Saturday Night Ledge: Last take

         On November 5th I sadly completed my last open water dive for the season as the air and water temps are creeping past my comfort level. Chuck and I rode with Cape Ann Divers to SNL once more in a final attempt to shoot 2 more critical shots for the short film I'm cutting. Upon descending 110' down the mooring line, we actually found conditions to be reasonably forgiving for shooting. I immediately proceeded through the trench with Chuck following close behind. I really wanted a shot of Chuck's light piercing through the opening at the base of the trench. In order to do this, I have to swim through first, gain ground on Chuck, spill out the front of the trench, line up my shot before chuck comes through, all while waiting for him in 135' of water. This is a difficult shot as I realistically only have a minute to pull it off and that's if we time everything perfectly. I failed to get the shot the past four dives at SNL, and miraculously, we pulled it off during our last trip for the season.

       After SNL we triumphantly rode to the Poling wreck in 6 foot rolling swells. I fought with all my might to keep down Capt. Steve's lunch as my belly became increasingly less tolerant of the seas. On the Poling a seal was playing by the mooring line. We were in hopes to see him on the wreck, but he wasn't interested in us and went his own way. This was a phenomenal day and a great end to the season.

    Stay tuned as I will keep posting images and video clips throughout the winter from the 2011 dive season.  

A video screen-grab of the most difficult shot of the season.

Folly Cove, the little stuff...

        Chuck and I took my macro setup to Folly cove on Sunday. We were originally scheduled to dive U-853 again, but 30 mph and 10' seas cancelled our trip. I can't say I wasn't relieved, I really didn't want to be on Canned Air "the rocket sled" in those conditions. It may be fun feeding the gulls your breakfast, but vomiting over the side of a boat gets old after 6 or 7 times. Hopefully the weather will pan out next Sunday.
        In light of everything being blown out, we opted for a Cape Ann shore dive. Wind was blowing out everywhere facing south so Folly was as calm as can be. We saw our friends on the Cape Ann Divers boat finding some shelter behind the Lobster Pool restaurant and decided to harass them from shore. Their divers were exploring the granite seawall east of the restaurant.
       We saw the usual assortment of critters, and admittedly, it was nice to have a stress-free dive compared to Nazi submarine wreckage and claustrophobic Saturday Night Ledge. We were in snapping pictures and exploring for over an hour. Miraculously, Chuck's makeshift drysuit-zipper-clamp worked and he stayed reasonably dry. In other words, just the normal amount of water we get in our suits. We'll see how it holds up at 5 atmospheres. Below are some higher-res images from Folly, enjoy!

The fine folks at Cape Ann Divers

Close-up of some gnarly urchin skin

Diplosoma listerianum, invasive, but pretty.

Spider crab getting romantic with Chuck.

Blood star, and a freak of nature. I actually didn't notice until I looked at my pictures when I got home.

Club tunicate engulfed by colonial tunicate.

Rock crab with beady yellow eyes.

sea star close-up

Saturday Night Ledge and Burnham Rock 2

        In a continued effort to shoot as much SNL video as possible before the end of the season, we booked another Cape Ann Divers charter to take us out. We were blessed with another flat day, unusual for mid October. With only 3 of us on the boat, we got to spread out and relax before the dives. Conditions underwater were not as nice as the surface. It was another foreboding, murky day at the base of the mooring line. While Chuck was grappling with an unruly, tangled wreck reel and a slowly leaking drysuit, I swam around the general area taking pictures. Alas, we never even made it to the trench. Although generally not difficult to find, our own minor problems and nitrogen induced confusion hampered our less than perfect navigational skills. This proved to be a mixed blessing as I was able to take my time and get some nice pictures to incorporate into the video.        
         At Burnham, the current was up and sweeping through the trench. It was strange because we really didn't feel the current until we hit the bottom. I swam through the trench a little bit and took some more pictures. While we were down there, Chuck seemed reluctant to move away from the mooring line. I realized when we were back on the boat that he had suffered a catastrophic drysuit zipper fail. When Chuck got out of his suit we were all shamefully amused when he emptied about 2 gallons of 55 degree water out of his legs. Funny when it's not you... So Chuck didn't have the best day in the world, and we didn't really get much video done. However, as always, it was a good day because there were no major issues and everyone returned to the boat safely.   

Sleeping anemones

Spiny sun star

Stalked tunicate

Cunner by the mooring line

Spiny sun star

The camera strobe illuminates the hidden color that is everywhere down there. I will paste this image to the forehead of the next person that tells me "there's nothing to see while diving in New England" 

Stage Fort Park

         After my Easy Diver trip last weekend I decided to hop in for a quick swim at Stage Fort Park. There was the typical 3-foot-vis to contend with, but I managed to find some critters nonetheless. Despite the beautiful day on land, I was the only diver in the water.

I hovered carefully above this submerged clam to snap its picture. Typically, as soon as you get close to clams they will dart down further into the sand and will not reappear until you are gone.  

Orange tunicate

Spider crab (toad crab?) with some serious living camouflage.

Close up of the same character, it's an alien if I've ever seem one.

A bright-eyed hermit crab

Easy Diver 2

            I was back on the Boat last weekend with Calhoun and crew. We were out shooting at the USF New Hampshire then the ledge behind Norman's Woe. Oddly enough, after all these years, this was the first time I dove the New Hampshire. Interesting but sparse wreckage. Peter was kind enough to give me the tip of a copper spike he found over by the island. Didn't look like much, but it was manufatured in Paul Revere's Copper Mill. The captain was shooting me, shooting pictures, I guess he liked how my Aquatica rig looked underwater. The water was still a forgiving 59 degrees and the air temp was in the lower 80s, on October 9th no less! It was a perfect day, one that will seem like a distant memory three weeks from now.  

Moon Snail dwarfing a hermit crab.

Captain on the left shooting another diver

Cunner by the wreckage

Wreck of USF New Hampshire

Not a boat in the water

Fall has officially begun in Cape Ann. In 6 years, I don't think I've seen Folly Cove as blown out as it was on Sunday. After visiting Folly, we drove around the corner to Halibut Point. Great day for watching the ocean, gray sky and black water. 

Eastern shoreline of Folly Cove

Folly Point

Halibut Point

Saturday Night Ledge Trailer

Saturday Night Ledge and Burnham Rock

The way out...

Returning to Saturday Night Ledge was high on my priority list. I was literally having dreams about this place. I could spend weeks at this site and never tire of it. Depth is the real issue here. I don't find being 130' underwater in New England remotely pleasant, but the canyon at SNL is just too enticing. On Wednesday we arrived at high tide. The bottom of the mooring line was 112' deep and visibility was about 6'. We tied off a wreck reel just to find the trench that was only about 15' away from us. When confronted by the blackened, murky chasm, Chuck and I looked at each other as if we were questioning our sanity. We both mustered the last bit of courage we had and swam in. There was only enough time to flirt with the trench for a couple of minutes before my computer started screaming at me. I carefully rotated around and was relieved to follow Chuck's reel back to the mooring line. This was my second dive on SNL and it gave me a new respect for the place. A delight to dive with good visibility at low tide, flip those conditions and it becomes a level in Doom.

In search of better conditions we chugged over to Burnham Rock. This place was thankfully a bit shallower at 80'-110'ish. Burnham is pretty much a miniature version of SNL. Beautiful trench in the solid rock, but much narrower in places. Still all the same bizarre deep dwelling invertebrates here. This dive was spectacular and much less terrifying than our first of the day. Much more to explore here...

Horse star in trench of SNL

Cunner on the slope of the trench.

Me during my safety stop, thanks to Chuck for snapping the picture.

Spiny sun star and sponges on Burnham Rock.

Colorful wall of Burnham Rock.

 

Virgil

Virgil is the new First Mate on the Cape Ann Boat. Honestly, I don't know if I like the guy. He staggered around all day, he peed on the deck then just passed out for the rest of the day. He even tried to kiss me!

First Mates

Virgil being a good sport for Todd

Capt Steve and his boy

Me having a puppy overload.

Seriously though, Virgil made everyone's day. He turned us into babbling idiots and we all followed him around like we were little kids. Diving and puppies... all we needed was pizza and beer and it would have been heaven. Photos were shot by Dave Shumway.

Easy Diver

      I spent last weekend on the Easy Diver with Captain Fred Calhoun. Calhoun and his crew were shooting video for their next short film and I was happy to be invited to assist. Using their Ikelite Mini DV rig I dove behind Kettle Island (pictured on right) on Saturday. On Sunday we steamed to Lanesville looking for dogfish and then off to Folly Point. The find of the weekend was on Saturday when Kerry Hurd found a torpedo ray and was able to spend about 20 minutes shooting footage of her. Some stills can be seen here on the Easy Diver trip reports. Unfortunately, I was never able to find Kerry due to low visibility combined with my less than stellar navigational skills, so I never saw the torpedo ray in person.

Peter Donahue, the Captain and Linda Hurd

 I've been out with Easy Diver a few times now and have had a great time with the Captain, Peter, Chris, Veronica, and all the other friends and crew of Mr. Calhoun. These were also my first experiences with minimalist diving. Upon the Captain's suggestion (he can be rather persuasive) I stripped down to just the bare essentials. No BCD, no drysuit, no gadgets, no extra hoses, no dangling clips or plastic. Wetsuit, tank harness, regulator, camera, and a steel 72 manufactured in 1959; that's it. There's something to be said for the minimalist approach to diving. It was quite liberating. I could swim twice as fast and used much less air than I would have fighting the drag of all my usual gear.
   

Kerry Hurd with his HD rig

 Some will have you believe that minimalist diving is a dangerous activity, but I felt very safe and comfortable during all my dives. It was easy to control my position in the water and with less stuff on, there is less to go wrong. I was very happy the Captain talked me into diving with just the harness. It was a different sport altogether and a new level of freedom.

Saturday Night Ledge

      Yesterday we set out for Saturday Night Ledge with Cape Ann Divers. This weekend was the Gloucester Schooner Festival. On the way out to SNL we watched as hundreds of sailboats were racing all around us.  People have told me about this site before but this was the first opportunity I've had to dive it myself. I can say without any exaggeration that this location is the most spectacular place I've ever seen underwater. Words, video, pictures; none could do this site any justice.



After descending about 95 feet down the mooring line, you touch down in a small patch of gravel. As you look out in almost any given direction, all you see is rock. It looks like the summit of a mountain above the tree line. However, the main attraction of this site is a trench that is carved out of solid rock. It is so perfectly chiseled that it looks man-made. The trench itself is probably 40' deep and therefore bottoms out in about 140' of water at high tide. I can't even imagine what could have created this structure.  As you swim though the channel, the most amazing and bizarre invertebrate life are growing everywhere. Thousands of colorful lamp shells line the edges of the walls. We also saw sea ravens and sea stars that looked like they came from another planet.

    These photos are screen shots from some of the video I took while swimming through the trench. The trench extends for about 40 meters or so before it opens back up at the end to reveal a beautiful panorama. Realistically, unless you're diving with doubles, you only have enough time to swim to the end of the trench look around for a minute and then head back. I was initially creeped out swimming through parts of the channel because they were so narrow that you couldn't turn around unless you swam vertically and rotated on your axis.

This place blew my mind! I can't wait to go back, there is so much to explore here. I still can't believe that this place exists, let alone the fact that I can visit it and be back at home by dinner time. I will enjoy many return trips here.

 

         After our surface interval, we steamed over to "Paddock Rock." Paddock is a submerged rock pinnacle that starts at 20' and the dome quickly drops down to about 80'. We had to contend with a strong surge and very low visibility, but this is always a nice dive. Generally we see thousands of sea urchins in the shallows here. They eat the algae off the rocks and you can see a very distinct line of where they've been vs. where they are going.






Down deeper, from 50 to 70 feet or so, we followed a school of juvenile pollack. They always stayed just out of our vision but as soon as the school changed directions, the sides of their bodies shimmer and hundreds of fish appear out of the darkness. Below is a sea cucumber that Chuck was able to find. I'm having difficulty identifying it. I believe it's either a scarlet psolus or a brown psolus. It was the first sea cucumber I've seen in New England.