Due to the massive construction project that has been going on at Peirce Island I have not been able to dive one of my favorite winter shore diving sites for nudibranch photography. This has led me to research other possible entry points or dive sites in the Picataqua River. I’ve only explored a couple areas so far and while I haven’t found anything similar to the massive hydroid field at Peirce, I have managed to find some cool bottles so that has been an added bonus.
Since I knew the road to the Peirce Island Dog Park is closed off due to construction we decided to walk it along the water to see how long it would take if you parked next the the parking lot by the pool. In short..it’s about a 7-8 minute walk without dive gear so I am guessing it would be closer to a 10-15 minute walk carrying carry or walking over fully suited up. You have to go through the construction fence at one section briefly but if you were all geared up you should be able to walk in the water and bypass the fence.
I’ll try walking in full dive gear in the next few weeks and report how long it takes.
I was feeling a bit lazy today so we decided to dive right behind the Peirce Island pool and see if we could swim out to where the wall drops off. I knew from looking at the depth chart that mooring field area is relatively shallow but I figured maybe we might find some nudibranches or old bottles
We hit a maximum of 32ft at high tide slack. The bottom here starts as mud but then switches to a sandy/rocky bottom and then back to mud in some areas.
There are definitely bottles here but most of them are newer. I did manage to find two blob top bottles so there are definitely old ones to be found if you look closely.
