Date: Wednesday 12-01-04
Dive Location: Casino Point, Avalon, CA
Time: 09:06am (#1), 10:43am (#2), 12:32pm (#3)
Bottom Time: 0:50 (#1), 1:01 (#2), 12:32pm (#3) 0:35
Max Depth: 61 (#1), 32 (#2), 36 (#3)
Vis: 40 50
Wave height: N/A
Temp at depth: 62
Surface Temp: 64
Tide information: Rising to 5.0 @10:32am
DIVE #1:
I was a little concerned the day before this dive, since there had been some storms over the past few weeks, and Avalon Harbor had been closed due to heavy waves. I PM'd Dr. Bill and asked him about conditions at Casino Point. He said it had been pretty bad over the weekend and he wasn't sure if it would clear up by Wednesday. But I called both Scuba Luv and Diver's Supply on Tuesday, and they said it was clearing up nicely, so my buddies Jim and Greg and I decided to give it a chance. We planned on doing three dives and not going too deep, so we could have shorter surface intervals and finish in time to have some drinks and nachos at the Catalina Cantina before catching the 3:30pm Express back to Long Beach.
It turned out to be a great day, but it was COLD. The water temp wasn't any lower than normal, but the chilly weather topside made it feel absolutely frigid, and it was hard to warm up between dives. The park was deserted when we arrived. Something seemed to be wrong with the scenery as we swam out to the buoys, but it took me a minute to figure out why. Then I realized what it was - the farther of the two buoys directly in front of the stairs was gone, having broken off in the last storm. Nothing but the anchor weight and the nub of its mooring chain remained at the bottom. We descended and headed east, towards Little Casino Reef.
Lots of life along the reef today. All the usual fish (garibaldi, sheephead, kelp bass, senoritas, rock wrasse, etc.), and still a lot of baby blacksmith, blueband gobies, and senoritas. Large schools of sargo in the canopy at about 20'. Oscar showed up for a few minutes, looking bigger than ever, but didn't stick around long. Greg found a small moray in a crevice, and a couple of octopi under a ledge nearby. One of them seemed to be a little larger than what we usually see, and was wrapped around a beer can. He didn't seem inclined to let it go, so that's one piece of litter we couldn't clean out of the park. I found a crevice filled with a swarm of cleaner shrimp, but no moray in sight. Saw a few uprooted clumps of kelp, with the holdfasts hanging 10' or so off the bottom. I also saw a lone opaleye foraging along the reef who was noticeably larger (about 1½ long) than most of the others in the dive park.
I went a little deeper than planned, but only for a couple of minutes. Most of the dive was 50' or shallower. Vis decreased a bit along the reef, but improved again when we got back to the area of the buoys. Greg found a giant kelpfish in the undergrowth near the stairs. The tide was high and getting higher, which made for a very easy exit.
DIVE #2
We kept it really shallow on this dive by heading west from the stairs. Not much to see in that direction if you go deep, since it turns to sandy bottom deeper than 30' or so. Greg found a very small moray peeking out of the rocks within 20' of the stairs. We swam past the old pier pilings, where we found some more octopi wedged into the crevices. I saw a really colorful baby garibaldi on the reef nearby, and spent a frustrating few minutes trying unsuccessfully to get its picture. No dice - he was moving too fast and wouldn't hold still long enough.
We kept swimming west until we reached the edge of the dive park. I tried to get a picture looking straight up the buoy chain, with bubble rings floating up into the light - also unsuccessfully. I'm usually pretty good at making rings, but I couldn't get one to hold together today. Saw a C-O turbot along the bottom, but not much else in the way of sand-dwelling critters.
We headed back slowly, and found some spots definitely worth exploring in the future. I always thought the area west of the stairs was boring compared to the park's eastern reefs, but it turns out I just never went shallow enough. We stayed in the 10' - 20' range, hugging the rocks along the shoreline. Absolutely beautiful area, with lots of shallow crevices to explore, and the ambient light at that depth was so bright that a flash was unnecessary for many of my pictures. Unfortunately, my camera's auto focus crapped out on me on the way back, and I couldn't fix it for the rest of the day. Lots of perch in the shallow zones - zebra, black, kelp, and a few rubberlips as well. Jim and I found a lingcod resting on the rocks about 10' from the stairs. He was about 18" long, and would have made a great picture if my camera had been working.
The tide was at its highest at that point, and we swam halfway up the stairs before exiting. Greg said that when I took off my mask and pushed my hood back, my entire face was as blue as a corpse. Although I couldn't see it for myself, I believe him. Our hands were all shaking so bad that we could barely swap our empty tanks for full ones.
DIVE #3
We agreed in advance to limit this dive to about thirty minutes, since we were craving nachos pretty badly at this point and wanted enough time to sit around and enjoy them. We stayed shallow again, exploring the topside of Little Casino Reef. We saw several schools of sargo in the canopy at that depth, and quite a few more juvenile and baby garibaldi than we'd seen on the previous dives. Visibility stayed good, only decreasing a little bit as we went further east.
We found an area that had a lot of soft purple corals, with baby blueband gobies clustered all around the base. We also saw two female sheephead doing their ritual challenge at each other by opening their mouths as wide as possible and occasionally liplocking before breaking it off. They kept this up for a few minutes, and then swam off in opposite directions. It wasn't immediately obvious who won the contest, but they both seemed satisfied with the outcome as they left. We looped around until we were swimming over the Cousteau plaque, where I saw a school of adult blacksmith picking around the base of the plaque. Vis was good enough that I could clearly see the stairs from the spot where the second descent buoy used to be. Despite the cold, it was a great day of diving.
As we were thawing out over drinks and nachos at the Catalina Cantina, we saw Dr. Bill walking by. He stuck around and talked with us for about half an hour, patiently answering all our questions about the dive park and telling us some good stories. My new bit of Casino Point trivia courtesy of the good doc: the wreck labeled on Franko's dive park map simply as the "Glass-bottomed boat" is actually called the Pisces, and was a navy surplus boat before getting its glass bottom (and then unceremoniously heading for the actual bottom several years later). Thanks again for the stories, Doc were going take you up on that offer to dive the park with you sometime. Well PM you next time we head your way.
