Lots of lessons from this dive amoungst them are; know thy camera, check which way the winds have been blowing (not where it is blowing now), don't sweat the water temperature, bring hot water and know thy camera.

We drove to Folly Cove on the North end of Cape Ann. The surge was coming directly down the cove, we passed another diver at Plum Cove so we went back there. He was just putting his equipment away and turned out to be ADS from the D2D board. He regularly post great pictures from Cape Ann. He told us the water was 37 degrees and maybe 10' visibility. We suited up and headed into the water, what a shock when those first drops go down your back. After we swam out a ways we dropped down and immediately lost track of each other and after a few minutes had to go to the surface to reconnect. This was to be a recurring theme and was very frustrating to both of us. The visibility just sucked maybe 5'. We floundered around the west wall and then went across the cove and came back in the east wall. We had to surface 4 or 5 times to reconnect, I swear I'm going to rope together next time, no change that, I'm never getting into the water with that kindof visibility.

I spent alot of time looking at the little stuff, it surprised me how many shrimp and little fish I could see if I just looked. The coolest thing we saw were egg cases for one of the nudibraches, they were lily white and frilly.

Lessons figured out after we critiqued this excussion. The wind had been out of the North West all week, right down this cove, it had shifted around to the East today so the surf was down in the cove but not all week. Everything was stirred up, hence the lousy visibility. The cold was not that bad and only my feet were cold, the hot water worked great to warm us right before we put on our dry clothes. The camera was fine the operator sucked, turns out I had the flash off , I knew it wasn't flashing but I thought it was using the natural light, wrong. Many blurred pictures due to the surge and slow shutter. One other shot I screwed up because I left the camera in macro mode for a distance shot of Art diving.

Anyway heres some pictures;

Art getting ready to dive, check the terror in the eyes;



A kind-of spongey thing (some motion blur)



Here some Sea Urchins trying to hide behind kelp.



Blurry Egg Case.



This looked like a Jelly Belly Candy but a good test of the macro.



My defense for lousy pictures are task loading and a new camera. I have some more excuses if you want to hear them.

Cecil, Welcome to the "Do Everything Once" club! You Navy guys have guts. I enjoyed reading your report, while sipping a cup of hot tea. Nice pictures! Here's looking forward to more!

cecil...bravo...the pictures are great, and need no apologies! ANY trip report is better than none in my book! Gave me a good fix!

Good work Hero!!! You have given me the nudge to put the suit in the water and to take the camera. In a few weeks there will be thousands of pink anemones-like things where we usually dive.They come in the spring and leave before the summer, so I guess I had better get there and take a few pics. Thanks for the report!!!! It is a realist one for this part of the world!!!

I still bummed about the flash. I lost most of the colors for that mistake. The sponge and the sea urchins would have been way kewl. Here's a couple more.

Here's a large blow-up of a hermit crab.



Here's a blurred shrimp that I can not find in the picture but I know he's there. He was about 3" long and the same color as the sand.



If only I had turned on the flash, waaaaa.

lol, ok cecil, i just thought that since the water was soooo cold...that the color was "true" and thought the green was a natural...had me fooled!

Cecil, the shots are crystal clear and an amazing window on life in the (subarctic) New England waters! There is SO much more to see than I ever imagined. Thank you for braving the cold cold cold just for us spectators.

You know - that green isn't too hard to clean up - I have a one-click freeware app called ColorCast from mediachance.com and it knocked the green right out:

Cecil,
What mm is your wet suit? Did you see any legal sized lobsters by chance? How deep and long was your bottom time? I second Cynde's motion on the trip report..A good Cape Ann thread would be nice to start someplace..IMHO it ain't Bonaire but its better than nothing at all..

Rusty I did mess around with the color balances and didn't get anything I was happy with. It sure would have been easier to turn on the flash and get the colors on the original.


Peter, 7mm jacket and farmer john. We only stayed 20 minutes but this was due to the lack of visibility not the cold. My feet were starting to get cold, I'm pretty sure I could lasted 40 minutes with something to see. As far as depth, it was pretty pitiful maybe 11', a couple of times when we were exploring some rocks my fins came out of the water. I call that power snorkling. The tide was going out and the surge got pretty bad if we swam out of the cove.

Sorry forgot your lobsters, no none at all, not even small ones. I've heard they move off to the deep water in the winter.

Rusty will that take out the blue from my UW pictures. First time shots and I didn't use the flash. Holly

I love the urchins you got - we used to have a brackish tank with starfish and urchins in it and they would all migrate toward my hand (slowly) when I fed them squid in the morning.

These guys seemed to like to cover themselves, the above picture is them using kelp. Other times I saw them with old clam shells.

Lobsters are smarter divers than humans--they do go out deep in the winter to warmer (in the winter) water. :–) They come back just in time for the 4th of July fireworks, at least they did for the 25 years I chased them around Boston. Then we could dive behind the Eastern Point breakwater they seemed to appear there first, coming in to shed. Dove once this time of year in the ocean then joined the lobsters in staying out of the (shore) water.