This year we decided to join the treasure hunt event in Plum Cove for our saturday dive. None of us have been to this event before so we were clueless what was going to happen. Since we arrived long before the event we decided to do a pre-event dive. We entered at the peak low tide. The water was extremely shallow. We took 330 bearing at the right side of the cove, which took us to the reef further at the opening of the cove. The dive was mostly very shallow 10-15 ft, over rocky bottom. Other than the tiny juveniles we did not see many fish. Once we reached the outer reef it was time to turn back but we noted that this reef was pretty cool with big colorful rocks with lots of crevices and possible lobsters underneath.
We didnot leave the waters for the event. We got the briefing at the shore from the organizers yelling at us. We were shown the “tokens” to be collected and then the race started. We were to collect white pebbles and there were 5 red golf balls which were there for grand prizes. Soon after the start of the dive I saw bunch of the tokens (pebbles) sitting there, with excitement I collected them in my bag, then some more, then some more. In the mean time I was enjoying the dive. I was really surprised to see even with one hour time interval underwater life had changed so much. It must have been the lunch time for the crabs, I saw so many green crabs, they were very active and they were everywhere. There were also plenty moon snails around. As for fish I saw a winter flounder, small red hake, radiated shanny and a few really pretty grubbies, colors ranging from green, golden to black and white. Before I got bored I was told that the event was over, it only felt like half hour but the allowed one hour dive was already over.
So many of us got to the shore with a bag full of pebbles hoping to get tickets for each. Then We found out that everybody gets a single raffle ticket, no matter how many “tokens” you collect. Well, didn’t we all feel stupid that moment. If I knew that before would I waste time on collecting the pebbles, I would reserve more time to enjoy looking around and taking pictures. At the end it was a big anti-climax, did not even stay for the raffle time.
While I thought I wasted 10$ for something not very well organized, it ended up being a good day of diving. And we added Plum cove to our dive site repertoire. It is always fun to discover a new site.
There is a decorator crab there, did not blow up its cover even when I picked it up and tried to position it for good photography
Gotta have those lobsters while they are in season
Radiated shanny, shied away before a second shot