Not cave diving, but WOW!

I like to get in about a dozen salt water dives a year. We get out the tide tables and schedule dives at the jetties of Destin and Panama City several times a year.

Saturday, I dove the Destin jetties with Kim and Ron Bear. The first dive was nice, if uneventful. We made three revolutions of the "whirlpool," a circular drift dive that brings you back to where you started.

Kim and Ron had to change tanks, but I left my system on the beach while we went back to the cars. They considered foregoing a second dive, as Kim had a minor tooth squeeze and Ron was really hungry, but I had over 2000psi left in my 95, and I talked them into another go at it.

After tying the flag off at 22', we headed down the slope. Two 30" remoras passed right by me. My first thought was, "Can there be an uglier fish in the ocean than a remora?", but my next thought was, "Two remoras - there must be something BIG around." I looked up and saw a HUGE manta ray right above me. I wanted to swim up for a closer look, but Ron was in front of me and had missed it. But if I wasted time getting his attention, I might miss the opportunity of an up-close look at my first manta. Still, friendship prevailed. I grabbed his fin, and he gave me the look of, "What do you want, you jack... - hey, look at that!"

I needn't have worried. The manta made a pass right by my face, then turned around and made another. Then another. All told, he hung around us for twenty-eight minutes. We were able to touch him each time, both top and bottom side. Kim later said he felt like sandpaper. Maybe - his top side felt like 3M Wet-or-Dry 600, but his bottom side felt like suede. And I got several CLOSE looks inside his mouth.

He had four 30" remoras fighting for position, and two around 18", and two around 12". It was definitely the coolest open-water dive I've made in the last five years.

After he finally left, we went a little deeper. Kim came across a sting ray, and went to pet it. She fingerspelled to Ron, "He's sick." Ron went over to him, and as he went to rub it, the ray's tail suddenly went up, and his barb sunk into Ron's forearm, just below his elbow. I always thought that was a myth! But it was buried deep into Ron's flesh. We tried everything, including my trusty Scubapro titanium knife, but it was like cutting through bone. After about ten minutes, Ron finally worked it loose, and it was as if the ray released his barb from his tail.

Long story short, we spent about three hours at the Emergency Room. As we were walking to the car, Ron said, "As much as it hurts, if I could turn back time, I would still make the dive. The manta ray was THAT cool."

Russell

I try to dive the jetties at both places when I visit. Sounds like a wonderful dive except for the stingray. I guess you never know what you find.
I was tallking to one the ladies in HR and she told me she used to dive almost every day when she was growing up in WP. She said they would dive in the area around the Marina back then and one day she noticed the water was pushing her forward. She said she went to the side and came up expecting to see a really huge boat but it turned out a whale had come into the port and was pushing that much water. This was in the seventies I think that this would have happened.

Tom

Great story Tom! Reminds me us all why we started. For those moments that no land dweller will ever know. My unusual visit in the keys was a huge Blue Marlin that swam so close to me I could see the pupils in his dinner plate sized eyes. It was not long after a storm. It must push the food around so we see them closer in to shore or something. Thanks for sharing. Cindy :)

I was doing a deep wall dive in Chub Cay in 1989. I was ascending from 281' when I saw what I thought was a B-I-G shark at about the 200' level. It took a few seconds to clear the narcosis from my head and realize that it was a large Manta ray and not a shark. That is probably one of my most memorable saltwater dives.