Drift Diving in Jupiter

This weekend, Lee and I went to Jupiter, Florida to do some drift diving. These dives were amazing and superseded my expectations by far. I must admit that at first I was skeptical about jumping into the ocean without a line to descend and ascend by. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found after I jumped in behind the leader who held the buoy. I looked down into the blue, tranquil water and could see clearly to the 80 foot bottom. The boat followed the leader's buoy as we traveled approximately four miles or more along the Gulf stream. The current gently floated us along the bottom as we were, in essence, sight-seeing in an open water aquarium. The beauty that surrounded us was full of life. There were abundant schools of brightly colored fish swimming in and around brilliant varieties of sea vegetation.

During this dive, Lee saw his first Goliath Grouper which we estimated weighed in around 900 pounds. (I'd seen one before on a previous dive, but not quite this large.) And I saw my first shark; a nine-foot nurse shark which was cruising in and around the reef and ledge. We also encountered a very curious sea turtle that was about two-and-a-half feet big. He swam up and hung with us while we were doing our deco safety stop at about 15-20 feet deep.

The dives were incredible and fun. And I met one of my online scuba buddies, Sandy, who lives in the Jupiter area. While we were drift diving, she and her dive buddy, Michelle, were hunting lobster.