Doug Fontaine - Scamp & Pompano - April 9, 2017© Photos Posted by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
This was primarily a Spearfishing Trip with Doug Fontaine, previously a local but now lives in Ohio. He had booked a Charter but everyone backed out on him and I told him I would take him anyway since I had some work to do for MGFB as well. Dyllan Camplejohn worked the deck. The wind was forecast to pickup in the afternoon so when we came across the Sharks on the way out, we opted to not waste time getting in the water with them. They were mostly small sharks anyway. We made our first stop at the Jumbo Barge in FH-7 to attempt a repair on FAD2. There have been problems with FAD2 leaking air since its deployment on October 29, 2014. Some Flex Tape was obtained in the hopes of sealing the leak, but efforts were thwarted because the line on the top securing a previous repair buoy had become entangled with the anchor line causing the unit to turn upside down when refloated. Since the Air Replenishment Pipe is open, this allowed all the air to escape. After 20 minutes of fighting the situation in extremely poor visibility, it was decided to try and apply the Flex Tape to see if it would work to seal the leak. However, shortly into starting that process, the diver’s air supply was exhausted and all efforts were aborted. We then proceeded out to the MP243 Cutoff area to look for Scamp Grouper since just about everything else is closed. Doug got him a nice one on his first dive. Then I went solo and picked up a pair of APs (African Pompano). Since there was a nice school of APs, Doug went down again and got him one as well. Following that, I made another dive on MP242 to get some live rock for my aquarium. It did get a little bumpy but it was a very fun day in the sun that encompassed 165 miles, 88 gallons of fuel, and 14 hours.
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
