FrankPro1
Contributor
What an incredible morning spent at Phil's Reef!
Phil's Reef is an artificial reef system consisting of a concrete platform, several pylons and a boulder field. It is located off of Redondo Beach in 80ft of depth. Every time I'm invited to join Phil and Merry on one of their explorations I get to see new exciting locals populated with rare off shore critters. Today certainly stuck to that norm with my first Mola Mola encounter.
Upon descent Merry led me over to two Octopus dens with several females guarding their eggs. The No Pressure duo has keenly documented their maturation over the last few weeks. We didn't catch the hatching explosion Walter Marti reported earlier in the week but just seeing them in the flesh was epic.
Leaving the Octopus dens behind I swam back to the concrete platform. On my way there I found this Yellow Crab along one of the pylons.
As I reached the platform Phil showed me where the juvenile Wolf Eel had been. Though he had moved deep out of sight I was still able to find one interesting critter underneath the platform, this Ronquil. He was positioned underneath a small ledge, so the photos had to be cropped in post to fill the frame.
Looking back south east off the platform I saw a distant boulder field. The field was teaming with life. Lots of fish were out and about, munching and going about their morning routine. It was here that I found a very photo-phobic Lingcod. I made sure to approach him slowly and indirectly, but no matter what I did, he would jump and swim away every time I closed in for a shot. With only a few minutes left of no-deco time, I had to settle with one half-way decent underexposed image. Next time I'm here I will make it a point to explore this area further.
Well, I finally put my computer into deco. As I approached the anchor line I saw Phil and Merry taking shots of Mola Mola. I checked my air, saw that I had over 1400 psi and decided I could afford to spend some time documenting these surreal creatures "despite my NDL's zeroing out". My still shots came out pretty horrible, but here is a quick RAW vid of one individual being cleaned.
[video=youtube;37w9ElGrEyk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37w9ElGrEyk&list=UUHcOWPjU4Rn1tarSy754_jA& index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
Phil's Reef is an artificial reef system consisting of a concrete platform, several pylons and a boulder field. It is located off of Redondo Beach in 80ft of depth. Every time I'm invited to join Phil and Merry on one of their explorations I get to see new exciting locals populated with rare off shore critters. Today certainly stuck to that norm with my first Mola Mola encounter.
Upon descent Merry led me over to two Octopus dens with several females guarding their eggs. The No Pressure duo has keenly documented their maturation over the last few weeks. We didn't catch the hatching explosion Walter Marti reported earlier in the week but just seeing them in the flesh was epic.
Leaving the Octopus dens behind I swam back to the concrete platform. On my way there I found this Yellow Crab along one of the pylons.
As I reached the platform Phil showed me where the juvenile Wolf Eel had been. Though he had moved deep out of sight I was still able to find one interesting critter underneath the platform, this Ronquil. He was positioned underneath a small ledge, so the photos had to be cropped in post to fill the frame.
Looking back south east off the platform I saw a distant boulder field. The field was teaming with life. Lots of fish were out and about, munching and going about their morning routine. It was here that I found a very photo-phobic Lingcod. I made sure to approach him slowly and indirectly, but no matter what I did, he would jump and swim away every time I closed in for a shot. With only a few minutes left of no-deco time, I had to settle with one half-way decent underexposed image. Next time I'm here I will make it a point to explore this area further.
Well, I finally put my computer into deco. As I approached the anchor line I saw Phil and Merry taking shots of Mola Mola. I checked my air, saw that I had over 1400 psi and decided I could afford to spend some time documenting these surreal creatures "despite my NDL's zeroing out". My still shots came out pretty horrible, but here is a quick RAW vid of one individual being cleaned.
[video=youtube;37w9ElGrEyk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37w9ElGrEyk&list=UUHcOWPjU4Rn1tarSy754_jA& index=1&feature=plcp[/video]
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I was really amazed that he let me approach so close. I didn't mean to get right on top of him but the slight current in the water column brought me in face to face.
