Dive #111 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

Spotted goatfish, showing the inactive pinkish color phase
Videograph by Rich Torkington in Florida Keys 2002

Dive Journal: Following the dive at Rocky Top, we move only a few hundred yards to the second site at Rocky II. Yo Adrian - it’s me Rocky Balboa.

With the very shallow dives today, there is practically no necessity for a surface interval. As soon as we can gear up again, it’s time to go. Today, I’ve chosen to wear my 3mm wetsuit, erring to stay warm. The water temp here, however, is really quite nice 82 or 83F below the surface, and a nice layer several feet thick of 86F on the surface, so the wetsuit is pretty questionable.

Rocky II is quite similar to Rocky Top, with the visibility about the same today. There are lots of small ledges and overhangs where nurse sharks like to hang out. Most of these nurse sharks don’t seem to care for divers much, and they fin away within a minute or so of our inspection.

There are some nice schools of French grunts and yellow goatfish. We especially enjoy the brilliantly colored porkfish who roam among the grunts. The grunts have a curious habit of facing the porkfish and opening their jaws wide for him. Could be a territory defense posture, could maybe be a cleaning pose – we’re not sure.

Without divemasters and with less than ideal visibility, I’m finding it a routine challenge to loosely steer the dive and then return us to the boat. Both reefs today are flat irregular patches with few other distinguishing features, so a bit of compass work is required. Good navigation exercise.

As before, the video settings are set on manual white control, and most of the video ends up severely bleached out. It is difficult to crop any decent photographs, but a few are included here.