Giant Sea Bass and a few surprises from Catalina

[MaxBottomtime]

We traveled to Catalina with Commodore Andy and Catalina Guerra in search of giant sea bass. As soon as we dropped down we were disappointed at the poor vis. When we saw our first GSB I motioned to Merry that I was not going to turn on the video camera for the dive. Suddenly one of the big boys swam directly under us. I managed to get about 27 seconds of usable video but had to color-correct it just to see the fish. It's my shortest video on YouTube.
[youtubehq]hbr4nAN7SpY[/youtubehq]

We didn't see much underwater worthy of photography. I found a large panamic arrow crab on a black urchin. Merry fired off a couple of shots.

While we were making our first dive, Catalina took pictures of a bald eagle perched rght above the boat at Goat Harbor. We dropped her off at Two Harbors while we made a second dive, and of course she found a buffalo right away.

On the trip home we found a pod of the largest bottlenose dolphins I've ever seen. Many were over ten feet long. We finished the day with a little Blue whale watching off Redondo.

 

[Belmont]

Thank you :cool2:

 

[cmburch]

I'd have to say you're the "Man" when it comes to capturing interesting pictures and videos!

 

[FrankPro1]

Great Set! You had the right idea going out to Catalina. Don't be fooled by the glassy conditions on the peninsula, the vis is still way down. Less the 5ft @ the 120 reef on Thursday Still managed to snap a few of this tiny Blenny:

 

[deeper thoughts]

Thnx Calif seems amazing!

 

[MaxBottomtime]

The ride back was rough and windy, but when we reached Rocky Point, it was nice and fairly flat. The dirty green water extends halfway to the island right now. I was hoping to dive Buchanan's this morning but the poor vis and getting our butts kicked yesterday made me sleep in.

 

[drbill]

I still haven't seen any of the Panamic arrow crabs divers are encountering off "my" island... of course I've seen and filmed them in Mexico. Maybe I should do a few day dives during summer instead of diving almost entirely at night. Also a bad year for me to see giant sea bass... only seen one underwater and it was on a night dive.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

During our last El Nino year the crabs were all over Catalina and Palos Verdes. I hadn't seen one in years until yesterday. It was also the largest I've seen. Every other one was about two inches long. This one was easily five inches.

 

[DwayneJ]

Not cool with the spiny lobster on the surface - That lobster in the photo took a beating just to be in a stupid picture.

I hope catch and release since the socal spiny lobster season has not started yet?

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/pdfs/lobsterbrochure.pdf

The spiny lobster open season runs from the Saturday preceding the first Wednesday in October through the first Wednesday after March 15 (the first Wednesday in October is when commercial season opens).

Dwayne

 

[FrankPro1]

Not cool with the spiny lobster on the surface

The lobster in question is actually an empty moulted shell. No lobsters were harmed in the making of this stupid picture