Dive day one:
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Diving the YDT14 off the coast line of Pensacola. We headed out of the Perdido pass, which made for along haul to the wreck, but man was it worth it. The seas were 2-3 and made it very difficult to put on our gear. There were three of us diving.
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At first we had the coordinates off by a few numbers, so we were searching on our fish finder trying to find the wreck and was only seeing sand. So after double checking the coordinates and correcting, we started to head to the right spot, we were 0.25 nM from the right location. As we were heading to the wreck, a pod of dolphin decided to start popping in and out of the water in front of the boat. There were around 6 total all spread out around the front and sides of the boat. Stephen was hanging his head over the front in awe! =)
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So we are heading down the line and realize we aren't alone, there are quite a few (30 or so) 6'+ barracudas eyeballing us and they are gutsy. They would broadside us with their teeth showing then turn straight at us and then veer off 5-10' away. After my last experience with these mad fish, I wasn't too worried, but being Stephens first salt water dive, he wasn't liking the extra attention.
At 30' the water turned merky, made the visibility about 10' till about 70', then the viz opened to the 40-50' range, this is when the ship popped into view... WOW! This sucker is big and fully in tact. We swam a big on the wreck and saw several large schools of red snapper and amberjack. We didn't bring the speargun and camera on this dive because the surface current was so bad, I stabbed myself in the leg with the speargun before even getting down, so that was a bad sign to me.
We made our way to the end of the ship and then decided to hit the sand, at this point John was leading us. Man, we are glad we did, there was a 7' nurse shark sitting under the bottom of the ship. I shined my light on it and he started to try to make his way under the ship some more, this was my first shark siting. It was then time to make our turn around, so we headed up. Bottom temp was 72 degrees with a max depth of 90'.
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Dive two, the seas had settled some, so gearing up wasn't so bad. No wetsuit for me on this dive... it was nice! This time we brought the speargun and camera, I had the camera, John had the speargun. About 15 minutes into the dive John spotted a good group of amberjack and started to follow, once one of the big boys turned broadside to us, he took the shot, I followed close and knifed the fish through the top of the head. Stephen strung the fish using a small mesh bag he was carrying. Not 3 minutes later, John starts yelling through his reg and pointing, there was a grey suit among us and he was big! We have video of him, but I just haven't uploaded it yet.
After doing some research, we have come to the conclusion that it was a 6-7' lemon shark. He made 2 passes before it was time for us to turn the dive. This made this trip worth every penny!
