Yesterday was a great day for diving. I was with my friend Jack, along with Barbara, Alek and Natalia on Jack’s boat anchored off Loblolly Cove in Rockport. The weather was perfect; warm, sunny, not too windy, and not much of a swell. Awesome conditions for the first weekend of Fall.
Jack, Barbara and I did the first and last dives, while Alek and Natalia did a dive in the middle. Visibility was pretty so-so, and it’s easy to get separated in a threesome, so I tried to stick close. Jack was lobstering, with Barbara spotting for him, while I was concentrating on my camera. Right as we came down the anchor line, we saw a flounder near the anchor. There were a lot of lobsters around, and the rocks were swarming with cunner, a small reddish brown fish. I also saw a sea robin, which looks like a blob of seaweed until you spot the roundish body, eyes and fins, and a rock gunnel, a small pinkish eel, as well as many small jellyfish floating through the water.
While Alek and Natalia were doing their dive, we had our surface interval. There was a ton of boat traffic going by, and it was amazing how few of them recognized our dive flag. At one point, the boat was rocking pretty heavily from a particularly heavy wake.
As I surfaced from our second dive, the sun was noticeably low in the sky, a reminder that it really was Fall after all. The sunlight was golden as we motored through the Annisquam and back to the marina.
Jellyfish
Rock Gunnel
Starfish
Sea Robin
Mussels
Gauging a lobster
Cunner
Starfish and Sea Urchins
Barbara near the anchor