My July Underwater

For whatever reason, I was really lazy about notetaking after my dives this month. There were plenty of dives and some interesting photography, I just didn’t feel like typing it up apparently. Oh well! Here’s what I do have…

I completed 8 dives including #700! I stuck to my two most-dived sites with 5 dives at Folly Cove and 3 at Old Garden Beach. I got a new +12.5 diopter, which made for some fun and challenging super macro imaging, which you will see.

July 2 - Old Garden Beach (Rockport, Massachusetts) x 2

Gear configuration: Olympus 30mm macro lens, +12.5 AOI wet diopter

I didn’t write down any notes, but I was using my 30mm macro lens and a borrowed +12.5 diopter from a buddy to see if I wanted to purchase it. I found a number of different subjects that were a good test for the lens and decided I would buy an identical used on I found online.

June 18 - Old Garden Beach (Rockport, Massachusetts)

Gear configuration: Olympus 30mm macro lens, +12.5 AOI wet diopter

We headed out toward the pinnacle to explore and found it before too long. We were a group of four to start, but my buddy and I got from the other two and continued continued on as a pair. I had put my new +12.5 diopter on, but didn’t realize until the morning that I had the 30mm lens on instead of the 60mm. I gave it a try and got some decent macro shots, but the surge made it tricky. My only real chance was to hold onto the kelp with my left hand, rest the camera on my arm, and then push the shutter with my right hand. I found lots of tiny nudis on the kelp, a sea lemon, and a zebra lebbeid shrimp. Once we hit the shallows, we were surrounded by sand lance and had a fly-by from some pollock trying to munch them and a large striper who was happy to get close to us as we stirred up its meal. We did a nice long 75 minute dive, but the other pair managed 2 hours!

July 19 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts) x 2

Gear configuration: Olympus 60mm macro lens, +12.5 AOI wet diopter

(The track is jittery because it was sampling too much)

My buddy brought his small scooters for some powered exploration, so we zipped straight out to the west point to work our way back on the swim. Once we got out there, I spent some time looking around for scarlet psolus, which seem to magically appear around 40-50 feet of depth. I found one that was totally closed up and then one that was open and feeding. We started our swim back in because it was 48F at depth, visited the northern red, and swam along the top to warm up a bit. I had my 60mm macro lens and +12.5 diopter - my best shot was definitely a tiny Eubranchus exiguus on some kelp. Looking forward to playing with this lens some more!

For the second dive, we swapped batteries over in the scooters and planned to jet over to the wall by the Lobster Pool. Neither of us had been over there, so the plan was to head north until we could turn east and then head over to the wall. It took longer to make the turn than we expected, so we kept popping up to see if we were in the right spot. My buddy’s scooter was running low on battery, so we went on low power to conserve. Once we got there, we started exploring the wall and it’s a really cool spot. We were there around low tide, so the corner of the wall dropped to around 30 feet. The wall itself has all sort of crevices for critters to hide in and then off the wall are some large chunks of granite providing more shelter. I didn’t take many pictures, but this was a fun exploration dive.

July 24 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

Gear configuration: Olympus 60mm, +12.5 AOI wet diopter

(The track is jittery because it was sampling too much)

I didn’t take any notes on this dive, but I also didn’t take many pictures (36 total) despite spending 1h42 minutes underwater.

July 30 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts) x 2

Gear configuration: Olympus 14-42mm EZ lens, Backscatter M52 wet wide angle

We all brought our wide angles to cruise the shallows on the left side at Folly - we surface swam much of the way over and then dropped down, swimming past the northern red and up into the shallows around the tip of the rocks visible from shore. Up on top, it was shallow, colorful, and bright in the sunshine. The visibility was awesome and I managed some nice shots in the shallows without seeing too much in the way of critters.

Another buddy joined up for dive #2 and we decided to cruise the right side to see what was going on over there. The sun was higher in the sky, so I couldn’t really get any sunbeam shots. Overall, we didn’t see a ton, but there were a few clusters of squid eggs including one with a lobster living under it. The stars of the show were the flounders who were mostly curious what we were up to rather that bolting away from us. Nice dive!