I don’t believe it is already September and also already the leaves started to change colors! The weather during fall time in New England is quite dynamic, we tend to get lots of winds, the dives get canceled and dive sites get blown out. Day before our dive was one of those days, there were high winds from north so we decided to get to something south facing, hoping the viz was not very disturbed by the storm.
It has been 3 years since we dove Norman’s Woe last. It was not because of lack of trying. For some reason that site gets blown out a lot, at least would have waves crashing. Due to the way the entry and exit is on that site, we tend to dive there only when it is flat seas. We had dove when it wasn’t flat, and it wasn’t easy, I remember waiting for the wave to push me to up on the rocks like a penguin.
This time the sea was not flat but it looked doable and we did. It wasn’t graceful entry and exit, but we survived.
The visibility was quite bad, unfortunately, maybe 5-10 ft. It is unfortunate because you would really want to see the topography of that site. There are random big rocks, over hangs, bunch of trenches. It is a beautiful site. There are always lots of schooling fish around, which explains the sightings of fishermen at any time.
In terms of marine life we had regulars. There was an abundance of crab. They were everywhere. And there were lobsters, every rock had a lobster hiding under, and almost all had eggs. I saw two giant lobsters as well, each claw was as big as my paws. During the dive my eyes could catch catch three rock gunnels, one was one of the prettiest ones I saw.
There were plenty of starfish. Blood starfish of different colors were all over the place. One interesting thing I observed was that there were bunch of sickly northern stars. I saw one with a few white patches on it and I saw bunch of single starfish arms, trying to survive. I wonder what happened to those…
Overall had a decent dive. I remembered how beautiful this site was, as well as what a pain getting in and out was. I will be looking forward to a calm day to revisit this site.
40ft, 93min, 59F, 5-10 ft viz
Buddies: Bert Perry, Dan Hedrick, Jason Feick