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Kingfish
Posts: 1201
 
Location: Tampa Bay | Captain's Corner: Along the Gulfstream Pipeline
By Chad Carney, Times Correspondent
In print: Saturday, November 22, 2008
What does the pipeline look like down there? This week we dove some of the Gulfstream Pipeline sites that I had not seen since we found them in 2002 and '03. In places, it used to look like a skinny hotdog alone in a bun. Not many fish hung around the bare natural gas pipe, which was in a ditch with mixed mounds of clay, sand and lime rock on both sides. Now little of the mounds is left except the lime rock, with soft corals attached; they are often home for small gags and mangrove snappers. In other areas pipe is covered for miles by a low rise of boulders about the size of five-gallon buckets. Then there is the mother lode, a section a couple of hundred yards long where rocks are about 8-10 feet high. This attracts all kinds of bottom fish. Another fish favorite is a section of square junction boxes with shutoff valves under aluminum grid doors.
The natural gas pipeline runs along the gulf bottom from Mobile, Ala., to Tampa Bay and plowed through many natural reef areas, so Gulfstream built reefs to mitigate damage. The reef boxes hold schools of bait, small grouper, sheepshead and snappers. Rock fields have legal-sized gag grouper plus red snapper.
Chad Carney teaches diving and spearfishing in the Tampa Bay area. Visit his Web site at floridaskindiver.com or call (727) 423-7775.
http://www.tampabay.com/sports/outdoors/article912924.ece
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Gulfstream Pipeline - Chad Carney | SPT
