Trip to MP265 with Cody, Chris, John, Nikki, & Omar© Photos Posted by Mark Miller © Hi-Res Source
This was a trip for Cody & Christian Conyers who purchased the trip at the Horn Island CCA Banquet. Thanks so much for your contribution to the CCA! Omar Vasquez put on 2 more Fishermen, John Kovach & Nikki Goodluck and then he came to work the deck and do a little scuba diving. With a name like "GoodLuck", we should not have struggled so hard but we did. It started out a little bumpy which slowed us down, but we continued on and made our first stop at the Barataria Bay in FH-13. We had some work to do here, deploying a USM Recorder to measure disolved Oxygen, Temp, and Salinity ever 15 minutes. The conditions were horrible here due to the recent high winds and rain. Visibilty was near zero and the current was strong. It took 3 dive attempts to locate the vessel and then could not see very well. The recorder was secured to a vertical pipe on the port side of the wheelhouse instead of the bow like last year because the water was so turbid at the deeper depth. After we accomplished that task we headed out to FH-7 finding a shrimp boat along the way and catching a couple small sharks. There were some large sharks as well but the water was way too dirty to get in the water with them. After arriving at FH-7, the water had not improved much at all. There was a very strong current going against the wind and the buoy would not stay on station denoting the current penetrated very deep in the water column. After two attempts to get the buoy to hold, we aborted the efforts to deploy the second sensor deeming it unsafe. So then we were off on our fishing trip. We became frustrated with all the red snapper keeping other fish off our lines. Omar and I made a dive on the 243 cutoffs which was turbid on top but cleared below 80 feet. However there was a very strong current at depth and we were off the edge of the cutoff so we aborted the dive in favor of moving over to close by MP265. Conditions were better there with bait fish activity and lots of life below the surface on the platform. We left there and headed north by way of Louisiana waters to pickup our limit of Louisiana red snapper as 2 of onboard had louisiana licenses. On the way we came across some Manta Rays. There were a couple small ones jumping and doing flips in the air. Then there was a large one teasing us, briefly showing himself and waving his fin to us. Unfortunately, the water was very murky and we didn't get very good video of them. The sunset was beautiful and I took my signature photos but the timing did not work out with a platform or vessel backdrop. We all had a great time despite the length of the trip and the poor conditions limiting our take. The trip encompassed 166 miles, 98 gallons of fuel, and 15.5 hours.
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