It was another great trip out to the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) aboard the M/V Fling with Fling Charters. We joined the Thursday-Friday trip and then snuck back on board for the Saturday-Sunday trip.
We left the dock Wednesday night for the ride out to Stetson Banks, about 75 miles offshore. We had a little bit of a bumpy ride out but, hey, this is Gulf of Mexico diving! It can’t always be flat and calm. From Wednesday night to Sunday, the seas couldn’t make up their mind and bounced between mild 1-2’s to “sporty” conditions that made the ladder… interesting.
Water temps were low to mid 80’s throughout both trips with conditions ranging from no current to semi-challenging, especially on the weekend trip.
Thursday saw us doing five drops on Stetson Banks and Friday we did our very first drops on the Kraken – the new artificial reef about 50 miles out. Saturday brought four drops between the East and West Flower Gardens – the night dive was called due to conditions – and Sunday we had two more drops at Stetson Banks before heading back to the dock. Who couldn’t dive Stetson for a week straight, anyway?
As a bonus for the weekend trip, we experienced our first dive on the newly re-installed Stetson Buoy #1. A shrimp boat ripped the buoy anchoring from the seafloor about six years ago and this was the first time the Fling was tying up again after being replaced. Stetson Buoy #1 is now our favorite spot to dive in the Flower Gardens.
The WLDT had quite a few firsts on these trips. After 32 dives in the FGBNMS, we finally spotted a Golden Smooth Trunkfish. While DNA has shown it to be the exact same species as a regular brown Smooth Trunkfish, no one knows why this color variation happens. There are only two places in the world you can spot this unusual colored Trunkfish – the FGBNMS and the Bay Islands of Honduras. A Scarlet Striped Cleaner Shrimp, a Beaded Sea Cucumber, and a Roughhead Blenny were all spotted as well; all of them firsts for us.
The Gulf of Mexico is a great place to view the Perseid meteor shower. With only a small amount of ambient light from the distant oil rigs we saw plenty of meteors bursting or streaking across the night sky.
We had another wonderful trip with the amazing crew aboard the MV Fling and made some new friends along the way as well.
Enjoy the pictures!
