My research for diving adventures led me to Brady Hale’s Ocean Strike Team which organized lionfish hunting trips out of Pensacola Florida. The dives required the Deep Dive specialty, so we signed up to do that first with Michael Watkins from Dive Pros, and that took us to the amazing Oriskany wreck. This was a fantastic week of adventurous, independent diving.
We stayed at “Cottages on the Green” with guest houses on a golf course. We had our own bedroom and bathroom and shared living and kitchen areas with other divers and it worked very well.
We rented gear and we checked it out with a shore dive at the Perdido Artifical Reef. This involved a lot of swimming to find the artificial reef, little life, poor visibility, and jellyfish stings. It was certainly memorable, and it was wise to become familiar with our gear before deep dives. I was also checking out my GoPro so I have a one-minute video which is not very exciting!
The following morning, we met at the dock to get on H20 Below for wreck dives on YDT (Yard Dive Tug) 14 and Ocean Wind. Michael was a great instructor and we had a couple of great dives. I recorded some videos and have pieced together a one-minute highlight reel.
The next day was our deep dive on the Oriskany. The U.S.S. Oriskany was built shortly after WW2 and is referenced in Top Gun. The 911ft aircraft carrier was intentionally sunk in 2006 in 212 ft of water as an artificial reef. The top of the wreck is at about 80 ft, the top of the bridge at about 118 ft, and the flight deck at about 145 ft, with the depths depending on the dives. Our two dives were limited to a depth of 130 ft. I took three videos of our first dive (descent, exploring the wreck, and ascent) and plenty of photos of each dive.
With our deep dive specialty completed with the most amazing dives, we moved onto the equally awesome part of this adventure. We chose not to dive the following day, and that evening, we did a bit of training with Brady before heading out for four dives each of the next two days hunting lionfish. Samuel caught 25 lionfish to qualify for a special Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) reward. Our dives ranged from artificial reefs (much better than Perdido), piles of rubble from old I-10 bridges (surprisingly fun, though getting stuck in one was unnerving) and some wrecks. On the final night, Brady took us to a restaurant which prepared a dinner using the lionfish we had caught which was yummy. I created a short video of the training and a couple of the lionfish captures. Listen to my shriek of joy when Samuel catches his second lionfish in an artificial reef.
This was a fantastic week of diving, and writing this up makes me want to go again!
The Adventures of the Cajunlimeys 