After a long time it was time to go back to Fort Wetherill to see some tropicals and swim with squids. Fort Wetherill never offers reliable conditions or half decent viz, but it does not disappoint on the variety of marine life.
And it didn’t. Cornet fish is one of the staples of tropicals we see in Fort Wetherill. It is always pleasure to see a tropical and cornet fish is a pretty one with all different colors reflecting off its skin (scales?). And in our first tropical dives we already saw few.
In the middle of the dive, for the first time, I saw a pregnant spider crab. It is surprising that I have never seen that before, because these crabs are the most abundant crabs at this site. We have even seen an orgy few years back, but never a pregger. It is also surprising because it is hard to think that somebody saw this crab and said “there she is, I want to have bazillion babies with her” 😀 😀
The dive ended with a nice surprise at my favorite part of Fort Wetherrill diving, the ramp – I always look forward to the end of the dive because the ramp is a treasure chest. This little flying gurnard sitting right at the ramp and was trying to sit still, with all the surge and bombardment of other fishies. All my photos of him was heavily photobombed 😀
The dive was pretty good, the viz was not the greatest and there are a lot of particulates floating around. Sometimes those are interesting because you get a glimpse of many larval stage creatures. I always try to practice photography of those things for a future blackwater dive. My goal is to get a decent photo of a larval mantis and a flounder.
66F, 18ft, 90min (don’t remember why a short dive)
Buddy: ?
