I did the East Coast Divers shore dive to Folly Cove a week ago Sunday. I took most of June and July off from diving, but Folly is one of my favorite sites, especially the left wall. At one point, it seemed like the whole wall was covered with anemones, and then, one year, they were gone.

Well, they’re still not covering the wall, but they’re starting to make a comeback. For the first dive, my buddy and I went to the left wall and descended. We didn’t see much of interest, but as it got deeper, I started to see a few on the wall. We encountered another pair of divers, one of whom was shooting under an overhang on the wall. When he left, I took a look, and there they were – a bunch of anemones.

My buddy ran low on air soon after, so we turned around, and came out. Once we got out, we heard that someone had seen a torpedo ray out there, “right underneath some guy taking pictures”. Ouch! We decided to go back to the left wall, and try again.

For the second dive, we decided to descend a little further out than we had before. We weren’t that far from where we had seen the anemones before, and I found their lair again, and this time, with no other photographers stirring up silt, got some pictures. Then we turned to go a little further out, and not 8 feet away, saw it. The torpedo ray. It was half buried in the sand, and looked like a rubbery arc in the sand, until I followed the line of it around and saw the tail. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have never seen it.

Once I got some pictures, I rose up a couple of feet and fluttered my fins at it, to try and rinse the sand off it, or make it move so my buddy could see it better. Eventually, it roused itself, and moved off.  It wasn’t until the next day that I found out that “torpedo ray” means “electric ray”.