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THE FLOWER GARDENS AND STETSON BANKS
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| The first week
of August a small group consisting of 8 divers from Colorado, 1 from
Kansas and 1 from Mississippi journeyed to The Flower Gardens and Stetson
Banks. This unique dive site is located approximately 110 miles
South of Freeport, Texas in the gulf. At the site all that is
visible of any other civilization is a few distant oil rigs.
The vessel we called home for 2 nights was the M/V Fling. The Fling and it's sister ship the M/V Spree, are converted crew boats which were originally used to shuttle offshore oil rig crews to and from the rigs. Today, these vessels house up to 32 divers and about 6 crew each. The schedule is up at 6am, in the water by 7:30, out for breakfast and back in at 10:30. You then have lunch and dive again around 2:30 followed by an afternoon snack. The last afternoon dive is around 5pm followed by dinner then a night dive at about 8:30. It all begins anew at 6am the next day. The Flower Gardens are actually a very nice reef formation with an abundance of all sorts of marine life. We saw most all types of caribbean marine life as well as a fairly large Manta Ray. The reef begins at approximately 70 foot and in some places drops off to depths deeper than recreational diving will allow. Water temperature was running 86 degrees at the surface and down to about 50 foot, from there it dropped all the way to 84 degrees. Needless to say, diving was quite comfortable. It was a good trip to a very unique dive location. Our thanks go out to Phillip Abston who set the trip up and made sure we all had a good time. |
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