The summer ends with a crescendo in New England. Slowly changing colors of the trees during the famous foliage almost reached its peak this weekend. The drive to and from the dive site is just as colorful and enjoyable as the dive itself. However, there is a price for this all around beauty: COLD.
This week Mass Diving shore dive on Sunday was at White Beach, Manchester. This is one of the sites which is hard to do during the seasons due to the parking restrictions. However after October 15th the parking restriction is not enforced so we can happily do our dives. Once the parking issue is resolved it is a very easy dive, sandy beach with direct access from the parking area.
The beach is at a cove. I have only done the left side of the cove. The entrance to the water was very shallow at the low tide. You walk a distance in the shallow water before you can reach a depth that you can put your fins on. The dive starts with sandy area then you reach the rocky formations and follow them around the left edge of the cove. Once we hit the rocky formations it becomes very colorful. While the bottom is mostly rocky occasionally we hit another sandy patch or a gravelly patch, so definitely the dive has different views to offer.
Maybe because I did not have my own camera I was sort of out of focus, I was merely enjoying the dive without actually noticing many creatures. One thing I realized that even though I am not lobstering I often go under the crevices to check what is hiding there. Most of the time nothing much other than the scaredy cunners. But unconsciously I think I am looking for the wolffish 🙂
During the single dive I did I noticed a juvenile sculpin with gorgeous colors, lots of lobsters, baby cunners, decorating crab and something floating, which maybe a siphonophore. The other guys saw a juvenile pipefish, sea robin and a single scallop in their second dives. I had to skip the second dive because it took half an hour to get the sense back to my fingertips.
The thing I was thinking when we first hit the rocky area was “Maaan! How are we supposed to go through a whole winter without enjoying this beauty!?”. The winter will definitely be long 🙁
I didn’t have my own camera so I am not very happy with my photos this week 🙁