Green Diver: 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...