My November Underwater

I tend to post my dive logs as I process the photos, but I figured a monthly recap could be fun. I managed 6 dives in 3 different states over 5 separate dive days for a total underwater time of 5 hours 44 minutes.

Locations:

3 dives at Folly Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts
1 dive at Fort Constitution in New Castle, New Hampshire
1 night dive at Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, Rhode Island
1 dive at Plum Cove in Gloucester, Massachusetts

November 1 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

With unseasonably warm air temperatures and calm conditions, we managed two dives. For the first dive, we planned to head out the left side of the cove, but didn’t make it very far due to critter distractions. One buddy mentioned she wanted to see a puffer, so naturally we found one immediately upon descending. A short while later, we came across a lumpfish and spent 10+ minutes photographing that little cutie. I also found a highly cooperative pipefish and spent a lot of time lining up just the right shot. This dive was 75 minutes, but we barely found 20 feet of depth.

For the second dive, we vowed to actually swim out the left side. While we didn’t have as much critter luck, we still had a nice dive, cruising out to a big overhang with many anemones, visiting the resident northern red anemone, and then cruising back along the top of the wall. I have done the “deep out, shallow back” route a couple times and it is really nice up top. The water is maybe 15 feet deep and the rocks are covered with urchins, stars, mussels, and crabs. My personal critter highlight was a radiated shanny that actually stuck around long enough for me to photograph.

November 7 - Folly Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

This was the dive that nearly didn’t happen. Conditions were great, but when I arrived, my buddy was having a gear issue: her BCD inflator was leaking. Neither of us had the correct o-ring for the hose side, so we wandered to a few other popular dive sites in case there were other divers who had it. Failing that, we headed to Ace Hardware and browsed their collection of o-rings. They didn’t seem to have a good fit, so we settled on plumber’s tape as a short term fix. The tape seemed to slow the leak, so we agreed to keep a close eye on air and keep it shallow in case of problems.

With the gear problems understood and under a close eye, we proceeded to have a nice dive! This was my first dive out with the 30mm macro lens (keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post on this), so naturally I found a Placida dendritica sea slug, which is small for even my 60mm lens. Other critter sightings included hermit crabs, pipefish, and moon snails, which were a much better size for the 30mm lens.

November 14 - Fort Constitution Pier (New Castle, New Hampshire)

Marine conditions were a mess all week, so we headed over to Fort Constitution for a little river diving. We descended into mediocre visibility and kicked out under the pier. There were crabs, crabs, crabs, and more crabs, a few sea stars, and a couple anemones among the lines on the bottom. There was a pretty steady cross current basically the whole dive, but I did manage to find a small sea lemon and a shag rug nudi out in the sand and then my buddy found a big sea raven that took off immediately. It was good to get underwater on a nice day, but not the best dive.

November 17 - Fort Wetherill (Jamestown, Rhode Island)

This was unquestionably my worst gear dive ever, but it was still fantastic. Right off the bat, my right dry glove was leaking. It had leaked a bit on the previous dive, but I thought I may have just had some debris in the glove seal or something. Nope, still bad! Not a huge problem - the water was decently warm, so a leaking glove wouldn’t be a big deal. We descended near the boat ramp and spent some time looking through the seaweed for seahorses. No luck, but we headed a bit further left past the eel grass to explore some more where I had spotted an octopus several weeks back. No luck on the octopus over there, but I did find a small conger eel and then a MASSIVE American eel. It was probably four feet long and quite thick, but it wasn’t too bothered by us so I managed some nice pictures. After that, we kicked west as planned to head over to the opposite side of the cove. We cruised over the sand for what felt like only a couple minutes, but then ended up very shallow. I popped up and we had made it all the way across as intended. By now, I could feel cold water in my drysuit and had the heater on full blast. I could tell there was significant water in my drysuit because when I hit the inflator, I could hear the air bubbling through some water. I submerged and signaled to my buddies that we were in the right spot and we should search around. We came acrosss a large skate that came in nice and close for some images and continued our octopus hunt. My computer was showing a low battery alarm, which meant I had no compass so I followed my buddies.

We turned the dive because I was very cold and on our way back, I FOUND THE OCTOPUS! We followed along and hung out with it snapping away for over 10 minutes as it moved over the sand. Finally, it reached its burrow and disappeared. I immediately signaled that I was going up because I was frozen and needed to get out. Kicking back in was HARD because I was very heavy. I considered dropping weights at that point, but I was very close to shore so I powered through. I hauled myself out of the water feeling the weight of all the water in my legs, trudged up the boat ramp to my car and dumped just a tremendous amount of water out of my suit. I was freezing cold, in need of a new drysuit, and only managed a 54 minute dive at Fort Wetherill, but I went home happy because we found an octopus!

November 26 - Plum Cove (Gloucester, Massachusetts)

After my drysuit flood, I knew I couldn’t dive that suit again without repairs. Fortunately, my buddy let me borrow his backup suit so I can keep diving this winter while I wait for my new suit to arrive! We had ambitions of diving Cathedral Rocks, but there was too much water movement to make a safe entry and exit there so we ended up at Plum Cove. I geared up in the borrowed suit, walked into the water, and then noticed a slice in the right glove. We hopped out of the water, swapped the glove out and then submerged. My buddy pointed out some super tiny bright orange tube worms, but I didn’t manage much of a picture with the 30mm lens. There was a good sized pinkish sea lemon nearby and then I stumbled on the star of the dive: a European rock shrimp, which was new to me. These are really cool shrimp and are a few inches long, so they are quite easy to photograph. I spent a bunch of time on it before we continued on. The water was really chilly at 46F and we were both having a bit of a tough time with buoyancy in the very shallow water (max depth for this dive was 12 feet) so we agreed to swim out a bit more before turning back. My buddy called me over to show me a moon snail eating a razor clam. I’ve seen razor clam shells often, but this was my first time seeing one alive (if not for much longer). It was good to get out, but I’m not ready for 46F water yet!