast Florida
coast.  While the hard corals were fairly small and isolated, there was an
abundance of soft corals, sponges, tunicates, coelenterates, and all sorts
of critters including big bugs which were eager to make themselves seen
since they are out of season.

        The current in the area can be anything from zip to ripping, but wave
action necessitates following a ball and having a safety sausage because
it's too hard for the DMs to follow the bubbles and there can be high boat
traffic.  My first adventures were with Lee on the <Fishfood> and as a
superb ball-handler he kept the team together but wasn't able to make the
blind see.  The biggest highlight of the first day was an octopus so large
that he was confidently out taking the midday sun.  Despite Lee's vigorous
gesturing, the octopus was unable to get in the optical center of my
coke-bottle mask lenses so I  completely missed everything about him except
the huge cloud of ink he loosed on us when I swam only inches above him.
What I didn't miss was how healthy the ledges looked in comparison to the
eutrophied, algae laden zones of death off Key West and other areas to the
south.

        Right now, we have a small inland sea in the basement, but I'll have more
gossip and some truth-stretching tomorrow.


DPTNST,


John