The Tampa Bay Times
The water conditions offshore after hurricane Ian has changed, but not in the obvious ways. Our spearfishermen expected to have Gulf of Mexico (GOM) water mixed up with sand and sediment, thereby cutting down the in-water visibility. And it did, but there is a bigger disturbance that the hurricane created – colder water. The movement of the surface water out of Tampa Bay and canals into the GOM resulted in the return of the water. A lot of the returning water came in from deeper waters, not surface water and the deeper water is colder. We call it upwelling. You may have heard in your lifetime “water seeks it’s own level”. This quote is from Aristotle is attributed to him. He may not of came up with it, but he was probably the first to write it down. What this means to us is, as the surface water got pushed to the west and when the water moved back east, most of it came from the bottom water, not the warmer surface. The deeper water temperatures dropped our shallow water temperatures. Some of our divers registered bottom temperatures in 60’ of water a full 10 degrees colder than it was the week before Ian. This movement of water in physics is called Pascal’s principle. Because the water temperature has dropped so rapidly it has caused the movement of gag groupers, hogfish and mangrove snappers into shallower depths. Our divers had marginal underwater visibility at 60’ but they saw many gags and hogfish and they managed to tag a few nice ones.
- Jay Mastry - March 26, 2024
- Captains Corner, Gorta - March 23, 2024
- Dave Zalewski - March 12, 2024
