Saturday, August 17
Pompano Drift with South Florida Diving Headquarters

Afternoon

Dive 1 - Turtle Ledge: The current was doing some strange things on this day with a south flowing current and a wicked east push that swept many of our divers into the abyss. We stayed safely at 70' but were staring down to 120' until we decided to surface. But a few hardy divers managed to hit the ledge and were rewarded with a large Southern stingray, numerous tropicals and enormous maroon vase sponges. One of our divers even spotted a hammerhead shark swimming by! 

Dive 2 - Nursery: Capt. Dave made a smart decision to leave the wicked current behind and brought us all to the Nursery - the 30-foot ledge that spans along the balls at the Pompano's first reef line. There is an incredible amount of life on this reef including a sleeping nurse shark we saw when we first went down, numerous lobsters, puffer fish large and small, trunkfish, lizardfish all amid beautiful healthy corals. 

Saturday, August 17

Dusk/Night Dive

Dive 1 - Nursery and Copenhagen Wreck - Capt. Jeremy positioned us skillfully north of the Copenhagen wreck with a mild south current. We saw large schools of rainbow parrotfish, bermuda chubb, and this dusk dive was really beautiful. As night fell, parrotfish started sleeping on the reef, three large curious snook came out to say hello and numerous lobsters were walking around brazenly. Then halfway through the dive the reef turned into metal spikes and ribs emerging from the bottom, and I realized that we had drifted over the Copenhagen. This is the dive I bring my open water students to, so I led the group over to the plaque from the Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve at the south end of the wreck, next to the ships anchor which sits upright as it has for the past 124 years since the ship ran aground in the year 1900. We came up to gorgeous orange skies and a bright blue moon casting a luminous light on the water. 

Dive 2 - Pompano Dropoff - By the time we went down for the second dive darkness was in full swing and the lobsters were out in force. We saw crabs, several small green sea turtles on this dive including one sleeping on a ledge guarded by a French angelfish. But the highlight of this dive was a curious squid who spent quite a bit of time dancing around my flashlight, and changing colors. It was a beautiful, magical dive. 

-- Active Divers President and Safety Officer Rachel Davis