Looking for lemons on Juno Ledge

[ricki]

An active local meetup group sponsored by Gold Coast Scuba out of Lauderdale By-The-Sea, http://www.meetup.com/goldcoastscuba/ has come up with a lot of interesting varied dives. Had just one more last weekend. Lemon sharks are congregating for breeding off northern Palm Beach County. You may see a couple perhaps more on drift dives up that way. We went out on Sandy's Sunday, Ocean Quest Scuba , departing from Riviera Beach Marina with the goal of seeing some Lemon sharks and other large interesting marine life up that way. We did two tanks including one on the twin west facing ledges off Juno. The other was some place not too far away referred to as Shark Junction I think. Bottom in both cases was in about 90 ft.. The current was light, the water a balmy 72 F and vis. around 60 ft. horizontally. Here are some photos from along the way. Apologies for the poor image quality in some cases, the light was pretty low late in the day at depth.


Just before we left the dock and manatee and her calf swam between the boat and the seawall. Would have loved to have jumped in to get some closer shots but we left within minutes of their swim by.





Most dives are done by drifting in this area given the frequent strong currents.



The north county dives are known for larger marine life. We had at least two large eagle rays, several sting rays, sharks, a bunch of turtles, etc. during the two dives.






Don't recall seeing one of these fish before. After communicating with my old professor Dr. Courtney and his colleague, Chris Koenig, I learned it was a gag grouper.






Nice loggerheads in these parts.



A grainy low light shot of a bull shark swimming by. I shot most of the other shark encounters but the image quality was usually fairly poor due to low light.




Near the end of the second dive. It was late in the day, close to 5 pm and it was pretty dim with some cloud cover. I was shooting with available light and there wasn't much available. I was using a new camera, a Canon G12 and so tried using a large ISO, 1250. I would never bother go much above 400 with other cameras in the past as they would pixelate to where the shots were largely unuseable. This was is pretty grainy but you get the idea. A lemon shark is lying on the bottom while two loggerhead turtles including one real big one swim by. Lemons have the distinction like nurse sharks of being able to actively breath water over their gills while stationary. Most sharks, free swimmers, must constantly move to push water across their gills unlike these guys.



Safety deco stop



There's Mike helping returning divers on board.



On board and heading back. Lots of happy divers. I must have sighted lemon sharks about seven or eight times.


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