The Crew had originally scheduled a Lauderdale-by-the-Beach dive on Saturday 9/20, but Hurricane Isabel made us re-assess the situation. Although we were spared a direct hit, this category 5 hurricane still had some dramatic effects on the east coast of Florida. NOAA was calling for 5 to 7 foot waves on Friday subsiding to 2 to 4 on Saturday. More concern than the waves was the visibility. These kinds of storms churn things up like a washing machine. Dave and I discussed the situation on Monday and came up with a number of possible alternatives to present to the kids at the meeting on Tuesday.
We came up with postponing the dive for a week, doing a land trip to the McClarty Treasure Museum or the Mel Fisher Museum (both in Sebastian), or doing a Blue Springs dive (Blue Springs is already scheduled for November, though). We knew they didn't want to do a charter boat dive due to the cost. Dave suggested a trip to the west coast to dive the gulf at Venice Beach. Venice Beach is famous for its abundance of fossilized sharks teeth. He said he did this dive years ago. I wasn't real wild on the idea of traveling to the gulf for a day, but we put it on the list as a possibility.
After checking yahoo maps, I found the trip to Venice Beach is only 3 1/2 hours. This is just a little longer than the drive to LBTS. Hmmm... I checked the weather. Venice Beach was calling for a warm, sunny day with some overcast clouds. NOAA was calling for flat seas.
We presented the situation to the kids at the Tuesday meeting and they decided on the gulf dive. A new place. A new adventure. Different conditions. A whole different kind of diving.
Dave told the kids to make sure they brought some kind of sifting tools like slotted spoons to 'mine' for sharks teeth. He told us that the depth was only 5 to 20 feet and the visibility is usually very poor. I still wasn't real thrilled about this trip.
We decided to meet at our house at 6 AM. I figured, with stops, it would take about 4 hours to get there. The kids made the call to do a picnic lunch and to stop on the way home for dinner. The original plan was to arrive around 10 AM, in the water by 11, do our dive (I guestimated 1 hour), have lunch, and leave around 2 PM. This would get us home around 6 PM unless we stopped for dinner on the way home - then we figured it would be more like 8 PM.
I did the shopping on Friday for the lunch. Bobby and I hit Wal-Mart for sifting tools. I picked up a couple of kitty-litter scoopers and Bobby bought a small deep frying basket. I also had to get tanks filled at Hatts and gather gear for 5 Crew members.
Dave and Ann were right on time at 6 AM Saturday morning. Matt showed up shortly afterwards. Then the phone rang. Amanda, Jen, and James were running a little late. Another phone call. Hillery and Crystal were having a hard time getting moving. By 6:35, everyone had arrived. Jen brought her Mom and Dad. Her brother, Bob (who is a Crew advisor), also joined us for the trip.
By 6:50 AM, the van was packed with Jen, James, Amanda, Matt, Hillery, Crystal, Bobby, and me. Dave and Ann drove the pickup full of dive tanks and gear, and Fran, Greg, and Bob came in their truck.
We headed up 95 to 528 to 417 to I-4 to I-75 to 618 (which becomes the Tamiami Trial) to Venice Beach. We arrived at 10:30 AM. We did have a 20 minute stop at McDonalds on I-4 (Exit 55 SR 27). There were a few more turns once we got into Venice Beach to get us to the Venice Municipal Beach (I wasn't paying real good attention). The weather forecast was right on the mark. It was slightly overcast, but still bright. The Municipal Beach has great beach access, lots of free parking, showers, bathrooms, and a snack bar with a large pavilion with lots of tables. We walked down to the beach to assess the situation. The ocean was flat, flat, flat. It looked like the vis was pretty good, too. Let's dive, dive, dive!
We determined our buddy teams. Me and Amanda, Bobby and Hillery, Bob and Matt, Dave and Ann, Jen and James, with Crystal snorkeling along with whichever team she wanted, as long as she stayed close to a flag. Well, this wasn't going to be hard. I counted, 8 dive flags off shore before our 5 entered the water! Some were in close and some were WAAAAAY far out. There were also a number of boats with divers within a mile of the beach. We met other divers in the parking lot who were getting ready to dive, too. One group was from Palm Bay and this was their first time, too.
Hillery and Crystal had made cool scoopers out of plastic jugs and replaced the bottoms with wire mesh. Hillery also had taken a clear tennis ball tube, cut some very small holes in the sides so it could fill with water, and attached a tether to use as a holding container for her finds.
Dave and Ann came prepared with slotted spoons. I supplied other folks with some tools and catch bags. I have some small clip-on pockets that worked great for holding small items.
Amanda and Hillery were going to try out my full face masks with communications, so Bobby and I got them setup. Bobby and Hillery started out before us. Unfortunately, we never did catch up with them and, therefore, Amanda and Hillery weren't within range for the devices to work. Lesson learned - only give BUDDY teams the comm masks. :)
Amanda and I headed out - both with kitty scoopers in hand. The vis was around 20 feet. There was all kinds of cool stuff in the sand - crabs, pogies, mullet, tiny pompano, gurnards (they have legs!), wrasses... I even found a bright yellow 'gulf' ball. Then we came across the sand dollar garden. They were everywhere. Once we got beyond the swim buoys, we looked for Bobby and Hillery. After about 10 minutes, we decided to abandon the effort and started mining for sharks' teeth. We found that we were both weighted perfectly for regular neutral buoyancy diving, but we really should have had a lot more weight on for digging. We dug in the sand for a couple of minutes, but didn't find anything. We decided to head out to deeper water. Next, we came across what looked like rock reef. There was lots of vegetation and I found that I could not dig were the plants were. But there were pockets of soft sand between the rocks. We stared to dig at the edge of the rocks. There was a shallow sand layer covering clay. I came up with our first tooth. Woo-Hoo!!!!! Amanda found the next one. We were high-fiving to congratulate each other on our discoveries. It was like having gold fever. Once you got one, that's all you thought about. Not pretty reefs or fish (although I did keep an eye out for lobster :) but sharks' teeth! I had read that extinct Megladon Sharks' teeth found in this area are worth hundreds of dollars. TREASURE!!!!
Amanda continued to find teeth. I only found one more during our dive. After about an hour, Amanda showed me she was down to 500 psi (the high volume of the full face mask causes you to go through you air much quicker). We headed in. We were the first ones to return. We were so excited about our treasure. We had a total 7 teeth between us. It was easy to get out of gear and pack it up without having to compete with 8 other people for space. Two by two, the other divers started to show up in the parking lot. Bobby and Hillery found a bunch of teeth! Bobby and Matt had even more (Bobby counted 60!) Matt had the prize of the day, though. His largest tooth measured 1 1/4 inch by 1 1/2 inch! Nice tooth. We've been trying to identify its origin and I believe it is from an extinct Mako. Crystal even found some teeth snorkeling! Dave and Ann didn't find any. They think they stayed to close to shore. It was a general consensus that we should have brought 2 tanks for each diver.
Everyone was back except Jen and James. We could see their flag. They were WAAAAAAY out there! After almost a 2 hour dive, they finally came in with 85 teeth. WOW!!!!! I was still proud of my 2. :-)
Since our dives were so long, it wasn't until after 1:00 that I got lunch out. We had yummy ham, turkey, and cheese sandwiches, Pringles, grapes, and watermelon. A number of the kids hit the snack bar for ice cream. There's nothing like ice cream after a dive to clear the salt taste from you mouth.
Bobby bought a Sharks' Teeth ID post card at the snack bar and we were all checking out our teeth and trying to figure which sharks they came from. We determined we had teeth from sand, tiger, bull, lemon, and mako sharks.
It was pushing 2 and I told the kids that we would have to get headed home. They all wanted to stay awhile and play in the ocean. This would take us off our time line. Matt was having a dilemma. He had a birthday party to go to in Palm Bay. He really wanted to get home, but he was also having fun and the other kids didn't want to leave yet. They discussed it and decided to stay until 4.
Everyone continued to scavenge for sharks' teeth. I found a really nice one right at the water's edge in the sand bringing my total to 3.
At 4, I called the kids in. It took another 1/2 hour to get everyone cleaned up and packed up. We pulled out of the parking by 4:30 PM.
Everyone fell asleep in the van expect Hillery, Crystal, Bobby, and me. At 6, Hillery saw a sign for Cracker Barrel and announced that she was ready for dinner. I called Dave and we decided it was a good time to stop. Even though Ann's birthday is on Monday, the kids decided they would tell the waitress that it was Matt's birthday (Ann was in on it :) I can't tell you how funny it was when the waitress came to the table with a free desert, we all started singing Happy Birthday, and said Matt instead of Ann. The look on his face was just priceless. We laughed so hard. Then we presented Ann with a birthday card from the Crew.
We were back on the road around 8 and back in Melbourne by 10. Everyone was beat. We unpacked the van and the truck and everyone headed home.
I am so glad we did this dive. We had a blast! I'm sure we will be planning more trips to Venice Beach.
Cost for this trip was minimal:
$5 Air and Equipment
$4 Lunch
$10 Dinner
$1 Transportation Contribution
--- ----------
$20 Total
Can't beat that!
Dive Safe! Dive Often!
Emily