My December Underwater

As the water and air have gotten colder, gone are the days of multiple dives. I still managed to dive 5 days this month, but that only resulted in 5 dives this time around. I spent 305 minutes underwater and consumed about 226 cubic feet of air while down there.

Locations:

2 dives at Folly Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts
1 dive at Fort Constitution in New Castle, New Hampshire
1 dive at Bass Rocks in Rockport, Massachusetts
1 dive at Canoe Beach in Nahant, Massachusetts

December 4 - Bass Rocks (Rockport, Massachusetts)

After a late start and a bunch of local traffic, I finally made it up to Bass Rocks, arriving to beautiful sunshine and some water motion, but nothing concerning. We all geared up and entered the water. Shortly after entering, I found a bright white sculpin in the pink weeds. Over the course of the dive we saw several nudibranchs (mostly in the water column), a massive sculpin, and a piece of sugar kelp that was covered with snails chowing away. Visibility was incredible, but we did have to battle a bit of surge, especially in shallow as we were coming in. This was dive #100 for the year and it was a nice one! I’ll definitely be back to Bass Rocks.

December 9 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

Met up with a buddy for a morning dive at Folly. The visibility was great, but we just didn’t find a whole heck of a lot. A few rim-backed nudis, some moon snails, some anemones, and not much else.

December 12 - Fort Constitution Pier (New Castle, New Hampshire)

We had gotten a few inches of rain and marine conditions were kicked up, so I was not optimistic about the viz on this dive but wanted to get in anyway. I was able to seal up my buddy’s glove and re-seal my glove so we could actually get underwater. We submerged and headed under the pier. Viz was, in fact, awful and even through slack tide, there was a steady pull. It might be best to avoid this site around king tides. Anyways, we cruised out and I found a couple sea lemons but not a ton else. I lost track of Maura and Dave and was sick of the constant pull of the current, so I turned around and ascended to the high wall under the pier. As usual, it was covered with anemones of all sizes and colors, but there were also a lot of scaled worms. I cruised along the high wall the whole way back and found probably 10 or more scaled worms before hitting the end of the pier and returning to the entry. Conditions weren’t great, but it was still good to get underwater.

December 16 - Canoe Beach (Nahant, Massachusetts)

We arrived to overcast skies and an incoming tide and as we entered the water, the viz was nearly zero. We put our fins on and kicked out a bit, expecting the worst but were delighted to find 20 foot viz. We didn’t see much for awhile, but then I found two Placida dendritica close to each other on some sea fleece. My navigation was awful - our destination was north and every time I looked at my compass we were pointed northeast. We continued on under my poor navigation for awhile until the bottom changed to gravel and the topography got more rocky. I thought we made it to the chimneys, which would have been very surprising. We swam around the interesting topography and I found two sea lemons, several fuzzy doris, and a few rim-backed nudis in the water column. I popped up and we were over around the right point…so not at all where I was navigating to, but that was a very cool area. It seems there’s interesting things to find wherever you point your compass at Canoe Beach!