Capt. Bill of the Independence II called us to see if we wanted to go to the Resor and given the poor visibility everywhere, I knew if there was going to be good visibility anywhere it would be at the Resor. I was originally thinking of diving the City of Athens but, given the conditions I thought the Resor would be a better choice and I believe I made the right decision. Once its late October..early November days of diving start to thin out due to the increasing winds which goes hand in hand with rougher seas. Yesterday, however, it was a beautiful day to be out diving, a little chill in the air, warm water (53 degrees on the bottom and 62 on the hang) and calm seas.
The Resor is one of those wrecks that has a large amount of relief and provides something for everyone from lobsters, scallops, fish to artifacts and photography. I have many fond memories of diving this wreck and the abundance of cod everyone used to spear on it.
We had a full boat of some of the best divers in the Northeast aboard along with some of the next generation of divers that you can just sense what they will achieve in terms of going "out of the box" and finding new wrecks, achieving greater depths to areas never discovered before. There was also 4 female divers on board which simply does not happen often. In addition, of the 14 divers on board, I could not help to notice that almost the entire boat was rebreather divers, there was only 3 of us on open circuit...times are changing.
I ended up attempting to be buddies with Anne Dashevsky...We tried to be buddies a year or two ago on the Gypsy Blood and ended up passing each other on the anchor line, I was going up as she was finally heading down..that day she had problems with her rebreather. This time, she splashed ahead of me and waited at 20' for me to do a bubble check for her and I saw bubbles so she went back up to the surface and I went down alone again.. As I descended there was a little current that was carrying that algae in the water column...I hoped that the water would clear up on the bottom. Once on the bottom the current was pretty strong on top of the stern where we were anchored and the vis was only about 15' which in my opinion is not that great for the Resor. It was darker but, it was also early in the morning and the sun was not fully up to give us that ambient light. I brought my camera and tried to stay on top of the wreck where there was the best natural light and shot some photos. I could not help to notice the enormous taugue that were on top of the wreck and they were not afraid to swim right up to me. After being down for about 10 minutes, my buddy Anne showed up and she was going to head down to the sand to look for scallops, I headed down into the wreck a bit but continued to shoot photos. I swam along the wreck and found the gun and I also noticed lots of spots where portholes once were. I also noticed a backing plate still there hidden amongst the marine growth, Bill later told me that there are quite a few backing plates left on the Resor because they are really hard to get off. It did not appear that any of the divers today were artifact hunting, everyone was looking for scallops and lobsters. I ended my dive after about 30 minutes because I was cold. The water is warm but, the surface air was cooler today so I was cold before I even splashed thus, I didn't last long before I was shivering...
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| Yellow Boring Sponge |
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| The sea anemone is wrapped around the mussel. |
Since the boat was full of rebreathers that also means that they spend a lot more time on the bottom so when they came up there was bag after bag after bag filled with scallops and lobsters. Some of the lobsters were really NICE in terms of size. Then the shucking began..It was definitely a productive day in terms of scallops.
I splashed ahead of Anne for dive #2 and she found me half way into my dive. The visibility improved quite a bit and I'd say it was now about 30', it seems the current helped to move out some of the algae, plus now the sun was out. We went down to the sand and I was going to take more pictures and she was going to gather scallops...I shot two photos and my low battery sign came on and my camera was done, I was not happy to say the least...oh well... I helped Anne look for scallops but, just for a few minutes because I didn't want to end up with a long deco...I was too cold to handle a long hang. I headed up ahead of Anne and still had a 20 minute hang which would have been shorter but my O2 regulator was free-flowing badly so I didn't get to hang on O2 deco gas. I tried to turn the knob on my Diverite regulator to get the free flowing to slow down to no avail... At times like this I am glad that I am a conservative diver because you never know what piece of equipment may not work properly and luckily for me I had plenty of Nitrox to decompress on and the only compromise is I had to hang longer...I could have used my O2 regulator but I don't like breathing on a regulator that forces air down your throat.. During my hang I was thinking about the fact that this algae bloom is still in full swing and the fact that there were tons of cunners on this wreck and some large taugue but, they were mostly located on top of the wreck. I wonder if this is a sign that the dissolved oxygen level is dropping on the bottom and as a result it drives the fish up higher??? I'll have to pay more attention to this on my next dive.
Back up on the boat, another load of scallops was bought up by those divers that did two dives. Anne said we did two partial dives together this time and perhaps next time we will do at least one complete dive together.. On the way home Terry shared some great stories of equipment lost and found and his great find of a bunch of $20 bills while diving. He had us all laughing and having a good time. Capt. Jim of the Gypsy Blood was at the dock when we arrived and we all hung out for a while having a few beers and sharing stories of dive adventures. I hope to get out a few more times this season...thinking of that Arundo trip in 2 weeks!
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