Another great day onboard Peace! Met Mike - really really awesome guy, and an inspiration. We also encountered another SoCal Scubaboard member - Steve Sammler. So Mike and Steve buddied up.
It was a full boat - 30 divers, the vast majority of which were OW students, so we knew we'd be visiting only shallow, easy sites. The last few times I've been to Anacapa have been a bit of a disappointment - currents & surge on the East end forced us to stick with the West end/back side of the island, which are really not very exciting sites - mostly jumbled rocks covered with urchins, little kelp, not a lot of life. Fortunately, yesterday the sea gods smiled on us enough to allow us to dive at the East end for two of our three dives. For the middle dive we headed up to the West end, but then back to the East end for the last dive. Hence, dives 1 & 3 were done in really lush, beautiful kelp forests, while dive 2 was the standard boulder/urchin fields. Vis was...well...eh, maybe 20 ft, lots of particulates. Dive 2 had the best vis, but there was just nothin to see!
Water temps were a little warmer than last time - around 57F for the first two dives, 54 for the third. I was trying out my new heated vest worn under my wetsuit, and it worked reasonably well, but there are limitations to its effectiveness - while it kept my torso toasty, the warm water didn't disperse to my arms & legs, which remained very cold (especially on that last dive). I'll write up a more detailed review on that item separately.
My new camera rig is now complete - I got the last piece of it this week (additional strobe arms) and I was really excited about finally getting out there with the full rig and see what I can do with it. Everything worked great, now I just need to work on my skills with lighting and strobe placement. Unfortunately there just weren't a lot of interesting subjects...just the usual stuff, no interesting or unusual critters. I did get a cool shot of a lobster getting cleaned by cleaner shrimp! Here are the best shots I got:
I saw several large ling cod
And various friendly rockfish
Not many nudies around, but I got a few lovely Spanish Shawl shots
And a cute little San Diego Dorid
This HUGE sheephead was following me around like a puppy dog! I think he wanted me to scratch him under his chin:
I like this shot because it shows the patch of algae that Gary Garribaldi is protecting
I really wanted to get a close-up shot of this Polyclad Flatworm, but this damn fish kept getting in the way!
This is my favorite shot of the day - first time I've noticed cleaner shrimp tending to a bug
He's hard to miss. We'll both be in Halcyon gear, diving wet.
