Come back on the weekend before July 4 and we can have another mini-NEDfest.
I will be there from June 30-July 3 diving on the Deeper.
----- Original Message -----
From: John Nitrox <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 9:49 PM
Subject: [SCUBA-SE] S.E. Florida mini-NEDfest


>         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
>