Sarah Goes Scuba Diving

ScubaBoard Meet & Greet - Saturday, July 19th, 2008

2008-07-27T15:53:00.001-07:00

It was a foggy morning waiting us when we woke up to begin our drive down to Monterey. While I had hoped that the weather would open up a bit, we got to Monterey and it was just as foggy as it had been outside our front door in San Francisco. Despite this, our spirits were not damped as we pulled into the El Torito parking lot to meet the other SB’ers who were coming to the M&G. Much to my surprise, one of my OW instructors, Joe Sparks was there too! How great this was going to be.

Soon the divers were showing up and we were all getting our gear set up, suits on and hiking the gear down the sloping beach between the hotel and the restaurant to start the dives. Joining us were two guys named Devin, Robin, Ron, Carrie, Jeff, Brandon, Katherine, Dannobee and two of his friends (although I think his friends ended up not diving with us in the end). When we got on the sand, we designated buddy groups and headed into the water – Mark and I bringing up the rear as we hadn’t walked down with our gear, but were suiting up on the beach instead (for whatever reason). But soon we were off into the water, only to hear that the cove was pretty soupy. With that in mind, Jeff led us along the surface, following the sand channel, skirting around the kelp. We dropped down en masse and Robin, Mark and I headed off into the kelp for Robin to try out his new dSLR housing that makes him look like a real professional. As I was leading, I thought the kelp would be the best area to get some good shots – macro, wide angle, etc. Plus, it has been so long since I’d seen such beautiful kelp that I couldn’t wait to get exploring!

And the kelp didn’t disappoint! While the visibility was less than what we were accustomed to in Mexico (hahaha!) it was still pretty good by Monterey standards. We had about 15-20 feet outside of the cove, considerably less inside. While we tinkered around in the kelp, we were soon joined by another dive buddy who clamped on to Mark’s bright yellow fins – a seal! Always a joy-filled event when these playful ones come along on our dive. But you have to keep them entertained. If we stopped swimming, ergo stopped entertaining, the seal would bolt. Only for us to see them on the surface just above us, floating around. I’d motion that Mark or Robin should start kicking as the seals were infinitely more interested in their colorful fins than my black ones. And when they did start kicking, down they’d come to play some more. So adorable. Soon a second one came and the two would lay on the floor, facing one another engaged in what appeared to be some sort of dialogue. Super cute. Soon it seemed they’d found other playmates and we were off to find more things to photograph.

Check out the video!

I was in the lead and so I decided we’d head into another bunch of kelp – thick and beautiful, blocking the overhead sun from filtering down to the bottom. It was majestic. You hear people talking about “soaring through underwater redwoods” – sitting inside of a kelp cathedral. It was just like that. Everywhere, tiny senoritas darted in and out of the kelp, joined by rock kelpfish, and what appeared to be juvenile rock kelpfish. It was serene, and, for a few moments – as tacky as this might sound – it was our space. Our own little cathedral. Just amazing.

Soon we headed back as Mark was getting low on air having dove the LP steel Luxfer. I walked up on shore with 1800 in my tank still, 47 minutes down. Not too bad on the air consumption. A surface interval was shared between all the divers, giddily chatting about their various seal encounters, anxious to see photos from one another. Soon we were heading back into the water as I was beginning to cool off in the shadowy day. Mark and Robin swapped out their tanks and I would dive the same since I had plenty of air left in it. Entering we prepared ourselves for the long surface swim outside the cove. Swimming around the kelp made the journey more difficult but because Robin wasn’t sporting a snorkel, it made it impossible for him to swim on his belly to avoid getting entangled. So, around we went! Soon Ron was kicking out to join us since Devin was not going to be doing a second dive as he was experiencing a bit of tooth pain, possibly a reverse squeeze.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the dive site, Ron realized that he had lost his mask that he wears on the backside of his head. Lesson to all – not the best place for it, especially when around grabby kelp! So Robin, Mark and I descended while Ron swam back in search of the mask. We had decided to do a kelp tour, with a northernly direction on a compass heading of 0-30 degrees. Returning around 180 and then 220-240 degrees back to the shore. On the surface this seemed like an awesome venture there appeared to be just tons of kelp in that area. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great when we got down there. Oh well.

The dive was still fun – rushing over boulders, peeking in pipes. On the way back, we hit the surge and the algae on the bottom caused Robin and I to get a bit of vertigo since the bottom was doing all kinds of crazy things! It was pretty awesome though.

After the dive, drying off, and then into El Torito for a group lunch. I think there were about 11 of us hanging out, lunching and sharing stories, experiences, photos, etc. It was a great. I had a really awesome time and hope that people enjoyed themselves. If you didn’t though – at least I did! Hahaha. :)

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Robin's Seal Baited Fins - Gets 'em everytime!

Cozumel Dive Vacation – June 28th through July 5th, 2008

2008-07-25T19:53:00.000-07:00

After almost three weeks at home, I am finally getting around to working on the blog entries recounting our experiences during our Cozumel dive trip. It was an amazing week full of awesome diving and great company – and while there was “issues” with the place we stayed, we had a great week of just hanging out, diving and being around friends. So, I can’t complain.

We flew out of San Francisco on a red-eye to Charlotte. In San Francisco we stopped into a bar near the gate and, lo and behold, ran into Susan and Vincent who I didn’t know but had been told were coming. Finding their luggage, I found them and introduced myself. How great that we weren’t even in Mexico yet but were already making friends with other divers in our group! In Charlotte, we met up with Lisa who I’ve known for years, but only in an online and telephone way. I was a little nervous about meeting Lisa, but after a hug, it felt like we’d been long time friends who were only recently living on different coasts. From Charlotte, we flew directly to Cozumel, all three of us sitting together in the same row, chatting the entire way down there. Going through customs and immigration felt like an eternity, anxiously awaiting to get to the resort, check in, bathing suits on and vacation started!

We were staying at the Wyndham in Cozumel which is a nicely situated resort for divers as it is quite far south, out of the city and close to the dive sites, making for shorter boat rides out and back. It is an all-inclusive, food and alcohol which is great but there are generally pretty long lines for… well, just about everything, especially the bar. But it was a nice enough resort. Rooms are spacious and the beds are comfortable, grounds are nice. The food is very good and the service in them tends to be very good by servers who, for the most part, seem very nice and interested in serving. But I will say that the hotel’s room cleaning was pretty bad and the management did not seem overly interested in remedying problems when they arose. But, as we all said, we weren’t impressed by the resort, but we were there to go diving and not hang out in the resort, so it didn’t matter.

We dove everyday with Sand Dollar Sports which was a decent operation. I believe that we benefited from the fact that we were on a dive shop organized trip. We had the same, large boat, DMs and crew everyday. We also had one of the best DMs I’ve ever had in my life – Alex Dorian. An amazing DM who really was genuinely interested ensuring that we had good dives with great critters and had as long as possible bottom times. It was awesome. Most dives were around 45 minutes, and we got to dive all the sites we were aiming to dive – so it was great.

When not diving, we were fortunate to have good snorkeling just off the shore from the hotel. During our snorkels there, we found schools of palometas (permits) that would aggressively bump into us, Sergeant majors, grunts, and even some barracudas. There was a Needlefish hanging out in the shallow reeds, and even a small octopus who had holed up in a rock. Mark even found a ray on one of the dives, in only about 2 feet of water.

Our DM was nice enough to suggest some other locations for snorkeling as well. One afternoon we visited Caleta where, after entering from the beach, the depth sharply increases allowing you to be in about 25-30 feet of water within 40 feet from the shore. There were tons of fish as the snorkeling boats generally feed the fish so they are quite accustomed to being around people, if only for their own selfish reasons. After putting up with the onslaught of inconsiderate snorkelers, we headed off to the second snorkeling sight down the road across from the Pirata Restaurant. While just about 1.5 miles down the road from Caleta, the site was completely different. The depth never exceeded 3 feet. The entire bottom was pitted and in almost all the holes were little urchins. Other than that, there were lovely purple sea fans. It was a lovely site although I always felt a bit nervous of being stuck by an urchin. While I am not overly interested in snorkeling most of the time, I was impressed by the quality of the snorkeling off the coast of Cozumel. It provided a very relaxing way to pass the afternoons after diving.

While the diving is different than what we are accustomed to in Northern California, it was wonderful to be in such clear, warm water. Having returned to California diving (this past weekend) with our 20’ (at best) viz – it made me appreciate the differences but, at the same time, there are definite benefits and disadvantages of both. But it was a wonderful vacation with great diving and I do miss being there. The nice thing about blogging, however, is that I guess to relive a little bit of the trip. So in the following entries, I’ll provide more detail about each of the day’s dives. Enjoy!

[PS: Mark recently bought me a download kit for my Suunto dive computer so I have been able to download my dive data. While I haven’t populated all of the information, I’ve got screen captures of the general information and will now be providing it along with my blogs! So, thanks sweets!]

July 3rd, 2008: Cozumel Diving Day 5 – Punta Sur (Devil’s Throat) & Paseo del Cedral

2008-07-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

Our last day of diving in Cozumel felt really sad to me. I was getting into a routine that I was happy in, diving early in the morning, having lunch after rinsing and hanging gear, hitting the pool or going snorkeling, leisurely dinner and hanging out some more, having some drinks or an early night in bed. It all seemed so sad to think that it was almost over and I’d be heading home to work, responsibilities, etc. These feelings, however, were tempered by the fact that we were about to head out to try and do one of the most fascinating deep dives that Cozumel has to offer – Devil’s Throat. I’ve been told that this is a “must dive” site but that it is oftentimes hard to dive because of the current.

The Devil’s Throat site is located at Punta Sur and consists of an underwater cave formation which starts in 70-80’ of water and opens up at approximately 135 feet, which is on the edge of the recreational limits. For this, and other reasons, this is considered an advanced dive that DMs will only do if they have confidence in your skills and abilities. Because of the depth and the time that you spend at depth, a longer than standard safety stop is required in order to minimize the risk of DCS. Our DM had actually planned for us to do a multilevel ascent with a stop at 70 feet for three minutes and a second stop at 15-20 feet for 6-8 minutes depending upon whether anyone had entered decompression diving.

Arriving at the site and hearing the admonitions about the site and the possible dangers, I began to get a bit worried about it. I was thoroughly convinced as to the safety of our DM and my own abilities as a diver, but the apprehension was still there. I suppose that, in one vein, it is healthy to have a small amount of fear just so long as it is not immobilizing; but I was a little nervous about it.

Splashing in, we all knew that we would be immediately descending in order to make it down towards the opening of the “Throat” without having to burn through a lot of air swimming underwater against the current. We all were in the water within a few seconds of each other, underwater and underway. Soon our DM Alex (Dorian) was giving us the signal for “swim-through” and we were heading into the Devil’s Throat. Lisa was ahead of me on the first cave, Mark, Vince and Susan behind me. Popping out at 135 feet, Alex was taking photos of each of as we exited the throat. Depth doesn’t appear to have that much effect on me, although I’ve never had to do any drills or tests to see if I suffer from Nitrogen Narcosis. I tried to use my camera at one point to take a photograph of Lisa, only to realize that none of the buttons would work, quickly remembering that my housing is only rated to 130 feet. Whoops! Realizing this, I simply stored the camera in hopes that nothing happened to it.

Soon we were lining up for the 2nd cave entry / swim through. This was more extensive and I followed behind Mark this time. Twisting up through the cave, we entered small, tight spots, gently swimming up and through them, eventually exiting at about 75 feet. I checked my camera again and found that the buttons were again working! I guess returning to a less pressurized environment allowed the buttons, o-rings, etc return to their normal working position. And, to my relief, there didn’t appear to be any water in the case.

We soon began our 1st safety stop for three minutes to allow some of the nitrogen to dissolve, removing us further from any threat of DCS and further increasing our chances of having a longer 2nd dive. Soon we were heading up to 15’ to start a longer safety stop, passing the time taking photos of each other and a school of fish that were hanging out around us. All too soon however we were back on the surface, climbing out and chattering to one another about how marvelous the dive was, waiting to get back into the water for another beautiful blue dive.

After our surface interval, we were off to Paseo del Cedral. Alex told us that this was a good site to see big critters, so I grabbed my camera and splashed in. Another drift dive and the current was ripping! We weren’t even to the bottom and we were being swept off along the reef, with little opportunity to break and take photos. As soon as we were down, we came across these massive stoplight parrot fish, just MASSIVE though. I guess that is the benefit of being in a Marine Reserve – you can just get huge. Its mouth, however, looked like a mola mola, always open. So far, big critters – check!

But soon enough we saw it – a sweet turtle hunkered down in the reef having a snack, its beautiful head tucked down into the reef, massive French angel fish at its side. Kicking hard to keep in place, I took two photographs before letting the turtle continue its lunch. Off we go down the reef, when I look up and see one of the most beautiful sites I’ve seen on a dive. This amazing turtle is swimming above us and, as if on queue, it dives down towards the bottom, swimming towards me as I am fumbling with my camera, all the while trying to think of whether I should take video or stills! Such grace that I could only aspire to, I swam along dive of it, against current for a few minutes, just in awe of the sheer magnitude of the moment.

The reefs here are beautiful. Skimming along the tops of the reef, I stay high in order to avoid a shortened dive from running out of no-Deco time, dropping down when Alex (Dorian) signaled something found – a nurse shark, lobsters, toad fish, trigger fish – heck, who am I kidding. I rode the line of deco diving (but didn’t cross) on that dive because there were just so many things to look at. Stunning sand dollars poking out of the sandy floor, Christmas tree worms, juvenile French angels, amazing corals and sponges, groupers, squirrelfish, etc. It was a beautiful dive and a really nice high note to end the week of diving on.

On the boat, I packed my gear quietly. Our DM (Alex Dorian) asked if I were okay. The answer was yes, but sad. I didn’t want to think that it was my last day of diving – it almost made me cry. I was so enjoying myself that I simply did not want to stop. It was incredibly difficult to walk off the boat and say goodbye to the crew members who we had chatted with the entire week, gotten to know, and a DM that we had shared such amazing experiences with and had become quite good friends with. It was hard, but I know I can always go back. So thank you. Thank you Mark for being a good buddy (except when you had the camera! J ), to Lisa for being an amazing friend, a happy and excited buddy and to Sue and Vince for tagging along and being enjoyable, friendly and caring buddies and newfound friends. A warm and very heart-felt thanks for Alex “Dorian” Salas who made our trip a marvelous success. Without you, it just would not have been as magical as it ended up being. Mil gracias!

Dive #73 – Thursday, 7/3/08 – Punta Sur / Devil’s Throat – Cozumel, Mexico. 9:10 AM. Max depth 132 feet, average depth 66 feet. Bottom time 34 minutes. Water temp 82°, vis approximately 50-60 feet. Surface interval – 1 hour, 9 minutes.

Dive #74 – Thursday, 7/3/08 – Paseo de Cedra – Cozumel, Mexico. 10:54 AM. Max depth 67 feet, average depth 43 feet. Bottom time 48 minutes. 500 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 83 °, vis approximately 60-75 feet.

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Turtle on the Reef

July 2nd, 2008: Cozumel Night Dive – Paradiso Reef

2008-07-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

We decided that we’d do a night dive while down there. We left from Caleta in a small motorboat with just the right amount of space for all 5 of us. Unfortunately Lisa was experiencing some ear troubles and didn’t want to push it in light of her desire to dive Devil’s Throat the following day, so just Susan, Vincent, Mark and I would be doing the dive along with our DM. We went to Paradiso Reef, which is just off the shore from Caleta where we had previously snorkeled. We received our dive briefing and soon we were splashing down.

Given that all of my night dives have been in the low viz of Monterey, I really wasn’t prepared for just how good our dive would be. Immediately upon descending, I was simply amazed by the visibility around us. We could see divers in the distance, their presence given away only by their lights that we could see were darting all over the reef like a sci-fi movie. It was amazing. Mark and I stayed toward the back of the group, intermittently turning off our primary lights in order to bask in the darkness and experience the dive in a bit more darkness. It was stunning. I really was so thoroughly amazed by the dive.

The dive lasted 71 minutes for me as I was the last diver down with our DM. Mark and Susan were down for about 65 minutes. It was astonishing. We saw sea snakes, sleeping parrot fish, rays skating along the bottom. What I wish I could remember is the name of the weird, long, thick worm-like critter that, according to our DM, are attached at one end to the reef, but that come out at night and feed on the reef. They were eerie, but amazing that things like that are “present” during the day but hidden. Of course we saw octopus along the dive, I believe that there were three of them in total. One fairly large one that entertained me as it tried to find safety in the reef, changing greenish whenever my light hit it. While I am a little bit intimidated by them (don’t really know why), I found it very intriguing to just rest in the water column and watch what I consider one of the most amazing sea critters. But what really struck me were the King crabs. One of the crabs was on the edge of the reef, hanging out, giant claws picking off bits of something, tenderly moving his claw back to his mouth, eating. I probably could have stayed there the entire night and he didn’t seem to mind.

In the end, I had about 550 PSI but thought that the other divers might want to go back so the DM and I headed to the surface just by the boat. It was an amazing dive and I can’t stop smiling as I think about it even now.

Dive #73 – Wednesday, 7/2/08 – Paradiso Reef - Cozumel, Mexico. 7:59 PM. Max depth 43 feet, average depth 32 feet. Bottom time 71 minutes (longest dive!). 550 PSI at end of dive. Water temp holding fast at 82°, night dive.

July 2nd, 2008: Cozumel Diving Day 4 – Wreck C-53 (Felipe Xicoténanti) & Punta Tunich

2008-07-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

Day four of our diving adventure on Cozumel and we were really looking forward to diving the wreck of Felipe Xicoténanti, or the C-53. After our briefing, we were asked whether or not we would want to penetrate, and our DM explained that there is a guide wire through the wreck that could be followed in case of separation or darkness. Despite our limited exposure to wreck penetration, I was not at all concerned about entering the wreck. Soon we were off, down the anchor line to the front of the wreck. Continuing our descent along the side of the hull, we swam to the propeller where photos were taken. Moving along to the other side of the wreck, we received the signal questioning / indicating our entry time. After all five of us indicating that we were okay, we swam into the wreck.

I guess I wasn’t sure what kind of penetration we’d be doing because I didn’t expect that we’d be inside the wreck for as long as we were. I was amazed when we cruised around the first deck, through room after room, connected by twisting, dark passages. Then, we were at the base of a flight of stairs, following Alex Dorian up them. On the next deck, the air bubbles from the divers behind were leaking through the holes in the floor. Soon, however, we were headed out to the back deck, exposed to the open water. Off the back deck, we descended to the sand where we found a huge cucumber under a sea rod. Back towards the wreck, we stopped to admire some brittle stars clinging to the side of the hull, beautiful in their contrasting colors to that of the wreck. Then there was a coral formation where our DM pointed out a lovely Spotted moray (Gymnothorax moringa) peeking out of the formation. Soon we all noticed that it was time for us for us to begin our ascent up the anchor line to the boat. Hanging out on the anchor line doing my safety stop, I hung horizontally watching the divers on the wreck below. So relaxed, I continued my safety stop for about another 5 minutes just to relax and off-gas a little more while enjoying the scenery.

On board we began our surface interval and then geared up for the second dive of the day which would be at Punta Tunich. This time we would be letting our dive buddy Susan use the camera since her SeaLife wasn’t cooperating at depth, despite our best efforts to figure out what was going on with it. It ended up being a lovely drift dive, cruising over the sloping reefs past fans, fronds and sponges. Soon enough we encountered a small turtle cruising along the reef accompanied by some large French and Gray angel fish. Also along the reef were Queen angels, large Stoplight Parrotfish, even one that Susan caught peeking out from under a ledge – too cute! Under larger ledges, tons for grunts hung out, allowing for close interaction with them. We even found what I called “Lobster Ledge” – an area, out of the current – about 4 or 5 of them, hanging out in the crevices, antlers poking out at us. Then as we swam desperately against the current, we found to huge lobsters climbing across the top of the reef. They were just amazing – huge in size and, while conscious of our presence, almost fearless in their journey across the reef. Truly amazing. At the end of our dive, we were visited by both a trigger fish and a electric blue file fish who let us get quite close to him before the current pulled us apart.

Dive #70 – Wednesday, 7/2/08 – C-53 Wreck – Cozumel, Mexico. 8:33 AM. Max depth 71 feet, average depth 55 feet. Bottom time 49 minutes. 500 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, viz approximately 50-60 feet. Surface interval – 1 hour 1 minute.

Dive #71 – Wednesday, 7/2/08 – Punta Tunich – Cozumel, Mexico. 10:24 AM. Max depth 67 feet, average depth 46 feet. Bottom time 44 minutes. 650 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, viz approximately 70-80 feet.

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Turtle (taken by Susan)

July 1st, 2008: Cozumel Diving Day 3 – Santa Rosa & Tormentos Reef

2008-07-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Day 3 of diving and I was loving it! The first thing we saw as we started our first dive of the day at Santa Rosa was a huge Goliath Grouper, trying to hid (unsuccessfully) under some sea rods. Soon we were headed off along the site, ducking under swim throughs that reminded Mark and I off the ski slopes of Tahoe. All over the walls of the reef were tiny fish flitting in and out of the reef – beautifully going about their business as we drifted by, taking in the scenery. The dive ended all too soon and soon we were about to begin our descent. Before we were able to head up, a blue tang past by me quickly, just barely was I able to snap a photo of him.

After our surface interval, we were headed to Tormentos Reef. Tormentos is another beautiful site – long flat sections, covered in sponges, rods and brain corals. A ray accompanied by a fish sad tenderly on the bottom. The reefs were, again, just teeming with life – small fish all over the reef including Sergeant majors, four-eye butterfly fish, Queen angel fish, and, as always, grunts. Perhaps my favorites, however, were the Sergeant majors who just were everywhere! Almost everywhere you’d look they’d be hanging out, almost checking out the scene.

As we crossed through a sandy bit over the top of the reef, we were greeted by a whole school of yellow tail jacks, traveling through the area. They were amazing – watchful of us, they swam right past, leaving me feeling completely awestruck.

Tormentos was a beautiful dive site. The expansive vistas were amazingly gorgeous. Combined with the water clarify, I was just amazed. I could have stayed down for the entire day.

Dive #68 – Tuesday 7/1/08 – Santa Rosa Wall – Cozumel, Mexico. 8:45 AM. Max depth 81 feet, average 54 feet. Bottom time 44 minutes. 660 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, vis approximately 60-75 feet. Surface interval – 50 minutes.

Dive #69 – Tuesday, 7/1/08 – Tormentos Reef – Cozumel, Meixco. 10:20 AM. Max depth 54 feet, average 43 feet. Bottom time 44 minutes, 750 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82 °, vis approximately 50-80 feet.

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Yellowfin Jacks

June 30th, 2008: Cozumel Diving Day 2 – Colombia Deep & Punta Dalila

2008-07-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Colombia Deep is one of those sites that you just shouldn’t miss. It is deep, beautiful and fully of life and beauty. It was my birthday so I was really happy that we were going to be doing such an awesome site. After Lisa announced the fact that it was my birthday and the boat sang to ring it in – we were splashing down into the blue. Swim throughs left us on beautiful overhangs, covered in lovely sponges and soft corrals. There were tons of elkhorn coral covered in tiny blue fish just swimming in and out of the coral.

For our surface interval, we headed back to a pier that was covered in conch shells. Pulling up to the dock, I decided I’d dive off the deck and then swim to the shore instead of walking over the beach and getting all sandy. However, while I stood on the end of the pier, the discussion turned to how deep the water was, how much caution I should use if I jumped, I shouldn’t dive, etc. While contemplating the merits of my decision, Alex Dorian, our DM, ran up behind me and grabbed me, both of us splashing into the water below. It was fantastic. We kicked back to the shore where Alex Dorian went back to the boat and I joined Mark and Lisa who were engaged in a conversation in the shallows with another group of divers, also from the San Francisco area.

Soon, however, it was time to head back on the boat and heading off to Punta Dalila for our second dive of the day. The site itself is lovely with a slight to moderate current taking you over lovely reef patches with outcroppings and overhangs onto sandy patches. There were lovely anemone covered in yellow and black fish contrasting in color to the green and blue of the anemone as they swam around the area.

One of my favorite things about this site was the amazing number of Honeycomb cowfish that were all over the site. The first one I encountered was hiding behind some thick sea rods. I slowed myself down, trying to hid behind the other side of the rods; letting the cowfish grow accustomed to me, making him/her comfortable enough to peek out from behind the rods. Sure enough, in a few seconds, its curiosity got the best and it started inching out from behind the frond, the entire time with one of its eyes trained upon me.

But this wasn’t the only encounter with these beautifully odd fish. Between and under ledges, there were groups of them intermingled with Rock Beauties and other fish. They were so adorable and curiously nervous. It felt really special have such close encounters with these lovely fish. We were even able to see a nurse shark hiding under a ledge. An amazing site that I felt really fortunate to have been able to dive on my birthday!

Dive #67 – Monday 6/30/08 – Colombia Deep – Cozumel, Mexico. 9:02 AM. Max depth 96 feet, average depth 46 feet. Bottom time 46 minutes. 600 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 83°, vis approximately 60-70 feet. Surface interval 1 hour.

Dive #68 – Monday, 6/30/08 – Dalila – Cozumel, Mexico. 10:48 AM. Max depth 56 feet, average depth 41 feet. Bottom time 60 minutes. 800 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, vis approximately 70-80 feet.

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Cowfish hiding.

June 29th, 2008: Cozumel Diving Day 1 – Palancar Gardens & San Clemente

2008-07-25T17:24:00.001-07:00

After getting settled and signed up on Saturday for everything, we were ready to dive on Sunday. The first morning was a bit hectic at the dive shop as people were signing in and everyone was there at the same time. I felt fortunate that we had gone over the day before to fill out the necessary forms and show our cert cards to the DS and soon we were walking down the path to the pier and to our boat. We were on the “Sand Dollar Express” – a beautiful, clean and incredibly spacious catamaran which was dedicated almost entirely to our group. We quickly chose a spot under the cover out of the sun and began setting up our gear, chatting and enjoying the warm, tropical morning.

Soon the boat was underway, cutting through the amazingly blue Cozumelenian waters, clear and inviting. I was anxiously awaiting splashing in and getting to explore around! The excitement was almost unbearable and the ride out to Palancar Gardens seemed to take forever. But soon enough, we were gliding into our 3mm wetsuits (a dream compared to our normal 7mm plus hood and gloves), getting our BCDs on, masks and fins in hand and making our way to the back of the deck to jump in. I was ecstatic.

After a little giant stride into the water, slightly anxious but more excited, we reconvened and were soon letting the air out of our BCDs and descending into the WARMEST water I think I’ve ever dove in. And what was below the water surface did not disappoint in the slightest.

As my head peeked below the surface, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, down 50 feet into the blue abyss, I could see the bottom. Looking around, I could divers in all directions. Just absolutely amazing. Mark and I, suspended in the water column, eyes wide as saucers and just making hand gestures to one another about the viz – I mean it was so good, that the viz wasn’t ending – it was just that I physically couldn’t see any further! It was truly awe inspiring.

After the buoyancy issues were sorted for some of our companions, we were off. Palancar Gardens is just a beautiful site full of coral reef scenery which just does not disappoint. The site has a number of swim-throughs, which are some of my absolute favorite things to do! And floating over the reef, you pass all manner of grunt and parrot fish, especially stoplight parrot fish in their various stages, while small wrasse, and angels dart in and out of the reef. It is truly a magical first dive to begin your dive vacation on.

After a surface interval, we were treated to San Clemente, truly a Cozumel drift dive experience. Blasting over the reef, we were greeted by Lisa’s favorite fish – the barracuda. While I find these fish somewhat creepy, their lower jaw slightly jutting out, sometimes exposing their lower sharp teeth, they manner in which they eerily hang out, watching us divers fascinates me to the point that I almost feel like I can’t take my eyes off them. Sea rods are in abundance and small fish flit in and out of the elkhorn coral and barrel sponges making this site a light and fanciful dive to do.

Dive #64 – Sunday, 06/29/08 – Palancar Gardens – Cozumel, Mexico. 8:37 AM. Max depth 51 feet, average depth 38 feet. Bottom time 48 minutes. 800 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, vis approximately 60-100’. Surface interval – 1 hour, 3 minutes.

Dive #65 – Sunday, 06/29/08 – San Clemente – Cozumel, Mexico. 10:53 AM. Max depth 79 feet, average depth 55 feet. Bottom time 41 minutes. 1050 PSI at end of dive. Water temp 82°, vis approximately 50-70’.

Favorite Photo of the Day:

Barracuda cruising the reef

Lake Taaaahhh!-hoe Diving – June 3-4, 2008

2008-06-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

After starting my new job, I was in dire need of some relaxation. Fortunately, I had already scheduled a weekend away to try our hand at diving Lake Tahoe with Ron and Carrie. The weather appeared to be cooperating so we were all systems go.

As there is no place in the Lake Tahoe basin where you are able to fill tanks, leaving the nearest option Reno, and since were planning on diving 2 tanks per day, Mark and I had to rent additional tanks so that we would have a total of 8 (4 each). With the Honda weighted down with tanks, weights and all of our other gear, including sleeping bags, cameras, etc – we headed off to meet Carrie and Ron outside Sacramento, just about ½ of the way to the Lake. We arrived just before 7 AM and off loaded our gear into Ron’s dive truck which then carried all of our gear, tanks and bodies up the 90 minute drive up through the mountains and down into the basin. It was a beautiful drive, making me remember all of the fun times Mark and I had spent up there snowboarding, thrilled at the prospect of being able to try something new in the beautiful blue waters of Tahoe.

We arrived and went to Kent’s cabin, met Emily and Heather. So we were all off to launch the boat around a Carnelian Bay. We dove out of the harbor in search of the elusive “sailboat” while working on weighting issues and adjusting to freshwater diving and the coldness of the water in the lake. While the computer didn’t register that it was that much colder than Monterey, there was something really chilling about the water in Tahoe, resulting in “brain freeze” for almost all of us upon entry and initial descent. It was quite surprising actually as the ambient temperature was quite warm. Perhaps it was the contrast between the air and the water which caused the freeze.

The diving was great, although quite different from saltwater diving. The first and most remarkable aspect of it is the lack of life. I know its there, but man, the few fish that you see are just so skittish of your presence that they hide every time your reg makes any noise. I only saw fish on a few dives, some crayfish the 1st dive, although we weren’t going into crayfish territory on any of the other dives, so it was not that they weren’t there, since Emily and Heather were their constant companions on just about every dive! The other remarkable aspect about Tahoe diving is the amount of algae/silt that lies on everything. It is really important to remain in a good position with respects to your buoyancy in order to prevent stirring it all up and ruining a section of the dive site for everyone. The nice thing about the dives, however, are plentiful as well. One of the best is the ability to drink the water while diving. As someone who oftentimes experiences dry mouth (resulting in coughing at depth), it is wonderful to just be able to remove my regulator and take a sip of water. Normally I just rinse, so being able to drink the water was quite nice, plus it tastes great! As well, I really enjoyed the fact that Mark and I were able to be a bit more playful and practice some skills underwater. We had an impromptu football game with a piece of wood, wrote messages on rocks, practice navigation and various other skills like buddy breathing, mask flood/clear, mask retrieval, etc.

The scenery, what there is, is also very pretty. The boulders were a beautiful part of the diving. And, oddly enough, simultaneously sort of creepy. They scatter the floor, especially on our 3rd dive of the weekend, off the coast of the Cal-Neva resort. They are just massive, and it makes you wonder what geological force made them end up in the lake? Some of them are almost split in half, like they cracked open. Another beautifully eerie part of diving Tahoe is the way that the depth changes. You can be over 60 feet of water and move 10 yards and it drops down to 200 feet. While puttering around looking for sites, we would habitually encounter this phenomenon. And, provided your buoyancy is good, you can swim right over this “ledge” or wall and be left in awe of the fact that you can only see this expansive rock wall that just disappears into the depths.

It was a wonderful weekend with great company. Ron and Carrie and Kent are just such gracious hosts who go above and beyond with helping divers feel comfortable, opening their homes, boats and resources and knowledge to others. I feel grateful to have been able to dive with them again, and hope to do so again in the future.

Next stop - MEXICO! Hoorah for warm water diving!

Dive Statistics:
Dive #60 – Saturday, 06/07/08 – Meeks Bay – Lake Tahoe, California. 1:45 PM. Max depth 61 feet, average depth 29 feet. Bottom time 33 minutes. Water temp 52°, vis approximately 35-40 feet. Surface interval – 2 hours 57 minutes.

Dive #61 – Saturday, 06/07/08 – Rubicon Wall – Lake Tahoe, California. 4:54 PM. Max depth 45 feet, average depth 29 feet. Bottom time 17 minutes. Water temp 50°, viz approximately 40-45 feet.

Dive #62 – Sunday, 06/08/08 – Cal-Neva Resort – Lake Tahoe, California. 12:22 PM. Max depth 72 feet, average depth 31 feet. Bottom time 37 minutes. Water temp 52°, viz approximately 45-50 feet. Surface interval – 2 hours and 6 minutes.

Dive #63 – Sunday, 06/08/08 – Barges @ Emerald Bay – Lake Tahoe, California. 3:05 PM. Max depth 39 feet, average depth 23 feet. Bottom time 32 minutes. Water temp 54°, viz approximately 40-45 feet.

Favorite Photo:

Underwater rock writing. :)

New Dive Buddies, Great Diving - Saturday, May 17th, 2008

2008-05-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

I have not been diving since our trip to Florida at the end of March so I was really looking forward to spending a Saturday in Monterey and diving with some new friends from ScubaBoard (and an already known Mike Guerrero). We planned to dive at the Breakwater in order to make it a nice, simple dive that wouldn’t be overly-exerting for anyone since we were a group of mixed experience levels, new gear and other such things.

I arrived at the Breakwater at 7:30 AM, fully expecting to find a half empty parking lot and a good spot near the top of the grass. Imagine my surprise, however, when I saw the mass amounts of people, all over the grass, the parking areas, the lower lots and wall. I parked and walked along the upper lot to find Tom, who was easy to find in light of his bright blue PT Cruiser. Soon Katherine came around and we were off to get a lesson from Tom on how to lineup the points in order to get to the Metridium Field. On our way back, Neil, Mike and Daniel found us and soon we were planning the day and getting geared up.

Our first dive was scheduled to start at about 9 am and my computer indicates that we dove at 9:20, so we must have entered the water around the scheduled time since the kick out to the Metridium Field takes a while. We landed the Metridium perfectly having had Tom line us all up but descending we were in a swarm of sea nettles, large and small. They were everywhere and in an underwater environment, you need to have eyes all over your head as you must remain conscious of what is above, below and surrounding you. Unfortunately because of the sheer number of the jellies, both Mike and Neil got stung on their faces and I can only hope that both of them are recovering from the stings.

After swimming around the Metridiums and surround areas, Neil and I began our 210-heading swim back to the shore. As we got into the shallows, however, I noticed that we were surrounded by quite a different landscape than is typical of the shore along the beach. Surfacing, we found we were slightly south of the beach and so we headed back at about 150-160 degrees and came up near the beach in about 5 feet of water. The visibility on the dive could have been better, especially around the Metridium Fields since I thought that we were out quite a bit further than the students, so I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t as great as I had hoped. That being said, the dive was wonderful – full of life, kelp and a buddy with just about an equal air consumption given our tanks – so I was happy.

After a nice surface interval in the hot sun, we swapped the tanks and geared up to go out again. This time the plan was to kick out a ways, then take a 300 degree compass heading and follow the shoreline south at about 30 feet. This course would take us over the remains of the pipes and infrastructure of the old cannery facilities that historically dotted the coast of Monterey. As I had never actually even considered diving that locale but having had witnessed a bit of it on our return from the Metridium Field, I was quite interested in diving it. Kicking out, we encountered the bubbles from a group of students who were obviously underneath us. As to avoid disturbing them and to steer clear of any finned-up areas, we went out a bit further hoping to find a clear patch in which to begin our dive. Soon we were descending and heading along the 300 degree heading and off on our dive. Checking out a pile of rocks, Neil and I were separated from Tom and Katherine, which wasn’t a big deal as we knew they were buddied up having discussed the buddy plans on the surface. The dive was beautiful although I think that we were slightly too deep as we didn’t see as much of the pipes and other areas and saw more sandy patches covered by bat stars. When we returned, we headed a closer to shore and hit the pipes and saw lot more, including a pipe covered in barnacles,

Overall, I was really amazed by the sheer numbers of nudibranchs that were present – doris, rainbow nudis (Dendronotus iris), etc. What was most amazing was the mass presence of Opalescent Nudibranch (hermissenda crassicornis) – large, small and super-small. Everywhere there were Orange Sea Cucumbers (Cucumaria miniata), Sea Nettle Jelly (Chrysaora quinquecirrha) and Spaghetti worm (Terebellid polychaete) with their fine threads out of their holes. It was a great day for finding Kellet’s Whelks (Kelletia kelletii) and their eggs all over the Metridium Field and tiny little halibut and sanddabs floundering around in the sand. I even got to see a hooded nudibranch swimming through the water column. The sun was shining and I think we all had a great day.

After the 2nd dive, we all went our separate ways. I got cleaned up, packed the car and took the new dSLR over to Backscatter Photography to talk about housings and the appropriate underwater set-up. Needless the say, the price tag associated with the new set-up will put the entire idea on the backburner for quite sometime, but it was great to mingle and hear about the intricacies of these amazing u/w systems. After that, I popped into MBDC and then took a walk along the BW Pier where the sea lions were in full effect. Pups playing inside of the harbor while more mature lions were sunning themselves on every available semi-flat rock along the wall. I stood and watched them, barking at each other while one rubbed himself (herself?) on some barnacles just below the water line – no doubt getting a fantastic back scratch. Soon, however, it was time to begin the trek home, rinse the gear and download the photos. Next stop – Lake Tahoe.

Favorite Photo:
Hooded Nudibranch (Melibe leonine) swimming through the water

Dive Statistics:
Dive #58 – Saturday, 05/17/08 – “Metridium Fields” – Monterey, California. 9:20 AM. Max depth 49 feet, average depth 36 feet. Bottom time 50 minutes (approximately 950 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, vis approximately 12-20 feet.

Dive #59 – Saturday, 05/18/08 – “300° from the Breakwater” – Monterey, California. 12:06 PM. Max depth 41 feet, average depth 30 feet. Bottom time 55 minutes (residual time 38 minutes) (approximately 490 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, vis approximately 15-20 feet.

Vicarious Diving & Video Shoots! – Sunday, April 27th, 2008

2008-04-30T16:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a landlubber since the world shortest dive on April 19th. I was looking forward to Doc Wong’s Video Shoot on safe Monastery Diving and was anticipating a day of diving. Of course, with a great Marine forecast on the horizon, I was getting excited. Of course, I shouldn’t have gotten excited as Wednesday rolled around and walloped me one of the worst colds that I had ever had in a very long time.

While extremely optimistic that the cold would dissipate prior to the dive day, I was not at all surprised when Saturday evening came and I wasn’t feeling near good enough to dive. Regardless, Mark was scheduled to dive with Michelle so we got his gear in the car. All the while, me with the heaviest of hearts. The forecast was still looking really good, so good that even Chuck Tribolet was planning on diving. I was really bummed but was hoping that I would at least catch some rays and could try out the new camera with subjects other than Mark and Gatita.

Doc Wong being assisted by Guy after his tumble.

We got up and made the trek down to Carmel, arriving at the rendezvous point slightly after Michelle and making our way to the convoy staging point (in order to get past the marathon that was running down Highway 1). Soon Doc was there and we were all hanging out, chatting and enjoying what was turning out to be a beautiful day.

Monastery is a beautiful beach. The beach is actually called Carmel River Beach – but it has adopted the nickname Monastery in the scuba community due to its proximity to a Monastery, just across the Highway 1, sitting proudly on the overlooking bluff. The beach itself, however, is quite dangerous. Because of the steep sloping beach, the way in which the waves come up the steep beach and then come rushing back, create an innocuous-seeming beach, which actually quite dangerous. Numerous people have had bad experiences because of this undertow, some have even lost their lives. In an attempt to warn visitors of the dangers, and prepare those divers who wish to dive Monastery, our friend Doc Harry Wong has been on a campaign to increase signage and create a video on safe diving procedures for the beach. We were onboard to help Doc Wong with the video; Mark would be demonstrating a safe entry into the water with Michelle. I would be providing surface support and photographs of the days events in light of my inability to participate in the diving.

Mark was amazingly composed about the entire event. Bringing his gear up the rocky beach, I was more nervous than he was. I suppose a certain part of that nervousness was because I have never actually stayed on shore while Mark was out diving – while he oftentimes doesn’t accompany me on a dive. But it wasn’t just that – it was my own fear about his safety. He would be diving North Monastery which is more exposed than the South, as it was necessary to show the entry with some kind of waves and the South looked like a lake. But North Monastery was rougher – walls of waves crashing upon the steep beach, each one making me more nervous as Mark suited up while listening to the dive briefing. But soon enough, Mark was down at the shoreline, listening to Doc, Guy and Dennis’ explanations on how to enter. Soon Michelle was entering the water, Mark standing back waiting as it is best to only have one diver in the surf zone at a time. When Michelle was safely through, it was Mark’s time. I put the camera down and walked down to the shore, watching with nervous anticipation as he watched the waves, waited for a lull, then moved out and, face down, began kicking like mad to ride the back pull off the beach and through the surf zone, regulator in mouth as instructed. It wasn’t until he was well clear of the danger zone that I relaxed, watching he and Michelle kick out along the edge of the kelp to begin their dive.

After about 35 minutes, Mark and Michelle surfaced and the exit procedure was begun – again, one diver at a time, all hands on deck ready to assist in event of an emergency. Michelle exited first, and then it was Mark’s turn. At this point, and due to their point of exit, the process was a relatively easy, rough surf exit on hands and knees, crawling until you are on dry sand where your fins are removed before you stand up. Whilst waiting for the right time, the small surf was actually pushing Mark onto shore, so it was a very stress-free exit for everyone involved.

Mark and Michelle were both pretty happy about the dive. The water temperature was cold, 48°, but because neither had their camera, the dive was spent swimming so they kept fairly warm in their wetsuits. They both related their journey, over the Monterey Bay Canyon, as Monastery Beach is the closest point to reach the Canyon from the shore. The visibility was approximately 25 to 30 feet, reduced somewhat because of the plethora of krill in the water, and better than the reports from other dive sites where the sandy bottom results in much for sediment in the water column.

It was important to both Mark and I to have participated in this venture to help promote a safe diving environment on Monastery Beach and it was a honor and a pleasure to have been able to help out. In the end, Doc’s video appears to have been a success although we await the final video to see how it came out…. After diving, Michelle, Mark and I went over to El Toritos to have some lunch and enjoy the vista of the Bay. MacAbee was equally tempting as we watched two divers kick out and begin their dives along side of a sea lion. Needless to say, I can't wait to post an actual dive blog from a successful dive!

MacAbee Beach

Shortest Dive Ever? - Saturday, April 19th, 2008

2008-04-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Marine forecast was looking pretty iffy all week, and being that my BC was still not back from Scubapro, I was thinking it might be wiser to just stay dry for the weekend. However, a convincing call from Dan go my butt in gear and out on the road at 5:15 AM on Saturday morning, heading to Monterey on the chance that the conditions would be great.

The wind was definitely not as strong on shore as I thought it might be, given the gale wind warnings that were issued, but the clouds overhead were somewhat more ominous of the day. I arrived before Dan or Dave, so I checked out the scene along the Harbor wall where the Earth Day divers and shore clean-up brigades were setting up. The conditions didn’t seem to bad, so I went back to the Honda and was soon joined by Mike and Dave. We went to check out the Bay from the harbor wall together, and Dave decided that we could try and get in at least one dive. So back to the boat to get gear loaded and wetsuits/drysuits on. Soon my gear was onboard and set up with the tanks in the hold and I was donning my wetsuit and soon after, we were walking over to K dock to meet Mike in the boat.

Dan and I in the front, Mike and Dave driving, we cruised out of the marina, Mike tacking against the winds that were already becoming an issue in the marina. As soon as we got out of the harbor, the truest nature of the Bay became more apparent. It was going to be rough and I forgot to take Dramamine. Regardless of my fear of getting sick, we laid out into the bay, the discussion turning to which site to try. Over the swells, riding down their backs, it was soon decided that we would have to stay somewhere near the harbor, away from the mouth of the Bay in order to get any dive in – and we decided to stay at the Shale Beds / Anchor Farm.

As soon as the anchor was down, I started to feel it. My stomach bobbing around inside of me. Starring off into the horizon, picking out the Marriott just beyond the harbor I was able to get a hold of myself and begin to evaluate the dive site, conditions, etc against my feelings, comfort level and training. I was on a boat with very skilled and knowledgeable divers. One instructor, one assistant instructor and another diver who had logged a substantial number of dives – I was in more capable hands than I’ve been since my OW certification so it wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with them or that I thought they would let me be unsafe. It was that, while sitting there, the swells were increasing. No longer did they seem to be in the 8’ range, but looked more like 12’ and seemingly increasing. I wasn’t worried about the dive, I was just worried about the reentry into the boat after the dive. I voiced my concerns and after being assured that they would help me if needed, I decided to go for it. Knowing my luck, if I stayed on the boat, they’d come up raving about the gorgeous conditions. So, I started to don my gear.

Soon Dave was in the water, his fins slapping the water as he made his way down the anchor line to the bottom resting 80’ below. Dan and I followed shortly thereafter, doing a great backward roll off the side of the boat, feeling the calm sensation of twisting back towards the surface. I tried snorkeling over to the anchor line, wishing to conserve as much air as possible as to not cut Dan’s dive too short, but the swells were coming over the top of my snorkel, making breathing off my tank for the short surface swim a necessity. Soon Dan and I were heading down the anchor line, me following closely behind in order to avoid being separated. Visibility was less than optimal, being about 5-7 feet on the surface, and quickly deteriorating as we head down the line. Optimistic that it would clear, we continued, point out sea nettles that were wallowing around in the water column.

At 25’ feet we encountered Dave who was heading to the surface, thumbing the dive. According to his report, at depth the visibility was nowhere near improved, the swell causing the bottom’s silt to simply be stirred up. So, we made our way back onto the boat, got our gear off and fired the boat back up. After pulling the anchor, we headed back to the Marina, the swells increasing still, but riding back was more enjoyable as we were going with the wind, and were almost surfing along the tops of the swell. All the while my eyes trained along the horizon, still holding on to my light breakfast.

Back at shore, the boat was soon pulled out of the water and gear pulled off of it. Hanging around for a while, we then parted ways and I went off to take some photos with my new dSLR. Meeting up with Dan at the Breakwater, we watched a group of students being helped out of the water at high tide with less than optimal conditions. Dan offered to show me around Monastery which I gladly took him up on given the fact that I’ve never actually step foot on the beach despite having attended to panel discussions, etc. on how to dive at the location.

We took separate cars and I followed him out to the beach. Pulling up, we walked past Doc Wong’s new advisory signs, over the pebbly beach to the top of the steep beach. The water was beautiful, but rough. Brilliant shades of blue accented by the new season’s kelp strands, it was easy to see how beach-goers and divers alike would be drawn to this dangerous beach. Dan pointed out the best entry and exit points, as well as showing me what makes the beach so dangerous – the walls of water that comes rolling up in a tube almost, while the receding waters down the steeply angled beach pull back. It was so easy to see how dangerous it could be, and simultaneously, how attractive it would be to an unsuspecting person or child.

Leaving there, we rounded the corner to Point Lobos and went down to Whaler’s Cove which was just inundated with people. Seeing Team Kitty’s car in the parking lot with all their double tables set up, we realized they must be in the water so we stood on the rocks and looked for their bubbles, to no avail. Giving up, Dan dropped me back at my car and we parted ways. Stopping off Fremont Street on my way out of Monterey, I found my new "favorite gas station" - cheap gas (relatively speaking) and a Subway. I sat for a while and partook of my favorite sandwich - veggie delite with no cheese. YUM.

While disappointed that the diving wasn’t great (and I had to now go home and rinse all my gear), I had a great morning hanging out with such good divers who are nice enough to take a relatively new diver under their wing for the morning. It is these kinds of experiences that remind me and make me grateful to live and dive in such an awesome area where there is a general sense of community amongst the divers in the local area.

A warm thank you to Dan, Dave and Mike – you all were instrumental and encouraging, and I appreciate it immensely. I look forward to diving with you all again in the near future I hope!

Dive Stats:
1 minute at 25’ feet. Visibility approximately 3 to 5 feet. Water temperature 68 degrees. I know, not really a dive, but its funny to recount the day's events anyhow!

Homeward Bound - Highway 156, somewhere south of Gilroy.

Warm Water Wonderland - Florida Trip (March/April 2008)

2008-04-11T16:37:00.001-07:00

In light of the challenges associated with my last two dives, I was really looking forward to my escape to Florida with my husband and his kids, James (20), Sarah (19) and Daniel (17). I know, hardly “kids.” The kids were scheduled to get their Open Water certification after doing the PADI online training. Mark and I would be diving along side of them for their boat dives, and then the plan was to head to the Keys and do some diving with their new certification! I should know by now that, despite all my anal retentive planning, things absolutely never go as intended.

It all started with the wind. Southeasterly winds (if I remember correctly) at about 20 knots. We arrive at South Florida Dive Headquarters with the wind at our backs, ready to check the kids in for their pool sessions. After the hellos and introductions, Ed, the instructor’s face screws up and in comes the bad news. The winds are making the seas unfriendly, so they aren’t sure if we can get their certification dives in before we head to the Keys. Not a problem, we rearrange the Keys portion. And off they go to the pool. Funny set-up: South Florida Dive uses the pool at a local hotel which sits beautifully on the intercoastal. Better yet (for us at least), there is a bar right by the pool. I LOVE Florida. So we hang out by the pool, kids getting their instruction as little kids swim by or stand around watching with extreme interest at the goings on with their class. A drink later, I am relaxing as the rain comes pouring in, but not thunder/lightning so that the class can continue.

After about 5 hours in the pool, the kids emerge, water-logged but excited with prune-like fingers. I check in that evening with Sherry of SFDH and get told we told that they have a back-up plan, call in the morning. In the morning, the winds are preventing the boat from going out into the open seas but that we should report at 2:30 for high tide, the kids will be heading out to the bay around Lighthouse Point and, at high tide, there is enough water in the bay to qualify for their first 2 open water dives. Better yet, it will be silty, so they will have a chance to experience low visibility diving. Good.

That afternoon, we arrived and Ed and the kids load all their gear on to the Safari Diver Boat and the 6 of us and Captain headed out for the Bay. Arriving, the water is just deep enough but there is quite a bit of water movement. Soon Ed has them in the water and descending to start their first dives. Mark and I hang out watching their bubbles and catching some sun on the back of the boat, watching some kiteboarders who are taking advantage of the strong winds to have some fun on the Atlantic.

Soon the divers emerged, big smiles on their faces, chattering about the fish that they saw, how cool it was. They practiced taking apart their gear and then Ed gives them a briefing. Soon there are doing their giant stride off the back of the boat heading towards their 2nd dive. I got a green light permission slip from the Captain and dove off the boat - no gear, just me felt so liberating. The initial chill of the mid-70 degree water soon gave way to relaxation as I tread water on the surface, swimming around to see the kids under the water working on their drills. Soon Mark joined in, diving off the high sides of the boat, relaxing in the warm Atlantic waters in the bay. When the kids came out after their second dive, they got a good report from Ed and we were off back to the Marina.

Next day, we are scheduled to go again – this time, hopefully, to the Ocean. Arriving at 8:15 AM, the kids get their rental gear and we meet the other diver scheduled to go out on the boat. Soon, three other divers have showed up and so we are 10 divers and one divemaster and a captain and the Safari Diver is looking like it is going to be a pretty full experience. Everyone gets on board, starts setting up their gear…..and its tight. Looking around at the other divers, I quickly realize that I am thankful I’ve been “schooled” in how to pack a boat bag as I am finding that the guy next to me has no clue whatsoever and has hauled his large roll-on bag into his space and mine and has no qualms whatsoever about taking up all of the available space. Determined now to let it get to me, I quickly get my gear ready to go and soon we are off to dive!

Heading out along the intercoastal is just beautiful. The people of Florida don’t know how beautiful their area is – with stunning homes, sunning Iguanas, sunshine and water everywhere. Enjoying the view, I slipped into my 3mm suit, smiling at the ease of getting it on compared to my normal 7mm. Rounding out of the intercoastal and into the now familiar bay, we see the ocean raging against the stone walls leading out to the Atlantic. Despite it being diveable, it is going to be sporty getting out there. I quietly reminded the kids to keep their eyes on a substantial landmark, knowing full and well that I, too, would need to do the same. And sure enough, soon we are in the thick of some pretty bumpy and rocking seas. I don’t think that there was one diver, except for Ed, who didn’t get queasy.

Soon the captain announced our arrival at Lighthouse Ledge and the gate was opened. Getting to the end of the boat was sporting, divers in slippery fins and heavy gear trying to get to the gate while the boat is bucking around is a challenge, but the promise of an awesome dive always lures divers to get to the end of the boat. Mark and I would be following Ed, James, Sarah and Daniel on one flag for their first ocean dive and soon they were in while the Captain swung the boat around and we plunked in, swimming over to their flag. As soon as we were in the water, they began their descent, fully conscious of the fact that it would help any seasickness to get their heads under. With the water clarity, Mark and I began our descent and quickly located them. An easy dive, coasting over the reef, barrel sponges and schools of fish was relaxing, photographing Sarah, James and Daniel in their new environment was rewarding and challenging (since I don’t often have the opportunity to photograph divers in Monterey because of the visibility).

Soon we were joined by fish, tons of various grunts, Creole Wrasse (Clepticus parrae) (blue) while watching Yellow Coris Wrasse (Halichoeres chrysus) playfully bob in and out of the various barrel sponges. Swimming over reef ledges we were delighted by the various tube worms quickly tucking themselves back into the coral and other rocky areas, reminding us that we were in a world in which we not normally invited. After about 25 minutes, Ed, James, Daniel and Sarah decided to end their dive as someone was low on air. Handing off the dive flag, they ascended in the water column without the assistance of an anchor line. Words can’t express how proud I was of them, knowing that ascents and safety stops can be difficult without a line, especially as new divers! Mark and I continued our dive, finding a nice sandy part of the reef where Mark enjoyed a rest, actually sitting down in the sand, while I swam around, videoing and photographing the reef and all the grunts that had joined us. After about 20 or so minutes, we began our ascent, doing a leisurely 4 minute safety stop at 15-18 feet, me attempting to do it in a horizontal, face down position (for the record it is not easy, but very relaxing).

Conditions on the surface were not any better and reentry onto the boat was a bit challenging. Mark got on first and found his position, while I waited a safe distance away from the boat until he was onboard. While swimming on the surface, I noticed that we were the last divers to surface. On board, we swapped out tanks and the captain moved us around to the next site – Sunkist Reef. We took our own flag this time because of our required surface interval and the pressing need to get Sarah, James and Daniel back in the water to prevent further sea sickness. Watching everyone jump in, we decided it was in the best interests of everyone for us to get back in so that no one was stuck on the surface for very long after their dive, given the conditions. I knew, however, that our computers would give us a relatively short dive as a result. Sure enough, at the bottom, we were advised that our dive time would be approximately 39 minutes at the depth we were sitting on. So, we found a pretty patch of reef and took turns snapping photos of the reef and its inhabitants. Unfortunately our dive time soon ended with a considerable amount of gas remaining in our tank. Beginning our ascent, we took our time, Mark gently winding up the flag’s rope and did another nice, long safety stop. Again, we were the last divers on the boat and as soon as we were onboard and our gear was tied down, Captain was hauling back to the Marina.

The talk soon started and I listened as the other group of divers talked about their experiences. I was surprised to learn that, of all the paid customers, Mark and I had the most experience and were the only coldwater divers. I thought of how that aligned with what I witnessed and it reaffirmed my beliefs (and yes, I am biased) that cold water diving gives birth to a different kind of diver, one more conscious, more able. Not to say that I am an able diver because I am just a novice. But I dive regularly, more so than those that visit somewhere warm once or twice and dive. The challenges of cold water diving – the environment, the conditions, the gear – make for a more solid diver, a community that I am immensely proud to be considered a part of.

Overall, I was amazed by the sheer numbers and types of fish that we encountered. In Monterey, we get varieties of rockfish, but nothing like this. All in all, we were amazed at the variety of fish life. Mark’s favorites were the Stoplight Parrotfish (Sparisoma viride) and the Blackbar Soldierfish (Myripristis jacobus), beautiful in its mosaic pattern. I enjoyed the Harlequin Bass (Serranus Tigrinus) I found hovering under some coral, but was really in love with the Yellow Coris, the Sharpnose Puffer (Canthigaster rostrata) with its blue eye markings resembling makeup and the lovely Cocoa Damselfish (Stegastes variabilis) who coyly swam in an out of a hole in a sponge, toying with my desires to get a good photo of her swimming out. But most delightful to watch was on the second dive while, of course, Mark had the camera. Over a pitted part of the reef along a ledge was a beautiful black and white Spotted Trunkfish (Lactophyrus bicaudalis), its little fins like wings, flitting it in and out of the various holes, teasing me because I didn’t have the camera in my hands! But it was absolutely enchanting to watch it duck in and out of the reef, curiously unaware of my presence, while I watched and listened to my breathing, relaxed.

Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate for the remainder of our trip. The four days of diving I had planned ended up being only one. Regardless, we had a wonderful time in Florida and are extremely proud that Sarah, James and Daniel are all troopers for sticking with it despite being seasick and are now certified divers! With that, I am looking forward to replacing my camera and getting back in my chilly backyard Monterey and shooting more macro with my friends and local divers.

Many thanks to everyone at South Florida Diving Headquarters (http://www.southfloridadiving.com/), especially Sherry and Captain Dick (both of whom tirelessly endured all of my questions!). A warm thank you to to Instructor Ed who was an absolutely wonderful, patient and informative instructor. Additionally, we'd like to thank Admiral Brenda and Captain Gary at Conch Republic (http://www.conchrepublicdivers.com/) - despite the fact we didn't get to dive with you, you were most welcoming at the shop, and we look forward to diving with you on our next trip to the Keys!

Favorite Photo:

Cocoa Damselfish (Stegastes variabilis)

Dive Statistics:
Dive #56 – Wednesday, 04/02/08 – “Lighthouse Ledge” – Lighthouse Point / Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 9:49 AM. Max depth 62 feet, average depth 51 feet. Bottom time 48 minutes (approximately 600 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 75°, vis approximately 35-45 feet. Surface interval 38 minutes.

Dive #57 – Wednesday, 04/02/08 – “Sunkist Reef” – Lighthouse Point / Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 11:25 AM. Max depth 50 feet, average depth 42 feet. Bottom time 40 minutes (residual time 60 minutes) (approximately 1200 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 75°, vis approximately 40 -45 feet.

Breakwater Cove – Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

2008-03-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

While last weekend’s diving provided technical aspects/difficulties, I was looking forward to the lapse in the horrible swell forecasts and hoping to get in some good diving with Mark.

As Friday as Good Friday, we set off early to get to the LDS in order to rent Mark a drysuit. Having taken care of those details, we made our way down to Monterey with the intention of meeting up with Ron and Kent and doing a night dive at the Breakwater. After dinner, we made our way over to the Breakwater. Soon Ron and Kent arrived and we were all gearing up for the night dive, moon rising slowly over Seaside, brightly lighting the sea. After gearing up, however, our fates changed and we realized that Mark was experiencing a slow leak through his Air2. After trying unsuccessfully to remedy the problem, we decided that we’d rather retire to the hotel to watch some TV and relax rather than to deal with the equipment issues.

Saturday morning arrived nice and early and we were off to the dive shop to get Mark’s equipment checked out. Finding out that it was the 1st stage of Mark’s regulator that was blowing overly hard, we swapped out hoses and got Mark a rental 1st stage and were off to check out Lover’s Point.

Because of the northwestern swell, Lover’s 2 and 3 were not diveable and Lover’s 1, because of the shallowness of the site would have been pretty churned up. So we drove over to the Breakwater to meet up with Michelle and Greg. Soon enough we were all there and gearing up for the 1st dive – planning to dive to the Metridium Field as Greg had not been there.

Making our way down to the water, Michelle and Greg entered first. Soon Mark was finned up and heading into the water. As soon as I started to get my fins on, one of my fin assemblies malfunctioned. After trying to rethread the fin strap in the water, I reasoned that it would be easier to do on shore because of the water conditions. As soon as I swam back to shore with only one fin, I found out that it the pin around which the strap threads was missing so it would have been impossible to have fixed it without a new assembly. Fortunately I had another, unfortunately it was up the stairs, across the grass and in the car, and the key was inside of Mark’s drysuit. So up we went – hard work.

After swapping out the assembly, we made our way back. As we were walking in, Michelle and Greg were finishing their dive having been unable to locate the “big pipe.” Mark and I contented ourselves with diving the Middle Reef area of the Breakwater, checking out condition of the kelp growth.

The swim out was somewhat onerous because of the water conditions. We dropped down and the water conditions were “green” – visibility being somewhat disturbed, to put it lightly. However, we began swimming around, taking photos of the Bat stars (Asterina miniata) and checking out the rocks. Drifting past us, a strand of kelp with squid eggs attached. The kelp was beautiful, nicely growing in and making me anxious for its full growth – long fronds with blades bending around gas bladders. Snails clinging to the leaves.

Swimming along, Mark was handling his drysuit very well given that it had been a while since we were certified in them. However, because dive shops generally don’t trim the drysuit seals anymore than necessary to accommodate the “average” renter, Mark’s circulation in his right hand was soon being constricted. Approximately 20 minutes into the dive, Mark’s hand was paining him and we decided to head back to the surface and end the dive. On shore we quickly got Mark out of the suit and only then realized just how badly the suit was cutting off his circulation. However, he stayed warm – mission accomplished.

After the surface interval, Mark decided that he would rather soak up the warm sun than to deal with the tight wrist seal. So Michelle, Greg and I ventured out to check out the Breakwater Wall, each of us with our cameras in tow. Swimming out nearly to the “6” marker on the BW Wall, we descended into a flurry of particulate in the water column. We continued to swim away from the shore, down towards the area in which the sand dips down, and the tube anemone begin to appear at about 40 feet. There were tons of moon jellies floating around in the water, some inside out. We made our way back towards the Wall, and the visibility improved slightly. And the nudibranchs began to appear. Clown dorids (Triopha carpenteri), Sea Lemons (Peltodoris nobilis) and a lot of San Diego Dorids (Diaulula sandiegensis), one even hanging onto a piece of kelp, gracefully balancing in the movement of the water. A large Sun Star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) tucked into a crevice between the rocks.

While the computer was registering water temps of 50 degrees (something I normally do not have many problems with), I think that the recent weight loss has resulted in my wetsuit fitting less snug, and I kept having water flush in and out of the top of my suit, resulting in my being very cold. While I managed to stay down as long as the others, the need to put away the camera in order to kick around and warm myself up was beginning to be a nuisance. Soon we were heading back and then had to surface as we had gotten separated from Greg when he stopped to take some photos. We regrouped on the surface and since I had started with only 2500 PSI, I was at 600 PSI and we were only a short distance from the surface, so I decided to swim back on the surface while Michelle and Greg descended and made their way back.

Needless to say, the swim back was rough. The water currents were not in my favor and while I have every confidence in my swimming and scuba abilities, the movement of the water resulted in a very difficult surface swim. I walked up on shore feeling completely tired, but in one piece and safe. I waited on the beach while Greg and Michelle got out, Michelle having gotten slightly tumbled in the surf while removing her fins. The walk up to the car felt like it would never end – but soon enough, Mark was helping me take my gear off and we were relaxing post dive.

After loading up the gear, we headed back to the LDS to drop off the rental regulator and then met up with Michelle and Greg and convoyed over to Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing for some lunch and conversation. A beautiful, sunny day with some challenging and equally rewarding dives.

But now I am looking forward to some warm water …….. Soon ... Soon.

Dive #54 – Saturday, 3/22/08 - "Middle Reef" - Breakwater Cove. Monterey, California. 10:57 AM. Max depth 27 feet, average depth of 2o feet. Bottom time 24 minutes (approximately 1900 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 50°, vis approximately 10 to 12 feet. Surface interval 1 hour 10 minutes.

Dive #55 - Saturday, 3/22/08 - Breakwater Wall - Breakwater Cove. Monterey, California. 12:35 PM. Max depth 44 feet, average depth 37 feet. Bottom time 35 minutes (approximately 600 PSI remaining at the end of the dive; began with approximately 2500 PSI). Water temp 50°, vis approximately 10 feet.

Favorite Photo from the Day

San Diego Dorid (Diaulula sandiegensis)

Good Fortune!

2008-03-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

After last weekend’s swells and “training day dives” – it seemed like the weather wouldn’t be cooperative for a while. And considering that I’ve been diving the past two weekends, I figured that this weekend would be spent dry, getting the house in order and having a quiet Easter weekend.

Imagine my surprise, however, when the reports started to come in about 6-8 foot swells on Friday, and slightly more on Saturday! Could it be a sign? Good diving, leading into Spring? Kelp growing back and no more winter storms? Well, there is only one way to find out – so off we go again. Down to Monterey on Friday afternoon, returning Saturday night. Meeting up with good friends, diving and having a great time. Hoorah!!

ScubaBoard Meet and Greet – March 15th, 2008

2008-03-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

Doom and gloom - all week long the Marine forecast was calling for doom and gloom. Even some of the weather reporters on TV were calling the incoming storm the storm of the season. Beware boaters! Steer clear of the coastline. Gail force winds and havoc! Reports of general mayhem resulting in my questioning the feasibility and sanity of trudging forward with the plan to dive coveted Point Lobos.

Ultimately Friday came and the report was downgraded some. And the Friday storm of the millennium (okay, I exaggerate a bit) turned out to be a blip on the radar. So, we move forward. Doc Wong, Carrie and Ron and my buddy will be there. Mike’s heading down along with Nathan and others, so we are going to move forward – everyone with the full understanding that we might be hiking.

I was up bright and early, on the road by about 5:45 AM. The roads were relatively quiet, and the first part of the trip absolutely devoid of other drivers (which can be a bit scary on 280 in the dark). Hitting 17, the sun was coming up and more and more drivers were joining me on the road. The sky was relatively clear, the winds seemed no existent. Reaching Santa Cruz and heading south on US1, the same. Calm, with the exception of some scattered and really minor showers and a foreboding patch of clouds on the horizon. Through Watsonville, into the Salinas veggie bowl, past the familiar Moss Landing power stacks and then moving into Marina and Seaside, the trip becoming one of habit after the recent trips down to Monterey on the weekends. The beauty, however, never eludes me. The thrill I see when I reach Seaside, glimpses of the bay past the sand dunes. The excitement and anxiousness to see my friends and go diving.

Today was no different. Although my excitement was mixed with a bit of hesitation as to how the day would shape up. Would Lobos be diveable or would we hiking?

I arrived at the Point Lobos gates just before 8:30 AM, first in line, and I was soon after joined by Michelle’s friend Roy. We chatted for a while and soon the line to enter started getting longer. Michelle, Nathan and other visitors were there, calmly waiting to see what Whaler’s Cove would hold for us. And so we were in to the Park, descending along the road, dropping down into Whalers.

The first thing I noticed was the foam - covering the middle section of the cove, protein foam. While I try not to be easily grossed out, having learned what sea foam is made of, I can tell you that I would never willingly paint my walls “sea foam”. Yes, I am exaggerating again, I would use “sea form” colored paint, but would I want to surface swim through it. That is another question all-together.

After regrouping and checking out the possible visibility from the rocks along the side of the cove, the rain began. As a group, we took the path up to the top of the outer wall of the cove to check out the outer cove sites and see if they would be feasible to dive. That question was easily answered by the white seas, swirling and crashing against the rocks.

Doc checked it out and then gave us a briefing. Would this be an optimal day for diving? No. Is it diveable? Yes. It would be a training day dive. Learning how to work in buddy pairs in low viz and high surge situations, exiting the slick boat ramp in low tide with a surge, etc. My buddy, Michelle, looked at me and the decision was clear. We were going in, if only for one dive. So everyone made their decisions. Most chose to dive, while some chose not to dive. But we began to get ready.

I don’t know if it is the rainy conditions which made me move faster, but set up seemed to take a remarkably short time to get done. Perhaps I was a little nervous about the entry, but before I knew it, my gear was set up, I had my wetsuit, hood and gloves on and then hanging out with the group while others got their gear finalized. Soon enough we were heading down the boat ramp and getting our fins on, air in BCDs and putting our regulators in our mouths, preparing to move into the water, off the ramp, when the swell moved in, riding it out. When the non-scooters were all in, Michelle, Robin, Mike, Nathan and I began kicking out to the Middle Reef to wait for Doc and Greg to enter and scoot over with us. However, after a while waiting in our wetsuits in the surge, and being unaware as to when they were going to join us, we decided to descend and start the dive.

Descending, our group (Michelle, Robin and I) quickly lost track of “Team Baconated” (Mike and Nathan). While wasn’t a huge deal as we knew they were buddied up and were familiar with each other have dove together on a couple of occasions. When we all descended, we began our dive with a 90° course heading, taking us towards the far side of the cove, but with the poor visibility, the intended search for famed wolf eels, Itchy and Scratchy, was going to be fruitless. About 10 minutes into the dive, we decided that the combination of poor visibility and a very strong surge was making the training dive a bit less enjoyable than we would have hoped. In such, we decided to make our way back to shore. Finding our 220° heading, we began the surgy swim back, following the contours of the cove’s floor, being unable to see more than 5 feet most of the way back. Over rock piles, around kelp strands. Bat stars galore, a few anemone and a one lone fish are about all that I could see because of the reduced visibility.

Surfacing about 15 feet from Doc’s buoy, we were greeted by Laurel, Ron and Carrie. We were all very glad to see Ron who was able to instruct us through the exit procedure, something that had us scratching our hooded heads. After our instruction, I decided to ride the next swell in. Riding it in was great. I could feel the surge behind me and I began to kick, quickly finding myself bashing my knees on the boat ramp, but fine. Ron helped us each get our fins off, and while Carrie took them, Ron helped us up off our knees and readied himself to help the next diver.

After everyone was out and everyone had tried off, Carrie brought out the luscious lemon bars and Laurel brought out other goodies. Soon, Dan, David, Albert and the others on David’s boat were back and we were all hanging out. Soon it was off to the Breakwater where Carrie and Ron’s camper was parked, and Carrie was heating up chili. Jim, Buck and Sunny were there, along with Buck’s children.

The ride home was uneventful – a few showers and lots of very interesting cloud formations. I stopped off to get some fish at Phil’s which Mark made for dinner. It was nice to be home and relax with Mark after rinsing the gear and cleaning out the interior of the car.

All in all, it was great a great Meet & Greet and while the conditions left something to be desired, the challenge and the experience was well worth the lack of visibility. Thank you to Doc Wong, David, Michelle, Robin, Mike, Nathan, Ron, Carrie, David, Dan, Laurel, Roy, Jim, Buck and Family, and everyone else who made it out, and those of you who were going to come, but decided against it. I look forward to more diving – May 10th @ Corral Street.

Dive #53 – Saturday, 3/15/08 – Middle Reef – Point Lobos. Carmel, California. 11:02 AM. Max depth 30 feet, average depth of 27 feet. Bottom time 25 minutes (approximately 1800 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 50°, vis approximately 5 to 10 feet. Great time working on threesome diving with Michelle and Robin.

Author relaxing @ home after her dive

Daylight Savings Diving – Sunday, March 9th, 2008

2008-03-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

Five in the morning came nice and early on Sunday morning, daylight savings having robbed us of one precious hour of sleep. Amazing how much that can mess up your internal clock. Regardless, we got up and headed off in the Honda down to Monterey. Although we didn’t get to dive off a boat as planned, we were determined to make the best of the day and were off to find a site to dive. We immediately thought of MacAbee since I am going to be spearheading the ScubaBoard Meet & Greet there in July. However, when we got there the fog and the wave action out by the Fishmonger made us decide that we would retreat to the “safe harbor” of the Breakwater and practice our navigation and “see how long we could stay down for”.

The BW was busy. And I suppose that since it is now March, the dive classes are beginning and the winter quiet will be replaced. We surveyed the groups to determine where they were lining up on the shore and like most weekends, they stayed near the wall. In light of this, we decided that our best course would be to head out to the Metridium Fields and then do a really leisurely underwater swim back to shore, although the fog was so thick that we were wondering if it would obscure the references points on the shore, preventing us from finding the site. What was worse was the fact that the fog appeared to be getting thicker as the morning wore on.

Gear setup and wetsuits on, the fog was slowly loosing its grasp on the shore as the sun rose further in the sky, and soon we were walking down towards the stairs. Much to my surprise, I was greeted by Albert who was there taking his Master diver course. That’s definitely one of the nicest things about the Breakwater – always likely that you’ll run into someone that you know.

Down the stairs and soon we were in the water. Kicking out I could feel the effects of my previous day’s workout as my fin strokes felt weak. I was marginally frustrated but I knew that I needed to “power” through it if I wanted to make the dive a success. We finally made it out – lining up Reeside with the other visual cues although I think we were slightly off because we ultimately had to swim south a few yards to find the pipe.

Finding the pipe was great. It was absolutely covered in bat stars (Asterina miniata) and a few Feather duster worms (Eudistylia polymorpha) which are so delicate looking. Reaching the end, we peered in the hole to be greeted by two of the largest Sun stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) I had ever seen and one somewhat curious copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus). I couldn’t believe the size of these Sun stars – they were gigantic. And all those little legs ………….. !

Swimming out from the pipe, we easily found the Metridium Field. No one was there, just Mark and I. The visibility was approximately 20 to 30 feet, maybe slightly more and much depended upon location on the site itself. There was a lot of particulate in the water column towards to shore side of the site, but as we moved around between the two outcroppings, the water was calm and the visibility improved. I tried my hand at underwater videography for the first time. I have to check out the manual to see if there is anything that can be done about the green tint to all the images. Nice, large sea lemons (Peltodoris nobilis), San Diego Doris (Diaulula sandiegensis), doris (Doriopsilla albopunctata and Doris montereyensis), a number of giant chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri), black-eyed goby (Coryphopterus nicholsi), bat stars and – of course – Metridium (Giant Plumose Anemone) (Metridium giganteum).

At 1500, I was getting a bit chilled and since Mark was pretty enthralled by the end of the giant pipe, we reversed the course and headed back to shore via the pipe. This time, the Sun stars were out of the pipe and motoring down the pipe. Those little legs moving the star quickly along the pipe. We then headed back towards shore, over the rocky sections, checking out the small dori (Doriopsilla albopunctata) on the sand, a beautiful and tiny Hermissenda crassicornis on some rocks, finding a black-eyed hermit crab (Pagurus armatus) on its back, barnacles affixed to his shell and a Moss Crab (Loxorhynchus crispatus) holding on vertically to a small rock. Sea pens and blowing holes in the sand. Everywhere, bat stars. Over the patches of olive snails and then arrived back in the surging waters near the shore.

Nice dive, but really cold. Both Mark and I were pretty chilly and while I had hoped the sun would warm us up during the SI, the winds had picked up slightly and we were both chilled before we knew it. After rinsing off and watching the Marine Mammal Center ( http://marinemammalcenter.org/ ) herd up a stranded elephant seal from the beach, we took showers and then head off to find some lunch and walk around with the tourists on Cannery Row.
All in all it was a nice day. It was great to see Michelle, Dan and Albert and nice to do some diving. But I was really glad to get home and walked straight into my bed for a nice little nap. Awesome.

Dive #52 – Sunday, 3/9/08 – Metridium Fields at Breakwater Cover – Monterey, California. 9:43 AM. Max depth 53 feet, average depth 40 feet. Bottom time 46 minutes (approximately 550 PSI remaining at end of the dive). Water temp 53°, viz approximately 25-30 feet.

Video from the Metridium Fields

My favorite photo of the day

Hermissenda crassicornis

2008-03-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

I am ready.

And it looks like we're getting the opportunity to boat dive.

.... Awesome. :-)

Zodiac Diving – February 18th, 2008

2008-02-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

“We need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is well worth flirting with.”

– D.H. Lawrence

It all started with three-day weekend topped off with a lovely Marine forecast predicting virtually no swell on Presidents Day, and – more importantly – no NW swell.

I’d been unable to do Dive #50 for several weeks because of the weather that we’ve been experiencing lately. President’s Day weekend, however, was a pleasant forecast to behold, and being able to make my 50th with Mark was a welcome thought. So, after an already fun and busy weekend, we got up bright and early on Monday morning, checked the forecast and then began the trek down to Monterey. We planned to dive MacAbee Beach for the first time and we were both pretty excited about the prospect.

Plans can change in the blink of an eye however and just outside of Marina, we got a call from Ron, Carrie and their friend Kent, telling us that they were on their way down to Monterey and – better still, they had a boat! A boat!

Now, this bears some explanation. I’ve done a considerable amount of boat diving given my relative lack of experience, but only one time have I dove in Monterey from a boat. Monterey has tons of shore dives that you can do, provided that you are willing to do the surface swim – which I am. But a boat? A boat! Luxurious! As I am used to “giant stride” kinds of boats, the only apprehension I had was that we would be diving from a Zodiac. On any given weekend you can see various dive sites around Monterey and Carmel spotted with little inflatable boats. In seeing these Zodiacs, I already knew, a bit more “finesse” would be required, a bit more knowledge, planning, etc. First of all, there is the entry. Not a giant stride, but a back roll. Not a problem. Check. More onerous, however, is how you get back into the boat. This requires more practice and generally makes you feel like a giant sea lion trying to catapult itself onto the deck.

Was I worried? Nah. Okay, maybe just a little bit.

Arriving at the Breakwater, we began setting up our gear to get on the boat for our first dive. We were soon joined by Ron, Carrie and Kent who further informed us of protocols, requirements, and procedures. While I was still a bit apprehensive of the entire situation (not because of the boat, the diving, etc. but rather because I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, cause problems, be a bad diver, etc), Ron, Carrie and Kent were so at ease, full of great explanations and help that soon we were dragging our behind down the boat launch and jumping in to the boat to take off.

Slowly cruising out of the Breakwater, the cool air of the overcast day, I felt like I should be on Ocean Adventures with Jean-Michel Cousteau. Lightly bouncing on the Zodiac’s inflatable sides, looking at the tightly stored gear and at the other divers, we exited the cove and headed out into the Bay. My sense of “cool” quickly faded when Kent opened up the throttle and we were charging across the surface of the water at a clip of about 35 miles per hour. Clinging to the ropes to avoid being thrown in, I quickly regained my sense of composure and couldn’t stop smiling. This was going to be a great day. Great company, lots of fun and good diving.

Soon we were pulling up on the site – ahead of us was John’s boat and its divers were in the water. We anchored off to the north of their boat, and quickly our boat swung around over the site – Aumentos Reef. Aumentos – a site I’ve seen so many pictures of but, for whatever reason, never thought I would have the opportunity to dive – but here we were. After initial preparations, we donned our gear and rolled into the water to begin the dive.

The dive site was phenomenal. The walls were healthy in appearance – covered in hundreds of strawberry anemone, metridium anemone, giant spined stars, algae and purple ring topsnails. Sea lemons lounged around lazily next to bat stars and there were “small fry” in the water column. Swimming around, we headed further down walls and around the back. Soon Mark and I headed off in another direction, away from the anchor line, only to find ourselves along a sheer wall, dropping off to a sandy bottom. The wall was absolutely breathtaking. White-spotted anemone mingled with strawberry anemone, purple algae, orange ball sponges and other sea life. A lone fish hung in the water column, wedging himself down in a crevice in the rocks. Coming around the wall, we did not find the anchor line, so we decided ascend without it. After our safety stop, we came up to the surface about 20 yards away from the boat, before the other divers.

Reboarding the boat from the water proved to be more difficult than getting into the water. Mark and I really needed to work as a team in order to make sure that we didn’t get injured or lose any gear. Mark removed his BC after we clipped it off onto a carabineer attached to the boat. He then removed his fins and tossed them into the boat. He climbed into the boat by stepping on a “step” on the outboard motor and then hoisting himself up into the inflatable. After I handed him the camera, I swam around to the other side boat, attached the other carabineer to a D ring on my shoulder strap and then wiggled myself out of my BC, slipped off my fins and handed them off to Mark – all the while trying to maintain my position close to the motor. Getting back into the boat, we relaxed while waiting for the other divers to come back. Soon Carrie and Kent surfaced and reboarded the boat. Then Ron showed up and we motored back to the Breakwater Pier to offload the tanks and have some lunch.

After dining at the Russian deli at the Pier, we loaded new tanks onto the boat. Mark decided that he wasn’t going to dive as he had gotten cold during the first dive but joined us on the boat nonetheless. After deciding to go to the Anchor Farm, we head out of the Breakwater to the site. Since I wanted to take photographs, it was decided that Ron, another photographer, and I should be buddies. Dropping the anchor, we again donned our gear, and rolled into the water. As we head down the anchor line, the visibility was not promising for the first 20 feet or so. Then, it suddenly opened up – beautifully. Swimming out a few yards, we quickly realized that we hadn’t anchored at the Anchor Farm but rather the Chains.

The Chains is a beautiful site. Piled up atop a shale bottom is a huge mass of massive, old chains and cement blocks. All of which are covered in sea life. The site was gorgeous. All over the shale beds were various nudibranchs. Crossing over a stretched chain, I encountered a Spanish Shawl (Flabellina iodinea) with a San Diego Droid (Diaulula sandiegensis) followed by a sea lemon. Continuing around the site there were more nudibranch – doris, lemons, clown dorids. California Sea Cucumbers, Metridium, Strawberry Anemone, Sunflower Stars, Black-eyed gobies, beautiful sponges and more. Hidden in all the rocks, brittle stars – feathery and light, tucked under and in the rocks, shale ledges. Ron even saw a wolf eel being pestered by a fish, but by the time he was able to get me, the wolf eel had hidden itself in its home.

Because of our depth, it was getting near the time for me to end my dive. I signaled to Ron and we began our way back to the anchor line. Ascending in the water column, we did a one minute safety stop at 40 feet and then continued to the surface. Because I was low on air, I had a hard time maintaining my second safety stop at 15. Bouncing around after about 90 seconds, I hit 8 feet and was unable to stay down. We hit the surface and swam back to the boat, joining the other divers and Mark. Removing our gear, we boarded the boat, and started back to the Pier. Offloading, the gear and everything else, we all made our way out to get some dinner together.

In retrospect, I was foolish for being worried about diving from the Zodiac. It was a wonderful day, wonderful experience and there were wonderful dives. Many thanks to Ron, Carrie and Kent for the awesome day! D.H. Lawrence was right; flirting with the zodiac is well worth it.

Dive #50 – Monday, 2/18/08 – Aumentos Reef – Monterey, California. 11:17 AM. Max depth 56 feet, bottom time 25 minutes (approximately 1100 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, viz approximately 20-30 feet.

Dive #51 – Monday, 2/18/08 – The Chains – Monterey, California. 2:45 PM. Max depth 75 feet, bottom time 30 minutes (residual time 13 minutes; computer did not exceed no-deco limits; approximately 550 PSI remaining at end of the dive). Water temp 50°, visibility approximately 25 to 30 feet. Great being buddied with another photographer as it enabled me to go slowly, take photos. A very nice experience.

My favorite photo of the day

Spanish Shawl (Flabellina iodinea) with a San Diego Droid (Diaulula sandiegensis)

Nitrox Dive Certification - February 17th, 2008

2008-02-16T22:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we are finally getting around to getting our Nitrox Certification. We had planned on doing it while in Florida last year after my brother's wedding, but the plan to head south afterwards didn't come to fruition. So, being faced with some upcoming trips where the ability to use nitrox could extend our bottom times and/or increase our safety margins, we've decided to do the certification here in California so that we can do some nitrox dives when we vacation or even here in California.

My coursework is completed and, suffice it to say, I hate gas management. Having to read through PO2 levels and such is a real chore for me. Diving air is just as well for me, although I do like the idea of increased safety. As well, the other benefits of Nitrox diving are attractive. So off we go. Hopefully I won’t get all befuddled on the examination tomorrow!

UPDATE: Took the classwork and have passed the examination. Looking forward to doing some Nitrox diving in the near future on one of the vacations we've got planned. As for the course, I enjoyed learning about the various computation methods for nitrox dive planning. I really enjoy using dive tables and the Nitrox class just added a number of tables more. Appeals to my sense of anal-rententivity I suppose. I wish we could try Nitrox tomorrow on our dives that we are hoping to do - but we won't be at any depths sufficient to warrant the additional cost, get the benefits, etc. C'est la vie!

ScubaBoard Meet & Greet – January 19th, 2008

2008-01-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

Finally, we hit the water.

It’s 2008 and January 19th brought with it the first ScubaBoard event of the year! And what an event it was shaping up to be. Not only were there ScubaBoard-ers but some of the folks from the North Coast Divers were also going to be coming along and diving with us, meeting up for dinner and doing the night dive.

On Saturday, I must have been excited as I woke up at about 4 in the morning. We weren’t leaving the house until 6 am, so I knew that I had some time to hang out and think about the day’s events – boy, I was energized to get the day started.

Leaving the house, we made it to the Breakwater by about 8:15 am and the parking lot was already looking pretty full. To my amazement, there were divers already suited up, and some coming back from their first dives already. That is one of the great things about the Breakwater – there is also so much energy with all the activity, divers and tourists. It just draws you in and makes you feel euphoric. Feeling the energy, we began the arduous task of hauling all of the gear out of the car and to the designated area for the get-together.
Surprisingly we were the first of the group to arrive. Soon, however, we were joined by Jon and Amy, Jim, Ron and Carrie. Tao and Michelle showed up around the same time and everyone pulling out gear and getting set up for the first dive of the day – the Metridium Field! And more divers were coming – Brad, Jeff, Anne, Ben, Mike and Nathan and some of the NCD-ers.

Just after 10 AM, the leader of the dive, Ron, gave awesome instructions on how to find the Metridium Field (*see below for instructions). So, all dressed up, we entered the water as a group, kicking out to the appointed spot. Regrouping, we descended. Although visibility was not fantastic, Mark led us perfectly following Ron’s instructions and we soon came upon the famed Metridium Field. We swam around, taking some photos for a friend’s advertising campaign and, at 2000 PSI, began our course heading of 210° back to shore. Along the way, we engaged in an impromptu ocean clean up – recovering some plastic bags, bits and even the head of a broom! Swimming up just south of the stairs in about 3 feet of water (our intended exit point), we surfaced, removed our fins and walked back to shore.

After drying off, the fun surface interval ensued. The mini-grill came out, and soon we were basking in the unseasonably warm January sun and enjoying grilled hotdogs, brownies and sandwiches together with the rest of the group. After about 3 hours, it was time to get back in the water for the 2nd dive of the day. Conditions were awesome – minimal swell and surge, so the group decided to give the Breakwater Wall a go. Having donned my gear in the sun, we were getting warm so Mark and I entered the water ahead of the group. Although this caused a little bit of a confusion on shore, everyone eventually made it out to the wall and we ended up having a great time diving, although the visibility, again, wasn’t the best which was somewhat disappointing given the relatively calm conditions.

After drying off and packing gear – throwing kelp on Laurel and having the favor returned by Dannobee – we left to check into our hotel and start the next event of the day – regrouping at Buzzard’s where Doc Wong had graciously reserved their meeting room in order for the group to hang out and swap stories. The Breakwater Divers showed up, along with some of the North Coast Divers who had been diving at Point Lobos. Also, the infamous Chuck Tribolet and his wife joined us – sharing stories of his digital photography at IBM in the late 1970s. It was such a warm dinner – everyone sharing photos, jokes and dive tales. Soon, however, the talk amongst some came to the topic of the previously discussed night dive. After enduring 52 degree water, a slight barotraumas in my right ear and being showered and warm, the thought of putting on a cold, damp wetsuit was hardly appealing. However, we had two divers who were anxious to do their first night dive, so we headed back to the Breakwater.

And I was right – that wetsuit was COLD!

Hanging out with Carrie, Ron and Jim on the pier, I was cold. Oddly enough, it was warmer in the water than it was on the surface, so getting in was an unexpected and welcome surprise. After a slight hiccup as Brad had to return to shore for his weights, we descended. Visibility was marginally better than it had been in the afternoon, but there was little sealife to be found apart from the rockfish which hang lazily around the rocks, generally overhead. Having gotten a bit chilled while underwater, when I surfaced I rushed to get out of my wetsuit and into warm clothes. Needless to say, I didn’t hang around for long as the warm shower of our hotel room was calling my name.

I can’t express my happiness at meeting all of the wonderful divers who shared in the day’s events and festivities. Sharing my passion for diving with other local divers – being able to learn from them and help other divers grow and meet other divers is truly an tremendous experience.

Thank you to everyone who came and to those of you who wanted to join us but couldn’t (zen_man!). I had a wonderful day and hope to see you all soon!

Dive Stats:

Dive #47 – Saturday, 1/19/08 – Metridium Field at Breakwater Cove – Monterey, California. 10:59 AM. Max depth 55 feet, bottom time 35 minutes (1000 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, viz approximately 10-15 feet. Great dive with precise instructions provided by Ron. Unfortunately the camera batteries were running flat and so we weren’t able to take the photographs that I wanted to take in order to test the strobe on the anemone. Visited by a ton of fish “fry” and a Sea Nettle, the first I have seen. Swim back on a 210° courseheading from the Field was great -- over the pipes and around clusters of rocks covered in algae and kelp. Saw many of smaller snails in the sandy parts closer to the shore – purple olive snails (olivella biplicata) and the obligatory sea stars. Surface interval: 3 hours, 1 minute.

Dive #48 – Saturday, 1/19/07 – Breakwater Wall – Monterey, California. 2:35 PM. Max depth 39 feet, bottom time 39 minutes (Residual time 25 minutes; about 1200 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, viz approximately 15 feet. Because of the low tide, we did a long surface swim to find deep water. Camera was working and what a great dive to have it working on. The wall was just brilliant. It felt like everywhere I looked there was something to take a photo of – and it wasn’t all sea stars! Saw many decorator crabs, coonstripe shrimp (pandalis danae stmipson, I believe), a favorite of mine - purple ring top snails (calistoma annulatum), huge sun stars and another sea nettle! But, most treasured, are the delicate nudibranchs which were out in droves! Leopard doris (dialilulli sandiegensis), an adorable clown dorid (triopha catalinae), doris montereyensis and sea lemons – and some mighty big lemons at that! It was a great dive full of wonderful opportunities to see and photograph an array of sea life. Surface interval: 5 hours and 50 minutes.

Dive #49 – Saturday, 1/19/08 – Night Dive at the Breakwater Wall – Monterey, California. 9:04 PM. Max depth 43 feet, bottom time 34 minutes (13 minutes residual time; about 800 PSI remaining at the end of the dive). Water temp 52°, viz approximately 7-10 feet. Nice night dive buddied up with Brad and Nathan. Not a lot to see other than the rockfish, who were not at all interested in the bread that Jim placed in my BCD pocket to entice them to come closer during the dive. Would love to get some better, high-visibility dive lights.

* Instructions to find the Metridium Field at the Breakwater:

Beginning from the left side of the beach (your left if you are facing out towards the water), swim out until you are directly in front of Reeside Road. Swim out, inline with Reeside, until you are the midpoint between the white rocks off the shore from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the end of the Breakwater pier. You have to make sure that you are literally at the end of the Pier and aligned exactly between the Pier's end and the white rock. When you've reached this, you should drop down and hit a big pipe, approximately 10 inches in diameter. Continue swimming straight out from that pipe along a compass heading along the pipe and you will find the field. To get back to shore underwater, take a 210 degree compass heading and follow that underwater to the shore [but don't blame me if you get lost]!

Channel Islands Live-Aboard – Thanksgiving Weekend 2007

2007-11-29T21:26:00.001-08:00

I am not a huge fan of the Thanksgiving festivities with the hectic travel, etc. so Mark and I stayed home for the holiday. We were fortunate to have gotten two places with Adventure Sports Unlimited on the Vision boat out of Santa Barbara. Three days and nights upon a boat in a little berth with the noisy engine going – sounds good to me!

We left work early on Wednesday in order to make the potentially traffic-infested trip down to Santa Barbara to get to the boat early enough to get a good spot topside for our gear. I was surprised to see that there were only about 8 people had shown up by the time that we arrived. We got onboard, gear into the bunks and topside, tanks set up for the morning. Great fortune in that we ran into two divers, David and Dori, who had been on the same boat last New Years Eve. It was great to reintroduce ourselves to them and find some familiar faces onboard! Always a treat.

Soon after boarding, we were off to bed realizing that 4 am when the engines turned on and the boat left port would come early. Regardless, I slept like a log – anxious to get diving in the morning.

The mornings are always a bit confusing. You wake up, knowing that the boat has moved, but not really knowing where in the islands you are. Greeting David, he told me that we were out near San Miguel, off the coast of the island. I was intrigued and slightly excited as I know that San Miguel is not a typical destination for most boats due to currents, winds, etc. So the fact that we were anchoring off the shore made me excited. Soon Mark was up and we were waiting for Captain Tommy to give us the greeting, lay down the rule and then explain the dive.

The trip was a success. We spent almost the entire time out at San Miguel with 2 dives and an overnight near Santa Rosa’s shores. My strobe, unfortunately, packed up and quit on the second dive and so my photos all were done with the camera’s onboard flash. While disappointed, I did my best to remember Alcina’s advice (from ScubaBoard) about getting closer and closer still and ultimately, I think my photos came out quite well.

We were fortunate to have good dives, although the first two were slightly less successful (and deeper) than we had anticipated. However, we walked away having learned the lesson regarding pre-dive training and not always believing the dive briefing (or what we thought we heard in the dive briefing).

My logs are not as complete due to the bulk of the diving and the fact that, when onboard, I rarely stay up past 8 pm! All in all, we did 10 dives over the course of 3 days, all challenging in their own way although some more so than others. I enjoyed meeting and making friends with David, Dori and Eric and look forward to (hopefully) diving with them again in the near future!

Dive Stats:

Dive #37 – Thursday, 11/22/07 – Boomerang – San Miguel Island, California. 11:04 AM. Max depth 130 feet, bottom time 14 minutes. Water temp 55°, viz approximately 50-65 feet. Surgy water conditions so it was hard to maintain depth. Was surprised to see maximum depth and motioned for our group (3 of us) to ascend along the face of the pinnacle to shallower depths. Did not violate no-deco limits. Critters: kelpfish, sea lions playing with us on the anchor line, tons of strawberry anemone. Surface interval: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Dive #38 – Thursday, 11/22/07 – Boomerang – San Miguel Island, California. 12:58 PM. Max depth 98 feet, bottom time 19 minutes. Water temp 54°, viz approximately 20-30 feet. Strong current caused separation of divers with Mark resurfacing separate from the group. Because of the current, he did not descend as the current was more at depth and he knew that, by the time he returned to do the safety stop with us at 15’, we would have been further away. Ended up not seeing anything as the plan had been to drop to 70’ and then swim horizontally to the pinnacle. Because of the current and the low viz, we didn’t find the pinnacle and ended up surfacing. Drift during safety stop caused us to be way off course and so we had the “water taxi” ride back to the boat. Pride = gone. Surface interval: 1 hour 55 minutes.

Dive #39 – Thursday, 11/22/07 – Site name unknown – Off the coast of San Miguel Island, California. UNKNOWN TIME. Max depth 67 feet, bottom time 22 minutes. Water temp 55°, viz approximately 15-20 feet. Nicer dive because the site was a bit more shallow. While I don’t mind the deep dives, I prefer the bottom time. Saw a HUGE lobster crawling along the tops of some rocks in a slight depression. Probably about 2 feet, head to tail. I swam up behind him and grabbed him but he was fast and strong. He quickly evaded us. Male sheephead and lots of kelp rockfish. I was a bit concerned after the first two dives about locating the boat, but we ended up coming up right along side of it after having done our safety stop on kelp strands. Always a favorite of mine! Surface interval: 12+ hours – last dive of the day.

Dive #40 – Friday, 11/23/07 – Woodson Pinnacle – San Miguel Island, California. 9:32 AM. Max depth 96 feet, bottom time 18 minutes. Water temp 54°, viz 40-50 feet. Large pinnacle with its top resting in approximately 70 feet of water. Covered in crevices filled with strawberry anemone. Drop off to the left of the anchor line to approximately 110’ – according to some of the other divers. Diving over the overhang was like flying off of a cliff. Really amazing. Good buoyancy control allowed for exploration of the crevices and sides of the pinnacle without exceeding my desired depth. Saw strawberry anemone, aggregating anemone, scallops and wispy fans. Sallop (?) jellyfish (like a bunch of tubular jellies stuck together in a long belt like construction, slightly curved). Playful sea lions while we were doing our safety stop. I entertained myself by doing some ducking and twisting with them. Too cute. Surface interval: 1 hour 20 minutes.

Dive #41 – Friday, 11/23/07 – Woodson Pinnacle – San Miguel Island, California. 11:08 AM. Max depth 89 feet, bottom time 19 minutes. Water temp 54°, viz approximately 30-40 feet. Again at the same pinnacle, but I was quite happy to be there as there was so much to explore and check out. Mark tagged along with Dori to watch how she hunts for scallops and seemed pretty intrigued. I hung out nearby checking out all the stuff in the crevices. Surface interval: 3 hours 53 minutes.

Dive #42 – Friday, 11/23/07 – Caldecott Shoal – Santa Rosa Island, California. 3:19 PM. Max depth 55 feet, bottom time 31 minutes. Water temp 57°, viz approximately 30-45 feet. Really great site with good viz. Tons of fish (mostly rockfish) and some huge starfish (whitish and puffy) at the base of the anchor line. Rockfish, and one that seemed quite interested in having his/her photo taken. Every time that I would take a photo of it, s/he would swim slightly closer and give me a different angle. It was really great. I must have taken about 10 photos of it before I got bored and swam off! Came across a beautiful Hilton's Aeolid nudibranch (photo) clinging to the bottom of some kelp holdfasts. Lots of giant purple urchins, sea lemons and bat stars clinging to the algae on the ledges. Good safety stop along the anchor line, but not holding on. Surface Interval: 45 minutes.

Dive # 43 – Friday, 11/23/07 – Caldecott Shoal – Santa Rosa Island, California. Same site, as dive #42, we just moved slightly from the original dive site. 4:36 PM. Max depth 48 feet, bottom time 30 minutes. Water temp 57°, viz approximately 20-30 feet. Dive site was nice – easy run down the anchor line to were it touched bottom led us to the face of some nice ledges, heading up. Following the anchor line over the ledges, there was a flat bit followed by a nice large ledge, approximately 12-15 feet, covered in kelp palms along the top. The water surging over the top of the ledge made the palms gracefully sway in the water movement. All around were urchins, cowry shells and nudibranchs – even found some mating doris (Doris montereyensis) surrounded by their eggs! Tiny blood star about the size of a quarter, and again, tons of fish and warty-neck paddocks (Chaceia ovoidea) and sleeping red-spotted anemone.

Dive #44 – Saturday, 11/24/07 – Woodson’s Pinnacle – San Miguel Island, California. 9:13 AM. Max depth 81 feet, bottom time 25 minutes. Water temp 54°, viz approximately 30-40 feet. Nice dive with an average depth of 47 feet. More sea lemons and other critters. Mark found a nice crevice with cowries and a Spanish Shawl (Flabellina iodinea) tucked away. Surface interval: 1 hour 37 minutes.

Dive #45 – Saturday, 11/24/07 – Heebee Jeebee’s – San Miguel Island, California. 11:15 AM. Max depth 62 feet, bottom time 25 minutes. Water temp 55°, viz about 30 feet. Nice site although full of either baby fish or krill which made it somewhat hard to see. Average depth 40 feet. Surface interval 1 hour 27 minutes.

Dive #46 – Saturday, 11/24/07 – Heebee Jeebee’s – San Miguel Island, California. 1:09 PM. Max depth 51 feet, bottom time 22 minutes. Water temp 55°, viz approximately 25 feet. Average depth was 36 feet. Current picked up slightly causing us to come up on along the drift line. Resulted in a fairly long surface swim. While doing the safety stop in the water column, came across two jelly fish – one moon jelly and Leucothea pulchra (photo), both of which were beautiful. The latter, upon close examination, showed a coloring effect, almost as if it were lighting itself internally in a waving motion. Absolutely amazing.

To top it all off, on the way back into port, we encountered a huge pod of dolphins which accompanied the boat back in under a full moon. A perfect ending to a wonderful weekend of diving!

Video of Moon Jelly:

Bummer - Florida Diving!

2007-10-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Regretably, our dives in Florida were cancelled as a result of windy conditions from Tropical Storm Noel. Reported seas were 8-12' which makes boat diving a bit too adventurous for most, including us. Back to the cold waters of N. California for us!

ScubaBoard Get-Together @ Point Lobos - Sunday, October 7th, 2007

2007-10-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

We had anticipated doing a night dive on Saturday but the windy weather on Friday resulted in less-than-optimal visibility and so we decided that getting all the gear out, wet and then donning a cold, damp wetsuit in the morning wasn’t worth doing for bad visibility. So we opted to have margaritas with Michelle and her dive partner, Bob. A great way to end a beautiful day of whale and dolphin watching off the coast.

Sunday was the big day though – something I’ve been looking forward to for about a month now – diving at the famed Point Lobos State Reserve located in beautiful Carmel, California. Despite some car problems, we arrived at Point Lobos on-time. The skies were blue, the water calm and we were all looking forward to some great diving.

Point Lobos is a beautiful dive site with such easy access. The boat ramp provides a great in and out to the water, ideal given the shoreline around Whaler’s Cove. From the surface, you can see kelp all over the place and I knew it was going to be great. After kitting up and getting to the water’s edge I was thrilled to see a star fish sitting in approximately 2 feet of water just at the boat ramp. I’m not even wet and I am already seeing sea life already!

After a long surface swim out of the cove, being “chased” by Doc Wong and his buddy Mark on their scooters, we arrived at our drop down point. A quick “Doc Wong Video” introducing ourselves and all 8 of us were letting the air out of our BCs and heading to the bottom.

I was a bit worried about the visibility. On the surface I wasn’t able to see my fins when my legs were below me. Granted, they are not that ‘high vis’ but still – I was hoping that we wouldn’t be dealing with a low-visibility situation – especially after the swim out. As we began to descend, Mark and I stayed within close proximity to each other in the event that the visibility didn’t open up. Down we went, slow but steady. Mindful for the bottom, I thought my worries were going to be warranted – I kept expecting the bottom, yet I couldn’t see it. All of a sudden there is was – just below me about 10 feet. Reaching the bottom, we regrouped and everyone was taking photos of all the other divers.

I was AMAZED. My eyes must’ve been huge. The visibility was AMAZING - about 40 to 60 feet. Far better than any I had ever had in Monterey. It was magical. There we were - sitting in about 63 feet of water and I could see all around me – giant strands of kelp gracefully reaching for the surface – like a forest. I could have just sat there for the entire dive, but soon we were off – to the “Hole in the Wall” site.

After a few minutes, I saw some divers heading back to the cove about 20 feet above and to my right. And there it is the ledge, and it’s beautiful. The visibility is still amazing and I am just in heaven. I’ve got the camera in hand, testing out the new strobe that we just bought and I see so many subjects to photograph – huge anemones everywhere including the fish-eating urticina anemone (photo), kelp strands with snails clinging to the leaves, blood stars (photo abovet)and bat stars, beautiful sponges and algae. Even a few fish – gobies and sculpins! Finally I am seeing what I have always marveled in Brad’s photos. I swim to the wall knowing Mark is well aware of my location and start taking photos. And then I see it. Tiny but there – a nudibranch. More specifically, a yellow-marginate nudibranch (Cadlina luteomarginata) (photo). Not the first nudi I have seen, but the first one that I would, come hell or high water, get a good photo of. I was thrilled.

The rest of the dive was just as beautiful. A long surface swim back to a nice potluck lunch with the rest of the group during the surface interval. Our second dive was less “beautiful” as Mark and I decided we wanted a more shallow dive and opted to stay in the cove. During the short surface swim, we passed a seal who I entertained by making clicking noises to keep his attention and curiosity.

While the middle cove reef has prolific amounts of kelp and was teaming with fish and other sea life, the trade off for the shorter surface swim is the lack of visibility – we estimated it to be approximately 2 to 12 feet, only intermittently opening up to anything close to 14-15’. Despite the visibility, we used the dive as an opportunity to practice our buddy and navigational skills. We saw more kelp with snails, crabs, chiton, serfperch, anemones and fantastic orange-yellow corrals (photo).

It was a beautiful day – great weather, company and even the rangers were super-friendly. The site is a beautiful site full of life and vibrant colors. While the new site provided excitement, however, I found a part of me that was still longing for the familiarity of the Breakwater or Lover’s. Funny how those sites have (and probably always will) a special spot in my heart simply because I was certified there. I would go back to the Point Lobos again in a heartbeat though. It is truly amazing.

Dive Stats:
Dive #35 – Sunday 10/07/07 – Point Lobos “Hole in the Wall” – Carmel, California. 11:13 AM. Max depth 74 feet, bottom time 34 minutes (600 PSI remaining at end of dive with AL80). Ramp/beach dive. Water temp 50˚ (brrr!), vis approximately 40-60 feet.

Dive #36 - Sunday 10/07/07 – Point Lobos “Middle Cove Reef” – Carmel, California. 1:51 PM. Max depth 34 feet, bottom time 30 minutes (1100 PSI remaining at end of dive with steel 2700). Ramp/beach dive. Water temp 52˚, vis approximately 2-12 feet.

[Topside photo from diverdunne - copyrights belong to him. All of his photos can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/11413840@N08/collections/ ]

Free Diving for Abalone – Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

2007-09-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Mark and I attended my colleague’s annual Abalone Camping trip held at Mackerricher State Park just north of Fort Bragg, California (http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=436). The weather was forecasting cold, cloudy days but we were camping with some dear friends of ours who are versed in camping and well-prepared, so we knew we’d be just fine. It was chilly – averaging low 50’s during the day with drops to the low 40’s at night. But, surprisingly, our sleeping bags were warm and we did just fine.

Waking up early Saturday morning we were anxious to try our hand at Abalone diving. As many might already be aware, California regulations require a special fishing license stamp to be able to catch abalone, and furthermore, you may only hunt for them by free diving (sans tanks, BC, etc). So it is a pretty “primitive” form of diving. We thought we were heading out earlier than the actual departure time but when the time came, about 10 divers walked out the ¼ mile or so boardwalk out to the shoreline, down the cliffs and suited up, so it was a nice size group of people go out with. Wetsuits, fins, masks, snorkels, floats, weight belts (so heavy!), gloves, abalone gauges and bars and we were off.

North Coast diving is quite a bit different from Monterey diving. It is more rugged, more exposed. There is a greater need to time wave intervals and be very aware of your surroundings to prevent yourself from being bashed up against rocks.

Swimming out as a group we swam around rocky outcroppings, past them and continued out into the sea. There was a considerable surge and we had to keep repositioning to avoid having waves crashing on us and possibly moving us too close to the rocks. Visibility was not great, it was hard for me to see my fins as I was floating on the surface, and the vis didn’t clear up as we descended. In the end, about 12 abalone were caught, cleaned, breaded, cooked – a truly wonderful and rustic meal shared with great company.

[Image is not my own]

International Coastal Clean-Up Day Dives - Sunday, September 15th, 2007

2007-09-14T20:22:00.001-07:00

This September’s International Coastal Clean-Up Dives were organized by Aquarius Dive Shop in Monterey.

We met at Lover’s #3, just around the bend from Lover’s Cove, on the more exposed area of Lover’s Point, across from Borg’s Motel. There was a bit of confusion as to the meeting time since I had thought we were meant to be in the water between 8 and 9 am, but when Mark and I arrived just before 8, no one else was there. Of course, that made us a bit worried that we were in the wrong place, etc. I knew some of the other members from ScubaBoard would be there, so we waited to see if we recognized anyone. Eventually we met Albert who was there for the dives and who informed us that there were several people who were at the Dive Shop and they were going to be making their way over to the site shortly. After they arrived, we had a dive briefing, explaining how we could conduct the trash search and recovery and were assigned our “locations” from the shoreline as to what area of the bay we’d be searching. Afterwards, we were left to our own devises to kit up and get into the water.

Returning to the car, I quickly discovered that Mark and I had left a crucial part of our gear behind – our wetsuits. Not only are they important from the standpoint of keeping you warm, etc – but they are, in a sense, “intimate” pieces of gear. The only thing that really sticks to your skin. Plus, in Monterey, dive shops only rent 2-piece “farmer John” set ups which, while providing tons of exposure protection against the cold, also are a pain in the backside to wear, restrict your movement and are generally a nuisance. Being 2+ hours away from our home, I realized that we were, in essence, condemned to wear this set up if we were to dive that day….and I was, in no uncertain terms, not happy in the slightest about it.

Well, with some strong arming and a bit of tenderness, Mark triumphed and we were suiting up, overheating and struggling to get our gear down a stone set of stairs to the rocky shore below. The waves were soft on the shore and all the other divers had long since gone into the water to begin their search for hidden (or not-so-hidden) trash. Finally, we were set. Andy, the photographer who joined us for the Clean Up snapped two photos of Mark and I, and we entered the water. Soon we were doing the short surface swim out and dropping down, through the strands of kelp the sandy and eel-grass bottom below. The water was GORGEOUS! Not too cold, great visibility and just perfect.

As Mark navigated, I searched for garbage, mesh bag trailing empty behind me. Over rocky ledges covered in sponges, kelp, crabs, starfish, bat stars, anemones and other life and vegetation, we moved out, and back towards shore, making u-turns at appropriate intervals. No trash. Schools of fish – perch, senoritas, krill, and even my first cabezon! But still, no trash. We surfaced to take a compass heading back to our entry point on shore, only to find out we had covered substantial territory while underwater. Taking the compass heading, we returned back, surfacing only a few feet off from our original point of entry – not too shabby.

Beautiful surface interval – talking with the other members of ScubaBoard as we waited for our opportunity to go back in. Visited by a man on a horse (we are still wondering about the legality of the entire exercise!) – and soon we were kitting up for dive #2 for the day.

Again, out we went, not particular heading in mind, just with the goal of spending time in the kelp cathedrals just under the surface of the water. Dropping down, we landed right in a beautiful spot – beautiful, long strands of kelp, at least 15’ long reaching to the surface of the water and gracefully creating a canopy under which swam tons of black and red surfperch and a bunch of senoritas. We found rocky outcroppings just covered in life – sponges, sunflower stars, short-spined sea stars, algae, bat stars, anemones – strawberry anemone, green anemone and what I think was a rose anemone. Even a moon jelly and some more crabs. As always, we emerged somewhat puffed, but happy and feeling successful about our dives – even in the face of the rocky start (no pun intended!)

Dive Stats:

Dive #33 – Sunday 9/15/07: Lover’s Point #3 – Monterey, California. 10:22 AM. Max depth 20 feet, bottom time 45 minutes (1200 PSI remaining at end of dive with Al80). Rocky beach dive, water temp 63˚, vis approximately 20-25 feet.

Dive #34 – Sunday, 9/15/07: Lover’s Point #3 – Monterey, California. 12:23 PM. Max depth 30 feet, bottom time 35 minutes (1300 PST remaining with Steel 74). Rocky beach dive, water temp 55˚, vis approximately 20-25 feet.

[Sorry, I didn’t take the camera along with me this time. The photo above was taken in April when we were down in Monterey and were checking out Lover’s. It is a representation of the site although the conditions were quite different on Sunday.]

Labor Day Weekend with the Metridium - September 1st and 2nd, 2007

2007-09-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

... Weekend Diving ...

Last weekend was a gorgeous, 3 day weekend in San Francisco and I had some diving planned, so I couldn’t be happier. Saturday, Mark and I headed down to Moss Landing to go on a whale watching cruise. Unfortunately the whales (and dolphins) had packed up for the holiday weekend and headed elsewhere so we saw none. :-( But the operators gave us a rain check so we could come back another time. I was, however, a bit skeptical about the lack of life, wondering if the warmer waters were causing the marine life to head further out then normal.

Curious how this would affect our dives, if at all, we headed down to Pacific Grove to Lover’s Point where we were staying. After resting up (the Dramamine caused us both to be a bit sleepy), we headed out to the Breakwater to get a night dive in.

Parking along the pier wall, we unloaded our gear, dressed and spent some time chatting with some other friendly divers who were also hanging out. Something nice about the dive community in Monterey – as if the coldwater experience somehow creates a bond between divers, commiserating about the viz (or lack thereof), where the best areas are, etc. It doesn’t feel as “aggressive” as vacation dives where everyone is trying to show up the other divers.

But I digress…..

We entered the water at about 7:45 PM and swam out almost to the end of the gate on the pier. Dropped down in about 17 feet of water and just as the sun was releasing its hold on the day. Reaching the bottom, we checked our compass headings and started out. Soon we were sinking into the deeper rangers of 30 feet and the tube anemones began to appear and so did the sea life. Tons of sand dabs flitted around in the sand, a tiny octopus entertained Mark and I until it swam quickly away, squeezing itself down into its hole. A dendronotus danced about 1 foot from the ground and other fish swam idly by, as though we were of no consequence. A shrimp hung out by an anemone, cute and delicate. We made it a short dive and came on shore with tons of air left. We didn’t mind, we were happy with all the life that we had seen.

Sunday morning we got up early to pack up the gear that had been rinsed the night before and hung to drive. Off to Monterey Bay Dive Center to get our tanks refilled and head back to the Breakwater to wait for Wayne and Kelley. Wayne, who we had met a few weeks prior during the event I had organized had offered to lead us to the famed Metridium Field which lies right off the shore from the Breakwater, a hearty surface swim out, but a rewarding one. We got there just before 8 and reserved a nice spot on the grassy area overlooking the beach. The sun was quickly rising on the horizon, promising to be a warm day. Our friends arrived just before 9 and set up their canopy and gear.

We entered the water just after 10:30 AM in search of the Metridium Field. Swimming out a long way, we regrouped and dropped down together in about 25 feet of water. Off we swam – Wayne and Kelley in the lead, Mark and I (with my camera) behind them. Visibility wasn’t that great – we had to stay on their heels in order to remain as a group. Crossing the “big pipe” (“not the small pipe”) on a 30 degree compass heading, we swam and swam. Finally, Wayne turned around and pointed off to about 45 degrees. I couldn’t really tell what he was pointing at, but swam in the direction, and there they were! The eerie white Metridium – huge, between 1-2 feet long, covering the surfaces of these rocks. Some fully extended, looking soft and inviting. Others balled up against the world, eating or having been touched by something disagreeable. I was amazed. I had seen them when we did our drysuit checkout off the boat, but because of the leak in my suit (at 80 feet in January --- brrrrr!!!!) we surfaced after only about 10 minutes. But this site seemed to have so many more and they were stunning. A kelp rockfish hung out on top of a group of them, peacefully allowing me to come within a few feet of him. I found a sea lemon surrounded by some strawberry anemone hiding in between some of the rocks. We floated around, checking out the scene for about 10 minutes or so before it was time to head back to shore. Following a near-perfect route back, we emerged in almost the exact same spot as we had descended at. Kudos to Wayne and his supreme navigation skills!

After a nice surface interval and changing out the gear, we headed back into the water, this time for a little tour of the Breakwater – to swim through the kelp and scope out cool things to take photos of. We saw black serfperch and rainbow serfperch , what I think were sardines, amongst other critters. A mask problem cut the dive slightly shorter than I had hoped, but we got some good photos nonetheless.

Dive Stats:

Dive #30 – Saturday 9/1/07: Breakwater Cove – Monterey, California. 7:45 PM. Max depth 41 feet, bottom time 34 minutes. Beach dive, water temp 63˚, vis approximately 10-20 feet (depending upon location).

Dive #31 – Sunday, 9/2/07: Breakwater Cove – Monterey, California. 10:35 AM. Max depth 48 feet, bottom time 42 minutes. Beach dive to the Metridium Field. Water temp 55˚, vis approximately 7-20 feet (depending upon location). Surface interval approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Dive #32 – Sunday, 9/2/07: Breakwater Cove – Monterey, California. 1:05 PM. Max depth 27 feet, bottom time 34 minutes. Beach dive, water temp 63˚, vis approximately 10-12 feet.

Meet and Greet - Monterey, California - August 19th, 2007

2007-09-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

Does life get much better than this?!

Went diving on Sunday with a bunch of local divers that had a “Meet and Greet”. We met up at the Breakwater shortly after 7:15 AM after picking up my tanks from a local dive store. The weather was perfect – sun just beginning to shine brightly, that time in the morning where everything just feels so new, fresh and full of opportunity (yes, I am a morning person). Two of the divers from the group had already arrived and set up a nice canopy on the grassy area, complete with tarp and chairs. We proceeded to haul our gear over and then hung out talking to the couple that were there already, watching the water at the Breakwater as it calmly lapped the shore. The water looked divine – so peaceful, some divers making their way in, seals down the pier doing their best to make a ton of noise. I was anxious to get into the water and start exploring.

Around 9:00 we were all geared up – 7MM fullsuit with a 5/3 hooded vest. It was getting hot and so I knew that the 55° water would be a welcome respite from the shore. Since one of the two divers that had been there was playing “rescue class victim,” his wife came along with Mark and I on our first dive. Swimming into the water from the shore, the water was indeed cool, but it felt great against the early heat of the day. Descending down, we were just on the edge of some kelp. Mark leading, Kelly and I followed him through the kelp, over the rocks, in and around all over the place. Tons of batstars, starfish,spiny rockfish, and – of course – kelp. When we hit 1200 PSI, we decided to start meandering our way back to shore.

All of a sudden, we gained another dive partner – a seal. First s/he was exploring Mark’s head and tank. I was desperately trying to get Mark’s attention, to no avail. The seal then made his way back to Kelly, doing flips and turns all the way. Playing with her tank, hood and then biting on her flippers. We got out of the kelp, each time I turned around to make sure she wasn’t stuck, there was the seal – swimming just over her shoulder, just as though s/he has fallen in line with our group. Then all of a sudden, he turned his attention to me – swimming over, going for my hood, playing with my fins – swimming off. And then, much to my extreme joy, s/he swam straight for my face – coming closer and closer until it touched its nose to my mask, I could see every little whisker. Only briefly though before s/he swam off for good. Poor Mark only got to see a bit of the fun since he had been in the lead and, whilst Kelly and I had stopped completely, he continued on. Realizing we weren’t with him, he came back for the tail end of playtime.

Ecstatic, we swam back to the shore underwater. Grinning ear to ear.

After a long surface interval, during which more divers came, we hung out – exchanging stories, snacking and sunning. It was a beautiful sunny day in Monterey – such a change from the relatively foggy summers of San Francisco. I got to play “distressed swimmer” and was rescued by one of the training classes. Nothing like getting towed back to shore and dragged up the beach!

Around 1 pm, I was starting to get warm and ready for our 2nd dive. Almost the entire group suited up and we headed out in search of the famed Metridium Field. After a relatively long surface swim, we dropped down to depth. Unfortunately, the kelp was a bit thicker than anticipated and Mark and I lost the rest of the group. While slightly disappointed, I had the camera with me and was quite happy to go off in search of some good photo opportunities – which we found. More kelp, batstars, starfish, beautiful vegetation, cormorants diving from the surface , massive amount of what I think were krill and some black surfperch, even an entire school of them!, etc. With about 1100 PSI, we were back on shore and happy as two clams.

Burgers with the group, more stories and sunshine and we packed up at about 4:30 to make the 2 hour drive home. It was a great day filled with wonderful dives and great company. I was really glad that I took the time to organize it and hope to see all those divers again in the future!

Dive Stats:

Dive #28: Breakwater Cove – Monterey, CA: Max depth 32 feet, bottom time 37 minutes. Beach dive, water temp 54°, vis approximately 12-15’. Surface interval approximately 2.5 hours.

Dive #29: Breakwater Cove – Monterey, CA: Max depth 27 feet, bottom time 40 minutes. Beach dive, water temp 54°, vis approximately 12’.

Finishing up my Advanced Open Water Course

2007-09-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

Oh, diving is what I love to do. Saturday were my last checkout dives for my Advanced Open Water certification. And while we really only had to do one dive, the night dive, we went for a late afternoon dive with the group to do a navigational dive as well as the instructor is infamous for his fun navigation exercise. We arrived in Monterey at about 4:15 pm having battled all the traffic heading to Santa Cruz, kitted up and entered the water at about 5:15 or so. While the instructors were setting up the course, we floated on our backs enjoying the relatively calm and surprisingly warm waters at the Breakwater. After about 30 minutes, the instructors informed us that we wouldn’t be able to do a navigation course as intended due to a white out from other divers who had carelessly kicked up the silt and sand, causing visibility to be less than 4 feet. Joy. So we dropped down, directed 300° to the kelp and then 120° back to the float line. Surprisingly we found it given the lack of vis, and even more surprising was that the other divers and the instructor didn’t make it back but were off about 30-40 feet. Ha. That made me feel good. Dropped down again with a compass heading of 270° back to the shore.

As we neared the shore, I noticed a seal darting off. Couldn’t see much of him except his outline and size. I was thrilled as I love diving with seals. But then something else started playing around. As we were only in about 3 feet of water, we stood up and were surprised to see two sea otters about 6 – 8 feet away from us in the water. How fun! They were really engaged with us, floating on their backs and maintaining eye contact, one dipping under the surface of the water, coming over to my fins and nipping at each one of them and then heading back to the surface. And then again, but this time with Mark’s fins.

While we were sufficiently engaged with the otters, we knew that we had to get out of the water and start preparing for the night dive. Having had a bit of apprehension about the night dive, Mark and I went over our buddy skills, hand signals, lost buddy procedures, etc. Kitted up and had a snack and waited for the sun to dip below the horizon.

At dusk we headed into the water with 2 instructors. Hanging out in the water we watched the two otters playing on a float that was left by a group of divers who had left for the day. Finally we dipped down under the water with a plan to skirt along the side of the pier, near the rocks. Lights on, we descended. Apprehension quickly lost out to excitement and marvel. There is something infinity amazing about night diving – colors seem more vibrant, discoveries lie just outside of the edges of your light’s beam. Gracefully gliding over a field of purple sand dollar poking ½ out of the sand, we found our way to the anemone field that we had previously dove several months earlier. Anemone seeming all the more eerie with their tentacles waiving around pulling in nutrients, tucking back in at the sense of my finger. Continuing on, we found giant nudibranches in vibrant reds and oranges, crabs, watched octos blowing sand out of their holes and came upon a sea pen (like in the photograph), its colors almost shining in my light. Soon, too soon, we were heading back to shore, over the anemone fields, through the sand dollar patch, slowly heading shallower. Amazing and fun and itching to do it all over again!

Swimming back to the shore on the surface, tired and happy. Holding hands and just relaxing. Fins off in the water, walked up on the shore, happy having finally completed my coursework. Even happier to feel that some of my nervous-air consumption issues were not present!

Dive Stats:

Dive #26: Breakwater Cove: Max depth 18 feet, bottom time 15 minutes. Nice short dive! Beach dive, water temp 59°, vis approximately 3 feet. Surface interval 1 hour 55 min.

Dive #27: Breakwater Cove: Max depth 46 feet, bottom time 39 minutes. Beach dive, water temp 55°, visibility 7-10 feet.

[Image is not my own]

First "Solo" Dive (without a group) for Mark and I - April 7th, 2007

2007-09-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

Finally! Mark and I hit the water on Saturday. Driving the near 2 hours to Monterey bay we went to the place where it all started for both of us - Breakwater Cove. Suiting up felt a bit chaotic. Shore diving can be like that sometimes. We were fortunate, however, to have scored a parking space right at the wall, near the top of the stairs leading down to the beach. Fortune favors the brave, right? :-)

All suited up we headed into the water. Swam out about 100' feet or so - I am not that great with distances. Dropped down at about 15' to a nice, smooth, sandy bottom. Finning out further, Mark taking photos of starfish along the way. With me navigating, we worked our way to a slight drop off where I believed we'd find a metridium field that I had read about earlier that morning. Sure enough, hitting 35' they started showing up. More and more of them - dotting the entire bottom. Well, they turned out to be anenome, but they were still very awesome.

How great to be in the sea's garden. Decorator crabs creeping slowly along, blending into the garden surroundings. Starfish and sea cucumbers wallowing around.

After about 20 minutes of exploring the Field, we decided to navigate our way back to shore. Emerging we were both exhilarated from the field, our first non-dive group dive, taking photos for the first time, etc. Despite the shortness of the dive, we both felt accomplished and relaxed. Mission accomplished!

Dive Information: Site Name: Breakwater Cove

Location: Monterey, California

Date: 4/07/07

Equipment: 7mm (1-piece), 5/3 hooded vest, camera, light, fish identifying chart, 80-aluminum, compass, etc. Dive Conditions: shore dive, sunny weather. Water Conditions: Water temp 50 degrees, visibility approx 25', relatively calm water, little surge, no current Depth: 46' max, 34 minutes.

Marine Life: starfish, anemone, decorator crabs, sea cucumbers, small fish (unsure what).

New Years 2007 Channel Islands Trip

2007-09-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Spent three days diving off the sides of a 100 foot boat around the northern Channel Islands, having left Santa Barbara’s port on Saturday morning at about 4 am. Having chugged the 20 or so nautical miles out to the islands during the wee-hours of the morning, it was nice to wake to a beautiful sunrise, and the first island, Anacapa, just in the distance.

Did three dives around Anacapa Island on Saturday, sitting out the last dive because of Mark not feeling well. The next morning his cold persisted and we both sat out the first morning dive. I was invited to tag along with another couple on the later dives around Santa Cruz Island, and eagerly joined in. Fortunately, Mark’s cold was better on Monday morning and we were able to finish off the trip with three more dives before the boat headed back to the mainland.

Of all the dives, the last dive was my absolute favorite of all times. Having been told of an underwater arch, Mark and I jumped in – first couple off the boat for the last dive of the day. Determined to find the arch that many others reported being unable to locate, we took very precise directions from one of the captains, got a compass heading and leaped in. Dropping down to 40 feet into a sandy bottom with a few sea urchins and shelled crabs, we headed due north, and lo and behold, found the most exquisite underwater arch. Covered in urchins, kelp and other vegetation, we swam through the arch side by side. What awaited on the other side took my breath away. Coming out on the other side, the sea was like an aquarium. About 200 fish swam peacefully in the clear water, kelp strands slowly moving in the current. It was absolutely beautiful.

We swam to a sandy patch and lowered to the bottom. Within moments, two sea lions swam into the area, tearing around, buzzing us as we sat there. They would swim close, and then dart off into the distance, only to return a few minutes later. We spent about 10 minutes quietly enjoying their company, the fish, the urchins, the peaceful ocean – just us and nature. Soon other divers were making their way through the arch and we decided that it was the best time to head back and let the other enjoy the area – albeit not as serene as we had by ourselves.

What a wonderful trip. A wonderful experience. I wish I were back in nature’s aquarium with the lovely sealions again.

This is all the information that I logged into my divelog so it does not contain the minute by minute information as to the specifics of depth, etc.

12/30/06: Dive #1 of the Trip: Dive #13 overall Site: Goldfish Bowl - Anacapa Island. Calm water, small surve, no current. Water temp 57 degrees. Deepest point, 41 feet, 37 minutes bottom time. Notes: current became strong after about 10 minutes down, resulting in us not finding the anchor line. Long swim back to the boat on the surface.

12/30/06: Dive #2 of the Trip: Dive #14 overall Site: Corral Reef - Anacapa Island. Visibility about 40', calm water and a slow current. Water temperature about 58 degrees. Max depth 53 feet, 23 minutes bottom time. Notes: Beautiful dive, long, giant kelp strands and tons of starfish, including a number of sunstars. Swam to the right through the kelp to an amazing ledge that just dropped, supposedly to about 70 feet. I only went down part way, and then turned to look at the ledge and was amazed by the fish hanging in the water, the kelp "blowing" in the waters movement. One of my nicest dives ever.

12/30/06: Dive #3 of the Trip: Dive #15 overall Site: Phillips Cove - Anacapa Island 57 degree water, 25' visibility. No current small surf. Maximum depth 36', 28 minutes bottom time. Note: Site is nicknamed "Sea Urchin Alley" which was an appropriate nickname. Tons of sea urchins, some as big as basketballs (overall size). Finally saw a spanish shawl! Relaxed dive.

12/31/06: Dive #4 of the Trip: Dive #16 overall Site: Flame Reef – Santa Cruz Island Calm water with small surf, slow current. Weather slightly cloudy. Water about 55 degrees, 30’ visibility. Max depth 60’ with bottom time of 27 minutes. Notes: Nice site with huge kelp strands. Ascent on a kelp strand. Regrettable long surface swim post-dive.

12/31/06: Dive #5 of the Trip: Dive #17 overall Site: Cobra Head – Santa Cruz Island Water temp 55 degrees, visibility about 25’. Calm water, small surf and no current. Still cloudy. Maximum depth 42’ with 33 minutes bottom time. Notes: Dove with Rich, instructor from Pinnacles Dive Center along the cliffs at the site. Saw a bunch of sea hares, played with a sunstar measuring about 18 inches across. At the anchor line at the start of our ascent, two sea lions darted by. Really nice.

1/1/07: Dive #6 of the Trip, Dive #18 overall Site: Unknown, deep dive – Anacapa Island Maximum depth 90 feet at the anchor line. Sunny water and calm water. Bottom time, 21 minutes. Notes: Nothing very interesting to see except some brittle stars and sea urchins. Slight problem with ear clearing on descent at about 40-45 feet.

1/1/07: Dive #7 of the Trip, Dive #19 overall Site: Underwater Arch – Anacapa Island Water temperature 57 degrees, good visibility, about 30 feet. Calm water, small surf with a slow current. Max depth 36 feet, with bottom time of 28 minutes. Notes: Nice dive at a sea lion rookery. Strong surge at the rocks. Only a small amount of playtime with the sea lions at the start.

1/1/07: Dive #8 of the Trip, Dive #20 overall Site: Underwater Arch – Anacapa Island 57 degree water, calm with small surf and almost no current. Visibility about 30’. Max depth 35’, total bottom time 25 minutes. First ones into the water, and this time we found the underwater arch for which the site is named. Swam through side by side and swam into an aquarium with 100s of fish swimming around. At first I hung onto a kelp stand soaking in the environment, we them moved to a sandy patch on the bottom. Sea lions were playing with us, zooming in and out, and all around the arch. We were alone at the arch for about 10 minutes before any of the other divers arrived. Amazingly to have it all to ourselves in such a peaceful and clear state.