Red Diving HoodApril 2015 - Red Diving Hood

Peirce Island, NH – 19 April 2015

April 21, 2015 / reddivinghood / Leave a comment

This weekend was a treat for the divers in New England. The visibility seemed to be amazing out there, reports saying ~50-70 ft at Chester Poling, allowing best ever photos of the wreck probably.

The same goes with the Peirce Island. In contrast to our experience last week with 2-3 ft of viz this, this time I can easily say the viz was in 30ft range. Such big freedom to have that and not losing your buddies while taking pictures.

Once again it was a beautiful dive with all the nudibranchs, mating, partying, laying eggs. There were so much more eggs around this week. I saw a few nudis sitting on egg ribbons, I’d like to think that I busted them laying eggs :). Also I saw a new kind of nudi here, Onchidoris bilamellata. There were two different kinds of egg ribbons next to it. The thicker one belongs to this species. The spiral shaped egg ribbon probably belongs to Flabellina verrucosa

I could also get a few shots of the sea gooseberries, which were slightly bigger at this site then Fort Wetherill yesterday. It looks like when they get freaked out they tuck those long tentacles back and wrap around themselves.

Overall beautiful day of Peirce Island diving. We have been abusing this site now. We’ve been away from Cape Ann area too long. We need to go to Cape Ann and say “hello” to Mary (@CAD) 🙂

bottom T: 40 F

Max depth: 52 ft

Dive duration: 53 min

sea gooseberry

onchidoris muricata

sea gooseberry

finger sponge

onchidoris bilamellata

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Fort Wetherill, RI – 18 April 2015

April 20, 2015 / reddivinghood / Leave a comment

I don’t think Fort Wetherill makes it to Top 10 list of favorite dive sites of many New England divers. It is the site to go see the tropicals but other than that people of Cape Ann area don’t seem to like going there very often. People tend to complain about the visibility, due to muddy bottom and often good number of dive students, the combination which never makes anybody happy.

I have been to Fort Wetherill a 5-6 times probably now, and I must say I never had a bad dive there. I guess I was lucky. I actually always have awesome dive there. We mostly dive in Cape Ann area, where the marine life is same all around the island. It is just a matter of seeing them or not. However, even though it is so close, the marine life we see during fort Wetherill diving is so much different. The soft corals and anemone covering the walls are so much different than we used to seeing in Cape Ann. In summer time the place is so rich with different kinds of, often juvenile, fish. Here is the only place I saw the northern puffer, as well. And the ease of diving needs to be mentioned. The two dive sites are right at the parking lot of the park, and there are benches where you can set up your gear. Once you are ready to go, you just walk down the ramp and you are in the water. I don’t think it gets easier than this.

So bottom line is I love Fort Wetherill. There I said it!

This saturday we were there for a dive and I didn’t know what to expect. Earlier reports did not mention much of a marine life other than crabs, there was no word of nudis. So on the drive there I was trying not to get my expectations high. We came across two divers and they also mentioned that they never saw nudibranchs here and there are some crabs here and there.

We started our dive and once again it was amazing dive. Funny that the first creature I saw was a nudibranch, it was a tiny little flabellina “verilli”. Later in the dive I saw a few more of those. This dive added three new species to me. A new kind of nudibranch I had never seen before, Eubranchus exiguus, which looks like a miserable little nudi, sea gooseberry, they were really tiny, and many small lion’s mane jellyfish.

In addition to these there were plenty of northern star coral, lined anemone, frilled anemone, northern cerianthid at the muddy bottom, finger sponge, and two grubby sculpins.

The surprise of the dive was the pipefish I saw near the shore! First I saw the tail behind the seaweed. I moved the seaweed a little to see what the tail was attached to and there was a pipefish, sitting there, not moving. I thought it was dead, picked it up to get a better photo of it then realized that its pectoral fins were flickering, poor thing must be freezing 🙁

Overall it was an amazing day of Fort Wetherill diving, with regulars, some new species and surprises. It was a shame that my camera was fogged up throughout the dive. I still have a few shots after manipulating quite a bit post-production 🙂

39 F bottom temperature

39 ft max depth

64 min total dive time

johnston's ornate worm

Peirce Island – 12 April 2015

April 13, 2015 / reddivinghood / 5 Comments

It was said that the nudibranchs “bloom” in April so I have been looking forward to another chance to dive at Peirce Island. The restrictions on the slack tide-diving-only makes it hard to schedule a dive on any weekend. And for some reason we have to work on weekdays.

This sunday the low tide slack tide was at a decent time, 11:58 AM, for which we can enter the water at around 11:45. One dive, then lunch with nice cold beer (now that summer is here this is a must); perfect timing for getting home before the kitties dinner time.

Low-slack tide is not preferred here much. Visibility may be worse than that observed for the high-slack-tide. But last time I had a phenomenal dive here, at low tide, so I had good expectations especially with the beautiful shining sun out there. Well, it was slightly different than I expected it to be 🙂 The visibility we observed was around 2-3 feet, if we didn’t have the lights for the camera we would have lost each other at the beginning of the dive. In fact 5 mins into the dive Bert and I lost Timur and Andrea.

The plan for the dive was to get to the wall. Even though we have all dove here before, some several times, three out of four could not get to the wall and the other could get to it only once. It is not because it is hard to find or the path is covered with obstacles. There are so many things to look at before the wall, so many nudibranchs and hyrdroids, you just can’t keep swimming.

Maybe because I was fairly disoriented by the cold and the lack of visibility I did not see as many as nudis as my last dive here. But, when I said this out loud during our “debriefing” with fellow buddies their eyebrows raised, apparently they have seen a lot and even much bigger nudis this time. Timurs comment was “I needed my wide angle lens to capture that nudibranch in a frame, macro lens could not get the whole thing in the frame”. Well, I did see a lot of nudibranchs, and a lot of their eggs, in form of ribbons , everywhere. I guess the intense “work out” we observed last time paid out.

Finally, after my huge efforts to keep Bert on track to the wall we could get to the wall. I have a feeling we were at the beginning of the wall, I did not get too deep because of the intense current, but it was enough to be impressed by the big bundles of the frilled anemone. It definitely is a beautiful scene. But, I think, the thing which excited me the most were the two grubby sculpins I saw at the wall. First fish of the year! I had missed those guys and their gold little fins.

Overall, with all the disorientation, struggling with the current and lack of visibility, still, I really enjoyed the dive. We also had awesome company, Timur and Andrea, who are addicted to diving. I knew his blog, todivetoday.com, before I met Timur. Very informative blog, beautiful pictures. He does not joke around with his camera.

I cannot wait to come back to diving in Peirce Island.