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Day 4: July 20, 2005

Overnight we headed south of Cape Fear NC to a site known to divers as the 18 Fathom wreck in 120 ft of water. Last year we dove this site, and it had the highest density of lionfish of all our other sites.

Air Temperature: 89 °F
Surface Water Temperature: 80 °F
Bottom Water Temperature: 75 °F

Dive Team 1 (surveyors): Doug Kesling, Roldan Munoz, Paula Whitfield
Dive Team 2 (collectors): Christine Addison, Casey Coy, Joe Hoyt, Jay Styron
Safety divers: Clem Shemanski, Tracey Hamburger, Dave Score, Joe Bishop

Our goal was to retrieve a temperature sensor to determine if water temperatures remained warm enough for lionfish to overwinter here. The first dive team dropped onto the site and found conditions quite different from the rest of this trip. There was a major current, and the visibility was only about 30 ft on the bottom. Often we could not see the wreck for the fish. The density of lionfish was much lower at this wreck than last year. Our second dive on the City of Houston is the first site we have surveyed that didn't have any lionfish. It is also our shallowest and likely gets much colder in the winter than the other sites we have surveyed.

fishes at 18 Fathom
This picture shows the high density of fish on this wreck. They were often so thick we couldn't see the wreck.
Courtesy of Doug Kesling.
Diving on the City of Houston
The visibility on this wreck was about 60 ft but there was a strong current. So far this is the only site where we didn't observe lionfish.
Courtesy of Doug Kesling.


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