a huge goliath grouper rests under a rock ledge

Molasses Reef

Today was the last day of diving this trip. Nobody was sure what the name of the dives were, because it鈥檚 a holiday weekend and we were lucky just to get moored on a ball somewhere along Molasses Reef. The reality is that all the dives are pretty close to each other and you can be moored above one spot, but wind up doing one or two of the spots right next to it. So both dives today were somewhere on Molasses reef, but they probably didn鈥檛 follow any officially named dives. We just went were we could be a little further away from all the other divers. ...

May 23, 2015 路 6 min 路 jtalbot
a scuba diver takes a giant step off the back of a scuba boat into the ocean

USCG Duane and Aquarium at Molasses Reef

It rained again last night. I worried that the water would be rough again today, but it wasn鈥檛. We bought some dramamine yesterday and took some before bed. We took another round this morning before heading out. I鈥檓 not sure if it was the drugs or the calm waters, but we were both fine all day. We did our second deep dive today. We decided to do all our deep dives before Brett and Jess get here. I don鈥檛 think Jess enjoys going deep and there鈥檚 certainly no need to go deep to see anything other than wrecks. The wreck we saw this morning was the USCG Duane. I took the camera down inside the enclosure for the first time. I brought the big flash because I knew there wouldn鈥檛 be a lot of light at depth. That full rig is pretty heavy. Speaking of heavy, I took 18 pounds of weight today, which proved to be way too much. It鈥檚 easy to compensate for too much weight, but there鈥檚 no way to compensate for having too little. Tomorrow I may try a little less. ...

May 18, 2015 路 3 min 路 jtalbot