My September Underwater

I did 8 dives this month, including several night dives. This is generally a great time of year to go out looking for tropical fish that got swept up from colder waters by the Gulf Stream current, but we haven’t had a ton of luck so far this year. Check out the Gulf Stream Orphan Project for more details (and a few of my pictures in the species ID section) and my running collection of tropical visitors.

The dives this month were a bit of a mixed bag. The water temperatures remained pleasant, as they tend to do, but we had varying visibility and a number of dives where we just didn’t really see a whole lot. Here’s the round-up of the dives (and make sure to stick around for the pictures at the end).

September 1 - Fort Wetherill (Jamestown, Rhode Island)

On the surface, I saw an osprey on a streetlight on the way in, a large deer walked through the parking lot, we had a gorgeous sunset, and super calm conditions. Once we got under, we had junk viz and not a ton to see. I found a coronetfish in the eel grass, two northern puffers, tiny squid in the water column, larger squid around sporadically, several tautog and massive black sea bass. As I was exiting, a small fish darted directly into my mask, which was very surprising. I battled the camera on this dive - I kept trying to take pictures and there was a dark spot in the middle that I just couldn’t figure out. On exiting, I discovered my flash trigger connector was wedged in front of the lens port instead of connected to the camera. Whoops!

September 3 - Loblolly Cove (Rockport, Massachusetts) + Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

Loblolly looked good from the surface, but it was deceptive. After we had already stashed the cars, we noticed quite a bit of sloshing at the point and the middle rock, but on we went! We submerged to junky viz and a large surge, but I found a juvenile boxfish almost immediately. I found some nudis on the kelp and while I was photographing one piece, a mega-tiny lumpfish emerged to say hello. I spotted an absolutely MASSIVE lobster out by the point before we turned and swam our way in, greeting some swimmers as the entered the water for a float.

After mediocre conditions at Loblolly, we relocated to Folly. It was so different! We arrived to gorgeous conditions above and below. We didn’t find any tropicals on this dive, but we did find several pipefish, rock gunnels, sand shrimp, stripers hitting the sand lance without any regard for us. This was a much more enjoyable dive.

September 12 - Dog Bar Breakwater (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

Weather report said decent NE wind and 3 foot waves from the east. True to form, OGB was totally blown out, Pebble was doable but looked messy, Bass Rocks was full on surfable, Niles was glass, but we ended up at Dog Bar. It was pretty low tide, so we were in for shallow. Immediately upon descending, I found a tiny orange trunkfish or boxfish. I finally got my camera ready and managed to snap a few pictures to prove I saw it and then proceeded on. We didn’t see too much, but there was a good sized school of juvenile cod, a horseshoe crab, a rock gunnel out in the sand, some anemones in the rocks, and a few tiny nudibranchs on the kelp. This was a nice, chill dive.

September 14 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

This was a solid night dive with a bunch of different squid encounters including one munching on a sculpin, a hake with interesting fins and a skeleton shrimp on its side, so many radiated shannies, a short bigeye, a couple pipefish, a tiny butterflyfish in the water column, and a stripey coronetfish.

September 20 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachuetts)

We had squid pretty consistently on this dive, often nearby when we turned our heads to look around. I found a super tiny puffer in the water column, a tiny trunkfish and then a juvenile sea raven swam by while photographing the trunkfish. I’ve got several pictures of trunkfish this season, so I wandered after the juvenile sea raven and struggled to get a good shot because of the camouflage and overall leafy shape. Finally got one I liked! The rest of the dive was fairly quiet, but I wandered over to the east side of the cove and found tons of loose seaweed, but pipefish up high in the weeds presumably to pick off morsels from the water column. A few decent finds, but not too much in the tropical department.

September 26 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

I didn’t take any notes after the dive, but from the pictures and dive profile, it looks like we cruised out the left side, checked out the northern red and then cruised back along the top of the ledge. Not too many images from the dive, which suggests the critter count was low.

September 27 - Nubble Lighthouse (York, Maine)

This was a bad dive for cameras. Mine refused to properly trigger my strobes, so I did a last minute swap for video lights and a GoPro. My buddy forgot hers entirely, but we set out anyway in search of whatever we might find. This dive featured more lobsters than I’ve ever seen on a dive ranging from tiny to mid-range keeper. The best finds of the dive were two snailfish, but both disappeared before I could get a good image or even show my buddy. We found a few anemones, lots of small cod, two VERY large cod hiding under rocks, sculpins of all size, and one of the biggest clusters of squid eggs I’ve ever seen. The squid who had been congregating during the day were nowhere to be found. We got separated at one point, which was a bit unnerving because we were 40 minutes out and this is not one of my regular sites. Of course, there’s a giant lighthouse showing the way and I had about 2/3 of a tank left so there wasn’t real danger, but it was uncomfortable nonetheless. I surfaced and began to swim toward the island, but after a few nervous minutes spotted my buddy’s light close by and went back down to meet up. We swam on for awhile and surfaced to check our bearing - we surface swam for a long while before finally getting back to our exit point. There was a tiny hole in the rocks maybe 3 inches in diameter near where we left our surface lights and it had tiny anemones in it! Very cool. This was a decent dive overall, but just not too much to see. That’s two quiet dives in a row at different spots. Where are all the critters at?!