The winds and seas weren’t pretty on Friday so Matt opted to cancel the AM and PM charters. I decided to make the best of it and get a quick dive in at Old Garden Beach where it was a sheltered.
Myself, Kim M. and Kate C. and James C. met up for a dive in the afternoon. Old Garden Beach is a good option on weekdays because you can park right on the street. Kate/James were planning on lobstering while me and Kim toted around cameras. Actually that’s a lie I also was planning on lobsters too but quickly gave up that endeavor.
Unfortunately the visibility was not very good. Perhaps 5-6ft of glorious visibility due to the red alga / sea weed (Heterosiphonia japonica), an invasive species that is blanketing most of the beaches on Cape Ann. The stuff covers and blankets everything. I would compare the smell to raw sewage.
The entire dive site is littered with Heterosiphonia japonica. If you’re lobstering you literally need to push it out of the way to look on the bottom. Hopefully a change it wind at some point will push all this stuff back out to sea.
It finally cleared up a little bit at about the 36ft depth mark before we turned around and headed back to shore.
Max depth: 36ft
Runtime: 62 minutes
Visibility: 5-6ft at most.
Overall it was still a dive. Kim did manage to find a horseshoe crab in the shallows. There were also a couple bushy back nudibranchs still hanging around. As we got out of the water Reilly, Caselyn, Alex S. showed up for a dive.
We then of course hit up Cape Ann Brewery. I guess we were all hungry because 4 orders of wings (one for each person?) plus full meals were had..and beer. Don’t forget the beer.
