Catalina Visibility

[Tim R Alcoser JR]

Let's just hope it's better the weekend of June 9th! I get a free ride on the Express!

Happy...Birthday?

---------- Post added ----------

Merxlin beat me to it.

Vis here off the island can vary considerably from location-to-location, day-to-day or even hour-by-hour. Recently vis at depth (say > 50 ft) has not been fantastic, but in the shallows above 40 it has varied from very clear to somewhat turbid. Even within the dive park one can experience quite different levels of turbidity depending on the number of OW classes being held that day.

May-June tends to be plankton and bat ray dominated. Plankton blooms turn the water greenish and restrict visibility. Bat rays stir up the soft bottom when they feed and I've seen vis drop to near 0 in May because of them... again, at specific sites where they are feeding. Late spring early summer can also have restricted visibility as giant kelp deteriorates with warming water temperatures and the invasive Japanese alga Sargassum horneri dies as well.

Some of the best visibility is in fall and winter (when there aren't storms at least). Summer can be very clear during El Nino years because the warmer water doesn't contain enough nutrients to foster phytoplankton growth... but the kelp often disappears during warmer events.

Whatever you do in any season, don't try to swim behind me. I stir up a dust cloud that will blind you!

I won't swim behind you, lol. Perhaps one day i'll have the honor of swimming with you though? When I get better and more dives on my log book first.

 

[keithbt]

The visiblity is alway best in fall and winter.......

 

[fnfalman]

You may not have seen it but your last diver (not Natalie) was roto-tilling his way out there. That did not help the viz.

I tried to give advices, but people do what they want to do.

 

[merxlin]

I tried to give advices, but people do what they want to do.

Amen to that!

 

[tracydr]

Vis may not have been the greatest this week but the big creatures sure were out. We saw giant sea bass (2 really big ones and some juveniles) on a day and a night dive, more lobster than we've ever seen anywhere before, including Channel Islands, a huge (6foot) guitar fish, a baby (2foot) guitar fish and last, but certainly not least- while I was hanging out at the dive buoy before exiting on our very last dive, Thursday night around 10:30 pm, I saw a Blue Shark swim right under me! I yelled to my husband in hopes that he would see it but he was in the process of timing his exit and by the time he could get back towards me I couldn't see the shark anymore.
He was a nice big one, too!

 

[drbill]

Are you sure it was a blue shark. Although they are seen in the dive park very infrequently, it might have been a soupfin (or tope) shark which looks very similar. See my video on soupfins.

Visibility has dropped substantially. I went down to do a few dives yesterday in my 3/2mm wetsuit and found out it was 55-59 F at 30 ft so I thumbed the dives. Vis was reported at 10-20 ft.