Diving In For Something A Little Different

This last weekend, as Delta had held a seat sale that I had jumped on, I flew to Ft. Myers, Florida and then drove an hour up to Venice and arrived after midnight Saturday.

Sunday, the next morning I was up bright and early and headed to the dock to get on a boat at 7 am run by Venice Dive Center. It was Shark-Tooth diving time. They've got a nice roomy boat and they offer a 2 dives per day trip. The only downside with them is you have to bring your own weights so I lugged 10lbs of lead through the airport which is kinda dumb.

We headed out to the fossil grounds and soon I was doing a giant stride entry off the stern of the boat and into chilly 71 degree water with 6 feet of visibility or less.

Monday, I got up and went to the meeting spot for Aquanutz Dive Charters.  They offer a 3 dives per trip and provide weights,  They sadly had no openings on Sunday. Aquanutz has a smaller six-pack boat so you don't do a giant stride off the stern, you do a back roll off the side of the boat into the water.

Do you know why divers do a back roll off a boat?  Because if they did a front roll, they would land in the boat and bang their heads.

So I did 5 dives in 2 days.  The water temp was 71 degrees F, so it did get a tad chilly. Bottom time was anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour per dive for me.

Sunday, the water was pretty choppy but not a big deal except it made getting back in the boat a fair bit of work.  Visibility was about 6 feet and mucky.  Dives were to 30 feet or so.    Monday it was less choppy but visibility was still low and there was still a fair bit of current.

I sadly didn't find any Megalodon teeth, but did find a fossilized Lemon Shark tooth and a lot of fossilized bones - Dugong (ancient manatees) and fossilized turtle shell. Still neat and fun diving. A few fish but mainly mud and current was moving pretty good.

I also inadvertently almost petted a stingray as I was searching for fossils.  He was hidden on the bottom in the muck and as I went near him he jumped up, I jumped in response.  We both agreed that we startled each other and would mutually go on our separate ways without any further ruckus.

After the dives following a recommendation, I headed to Nokomo's Sunset Hut for a great lunch.  A blackberry Jack Daniels tiki drink and a Grouper sandwich really hit the spot.

Great restaurant, great service, and one heckuva nice view.

Monday I again got up early and  headed out with Aquanutz.  It was a fun boat with quite a few neat people on board. They also had some spare neoprene hooded vests to go around, and I put one on top of my wetsuit and was much more comfy for the dives.

Visibility was again about 6 feet or less, but less choppy. 

Quite a few more fish to see at these dive spots, including on the last dive a huge Grouper (bigger than your head in size) hanging out by the anchor line.

Sadly while all the experienced divers found some great Meg teeth, the two newbies on board, myself and another fellow, both didn't find any. We were, as the captain said, Megless in Seattle. Apparently it is hard for newbies to find them, but once you've found one your brain knows what to look for and you then find more a lot more easily.

On the upside on these dives, I found a Bullshark tooth, whale ear bones (they're rather neat), more dugong bones and a big whale bone.

I also came across some large fossilized sand dollars. These are each slightly larger than the size of a teacup saucer.  Kinda neat.  Also neat they survived the trip back to Michigan. The regular smaller sand dollars tend to disintegrate as you ascend from depth as they are a lot more fragile.

So sadly, no Meg teeth for me. Other folks on the Aquanutz charter did find some real beauties including one that was 4.5 inches in size, meaning the Meg it belonged to was around 45-feet long!

I then headed back to the hotel, washed the gear and hung it to dry and did some work until late, then ate at the hotel restaurant.

Tuesday, I again worked at the hotel until it was checkout time, checked out of the hotel, drove back to the airport and dropped off the rental car and then worked at the airport until it was time to leave.

TSA at Ft. Myers Airport was both the nicest and most helpful bunch of TSA people I've ever seen.   My artificial hip, as I set off the metal detector with it, now gets me fun with the x-ray machine for screening every time now.  They were cool about it, and actually listened when I told them that would happen and so they routed me right to the scanner rather than wasting everyone's time by first beeping at the metal detector. They were fine with the bones and sand dollars in my carry-on but did search the bag to check out the dive computer and regulators.

Then I got home around 11:30 pm to 43 degree weather after enjoying the 80s for the past few days, and had court Wednesday morning nice and early.

In short, it was a great experience and I need to keep looking for Delta seat sales to do that again in the future.  Delta was perfectly on time and offered nice fights with great service on board. I will find some Meg teeth eventually and the fun of those dives and the thrill of the hunt is still there, even if I didn't find any.