GSB on 2 of 3 dives 8-28-10, video

[diverrex]

Capt. Tim of the Geat Escape took us to some good sites on Saturday and we saw Giant Sea Bass on the 1st and 3rd dives. Dive one was at Goat Harbor. We were swimming north at about 45 feet when about 10 feet away a GSB passed us heading the same direction. We saw it for a few seconds before it got lost in the not so great viz. We kept swimming for another 5 minutes and then came upon a pod of GSB, maybe 8 - 12 of them. They were hard to count because they were on both sides of us and as we got closer the ones on the outside would drift off into the murky water and you could barely see their shapes. But a few of them would come up close to us to check us out. After about 5 minutes they had enough of us and drifted away. As we headed back to the boat another one passed us going the other direction.

On dive 3 (forgot the site) we saw another, the biggest of the day. It passed us going the same direction but in about five minutes we found it again in the kelp. It hung out with us for few minutes making circles around us and through the kelp. It came very close a few time. Another diver back on the boat described it as "aggressive" but I never had that sense at all, it was just curious about us. And I was glad it was to give us a few minutes with it. These were my best views of the GSB yet and it was really cool. I can't wait to go see them again but I now have an even 100 dives at the Channel Islands and I've only seen them on 3 dives, a 3% chance.


Here is a link to video.

 

[robint]

nice! I have yet to get any good video of them, though I have about 40-50 dives in Calif, and I have seen them about 5 times (Anacapa, San Clemente, and Catalina).

robin

 

[blue steal]

Hey diverrex I had to cancel out this last Saturday due to work. You had a group from Las Vegas and an early departure (5am) and I just could not make it. I was really bummed out. Glad you had a good time and saw the GSB. My next trip onboard the GE will be Sept 11.

 

[drbill]

The diver who thought the behavior was "aggressive" was probably intimidated by the bass' size. I've dived with hundreds of these incredible fish and never had anything from the males but threat postures. Even when I was in a group of 17 and the males were all hopped up on hormones (sound familiar?) and chasing one another away, the bass on occasion would head in my direction at pretty good speed but avoid any contact by good maneuvering as they chased the other bass away.

This season I had been skunked on seeing them (but I'm mainly doing night dives during summer). Finally last night I encountered and filmed a female... at least until I heard the male bark and warn her to swim away. Never saw the male, but he must have been the jealous type!

 

[diverrex]

Hey diverrex I had to cancel out this last Saturday due to work. You had a group from Las Vegas and an early departure (5am) and I just could not make it. I was really bummed out. Glad you had a good time and saw the GSB. My next trip onboard the GE will be Sept 11.

The early departure worked out well, we did our three dives and were back at the dock by 3:30. There were both a Las Vegas group and one from Bakersfield that stayed onboard Saturday night and did the Sunday San Clemente dive. It was a little crowded with 31 divers. At first I thought it might be too many and too many students but it turned out fine, we usually jumped in first and swam away from the boat fairly far and didn't really see any other divers until we went back to the boat. I was pleased with the trip, Capt. Tim always does a good job.