Lilian 8-27-17

Today Gotham Divers charted the Independence II for the elusive 56 Mile wreck and for the 5th time, the sea conditions were such that we had to change our destination to the Lilian.  Everytime I am scheduled for the 56 mile wreck we are blown out but, at least today we had a plan B...We still left the marina very early to beat the incoming weather and also to beat the fishing boats to the wreck. It turned out to be a fantastic day and an awesome dive.

The tie in was pretty quick and I was the first to splash when the pool was open.  I wanted to get in quick so that my decompression was calm since the seas were already picking up.  Once I splashed I saw that finally the blue water gulf stream was in and the viz to about 75' down was at least 70'.  I love it when these conditions arrive in NJ!!  On the bottom the viz as about 25' and there was a lot of particulate matter in the water column.  Photos would be difficult today.  I did not recognize where I was on the wreckage but once I was on the surface I found out we were in the bow.  In the past I had always been near the boilers and the large plates of wreckage.  Today it was more broken up and I swam out to the various pieces in the sand.  I noticed that again this wreck was covered in nudibranchs but, they were much larger than anywhere else I have seen in the Northeast.  I did have a hard time shooting photos of them since it was pretty dark on the bottom and there was so much back scatter from the particulate matter. My camera also seemed to be having some focusing issues too.

The nudibranch blends in pretty good on this photo

 After taking a bunch of photos, I swam around to some other areas and all of a sudden I felt like the whole bottom of the ocean was moving.  I was all alone and there were tons of ling cod and flounder swimming everywhere and it felt as if they were swimming towards me.  It was so cool but also a little creepy.

I was on the search for the ocean pouts that I have photographed many times in the past on this wreck but, since I was not on the area of wreckage with the plates they were harder to locate.  I did find a few and they were definitely camera shy.

 I then swam upon a lobster carcass that was all cleaned off and the claws that were yet to be eaten.  The culprit was a lonely crab.  He must of had quite a meal and was guarding the left over claws from other fish and me!

It was pretty cold on the bottom at 46 degrees and after a while my hands were pretty cold so I headed up after about 25 minutes.  The thermocline was around 45' and it was in the upper 70's during the hang.  My hang was nice with little or no current.  However, I did have a minor regulator issue and computer issue when switching gases but, I managed to work through it without panicking..
I did manage to shoot some photos of other divers heading down during my hang..

Damien

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Scott

Up on the surface there were flounder speared and lots of lobsters and other tasty items from the sea.  It turned out to be such a great day and everyone had fun!!