When diving Rockaway our usual order of the day is to swim to the buoy, follow the line to the reef, explore the reef, head to the deep reef, look for the octopus, back up the line to the main reef, then up the line to the buoy or over to the shallows for a quick look before the air runs low. Today was different. We were supposed to head for Keystone but I couldn't get ferry reservations so after a half hour of trying to figure out different places to go we came up with the brilliant idea of heading to Rockaway. This time would be different, we would stay at 15 feet and follow the shoreline South to the beginning of Blakeley Harbor. An hour and a half later Lucas and I were pulling ourselves out of the water exclaiming what an awesome dive that was and wondering why we hadn't done it sooner.
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| Red Dendronotid |
The dive itself is not what you would normally think of as spectacular diving. The bottom is mostly sand with a small outcropping of rocks and a set of reefs towards the end. You actually pass over the reef structure that goes out to Metridium Reef. The dive requires patience and an intense curiosity of what is dwelling in the sand and the silt so this makes it a slow, well paced dive. The deepest depth we obtained was at the last reef that we went down to explore and hit 30 feet for a short period. It was a good thing we did because it was there that we found the pile of Red Dendronotids that I had previously only seen in books and JC's picture at the dive shop.
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| Cluster of Small Plumose Anemones |
Starting out from the beach the bottom was the usual sandy floor with seaweed, 3-section tube worms (they seem to be dead now), burrowing anemones, numerous crabs and other small animals. Further along we went around the rocks at the end of the cove leading into the next one where we found scattered clusters of small plumose and rose anemones. In the sand past the clusters of rocks red rock crabs were buried in the sand while alabaster nudibranchs lumbered along in search of their next meal. Purple, red and orange starfish were scattered around along with numerous miniature versions of Sunflower Stars about the size of a quarter (these may have been ten arm burrowing anemones) .
We came upon a bed of eel gfass with a school of tubesnout's that scattered as we swam through the class. The eel grass is important as it houses many juvenile fish and smaller animals making their living in the sand. It's important to look up from the bottom as well to enjoy the varied jellyfish floating along in the current. We found the typical cross jellyfish and a small jellyfish called a tube sausage jellyfish which resembles a small spaceship with a red sausage in the center.
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| Sunflower Starfish |
Shortly after the eel grass is the last series of reefs before going into Blakely Harbor. The reefs run roughly in an East to West direction making it easy to follow any of them down to the lower depths. Here we found sunflower stars and kelp crabs defending their territory against the invading scuba divers. As we followed the last reef down we came upon a pile of red nudibranchs swaying with the flow of the kelp. By this time though we had been down for over an hour, but because of the shallow depth my tank pressure was still half full.
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| Rose Anemone |
As we came back across the last grouping of rocks I came upon the large rose anemone I had found last summer. It's the largest one I've seen of this type at Rockaway and have been looking for it ever since July. And so ended a beutiful dive that rivaled many I have done at various other sites. In this case it was definitely about the journey and not the destination.
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