Day of Scuba/Rest

<--- Paddlefish (aka: Spoonbill, Spoony, Spoonbill Catfish)

Well, I made it back with all my fingers and toes. We only experienced one fish attack today. While Jake practiced his mask clearing skill in about 20 feet of water, a little sunfish darted out of nowhere and nibbled at his ear. He immediately swatted at his ear like he was shooing a fly; at the same time he was trying to replace his mask and clear it. I almost spit my regulator out as I attempted not to laugh and choke. It was the funniest thing I've seen under water!

We saw lots of sunken treasures along the bottom. Swam through the fuselage of the U.S. Marshal's plane, a school bus, ambulance and sat on a motorcycle. We played with schools of pan fish, largemouth bass (two to six pounders) and a couple of huge catfish. The Paddlefish tried to avoid us. For a second, I thought I saw one of the catfish eyeballing us for dinner. :-)

My briefing took longer than I expected, so we arrived to the quarry after lunch. We only got to do two dives. Of course, we had to cook some beef on Jake's new hibachi grill between dives which took up some of our time. During the first dive, we stayed down for 41 minutes. The second dive about 58 minutes. Even though the quarry is at least 120 feet deep, we only descended to 40 feet. The first thermocline was about 20 feet and dropped from 80 degrees to about 65-70 degrees. The second thermocline was about 40 feet and dropped to 50 degrees or colder. Since we didn't want to wear hoods or gloves, we decided to keep in the warmer water. Anything below 50 degrees ain't to pleasant on the unprotected skin for any period of time. Besides, most of the fish were swimming above 40 feet.

All in all, it was a good day of rest!