Red Diving HoodApril 2016 - Red Diving Hood

Peirce Island – 18 April 2016

April 19, 2016 / reddivinghood / Leave a comment

Peirce Island never disappoints. I mean, it may a little with lack of abundance of verillis, but would still provide you a beautiful dive.

Today, thanks to Patriots Day, Jason and I could spend a weekday in the water. It has been a while since I was at this site so I wasn’t sure what was the news with the nudis. Plus Jason was diving it for the first time this season, so we had to find some nudis, for his pleasure.

Unfortunately, the number of nudis had decreased significantly. We saw mostly F. verricosa with a lot of appetite for the hydroids but there were barely any verillis. We also saw a few bushybacks, but definitely not at the sizes we used to see here. So, the nudi season at Peirce is coming to an end. That’s ok, we enjoyed quite a few dives there this season, so cannot complain.

It was overall beautiful dive spent mostly on the hyroid field. In addition to the nudis we saw there were a few tiny decorator crabs, rock gunnels and grubbies. No sturgeon fish 🙁

Nice day to be out there and get under the water at Peirce Island.

42F 46ft 44min, 3-10 ft viz

Buddy: Jason Feick

Niles Beach – 17 April 2016

April 19, 2016 / reddivinghood / 2 Comments

“Niles Beach, when everything else fails”

No one has ever woke up to a dive day and said “I really want to dive Niles Beach today”. You end up at Niles beach after a long discussion with your buddies what else is available and a drive around the island just in case.

And that was how this past Sunday was. Saturday came with ~20 mph northern winds. Even if the wind was mild, the after affects were lingering. The drive around the island, started at Folly Cove ended at Niles Beach. I was almost wishing that Niles was also blown out. It wasn’t. So we dove. My comment on the dive after the dive should explain it, “It was a dive” 🙂

As usual Niles was decorated with a sea grass and lots and lots of shells and hermit crabs. We came across a few big spider crabs and no nudibranchs. However I did see a bunch of dorid eggs. Almost all of the dive I was looking for Cuthona nana, a nudibranch which mostly live on hermit crabs with pink hydroid on their shells. There were a lot of fuzzy hermit crabs but no C. nanas.

42F 18ft 59min, 10ft viz

Buddies: Timur, Jason, Bert (land support)

Folly Cove – 2 April 2016

April 3, 2016 / reddivinghood / 4 Comments

This Saturday there was a break from the crazy wind taking over Massachusetts. The wind has been coming from south so good time to dive at one of the north facing sites. After considering a few options we decided on right side of the Folly Cove.

Man, what a dive it turned out to be! The visibility was easily 30+ feet. The water was getting warmer by day, already 42F today. There were so many different kinds of nudibranchs on this side of the cove, compared to the last time on left side wall. I really cannot differentiate much of the Flabellina family of nudibranchs but for sure there were plenty of F. verrusoca and a few F. bostoniensis. Also saw many P. dubia, a few D. frondosus (bushy back), one O. bilamellata,one D. fragilis and one E. exiguus.

I thought I didn’t see any eggs, but later with help of Timur’s photos I realize that there were a few tiny rings of eggs, possibly belonging to D. fragilis, as one was sitting very close to them in his photo.

Unlike the Metrowest friends diving the East side wall, we did not see many fish. Dan pointed out one pipefish, which was a surprise and also he mentioned that he saw a rock gunnel. I also saw a silver colored fish, which speed past me so fast that I cannot possibly identify it. But I can speculate that it was a sand lance the way it was hurrying.

Like last time in Folly I saw a few shrimp which I haven’t seen before, the shape looked like Aesop shrimp but the colorings were different, that’s something I need to figure out later. In addition to that there were many mysid, skeleton and sand shrimps enjoying the nice day.

Beautiful diving day at Folly, making us wanting more.

19 ft, 42F, 71 min (though good portion of the dive was at 4ft, which was not included in this)

30+ ft viz

Buddies: Dan, Timur, Bert (as land support)