Frank O
Contributor
We'd heard the week before that Ray was expecting a light load on the Sundiver for Memorial Day, and was thinking of getting around Catalina's backside. Surprise, surprise, come Monday it was a full boat and he was turning divers away. It was also a little too frisky for the backside. Onboard were perhaps eight or nine DIR divers, four of which brought doubles and deco bottles to do a tech dive to 150 ft.
Ray pulled up off Rippers Cove, threw out a float on a line and and dropped off the four tech divers. He then motored in toward shore a little and invited anyone interested to drop on another line he left here to a reef that rose to about 105 ft. A trio of divers opted for this bus stop. Finally he pulled in and anchored in about 35 ft of water for the rest of the contingent to get wet. Under other circumstances I would have picked the second spot, but nursing an ailing lower back I thought I'd take it easy.
Dive #1
Date: 05/30/2005
Buddy: Sergio and Stephanie
Location: Rippers Cove, Catalina
Max depth: 41 ft
Run time: 50:00 min
Visibility: ~35 ft
Bottom temp: 66 F
Temp at end: 66 F
Gas mix: 32% nitrox
Due to my back I decided not to gear up on the boat; instead I got into my drysuit, slipped off the swimstep and let them hand down my rig, which I donned in the water. This proved to be fairly tedious. Meanwhile, I arranged to follow around Sergio, who runs scubadivernet.com, and his friend Stephanie, who as a newly minted diver was on dive #7. She was also trying out a backplate and wing for the first time, calling for assorted tweaks of weighting, picking up rocks from the bottom, etc. Several large bait schools. Sergio said he saw a lone barracuda shadowing one school.
Dive #2
Date: 05/30/2005
Buddy: Jon and Susan
Location: Isthmus Reef, Catalina
Max depth: 74 ft
Run time: 52:00 min
Visibility: ~45 ft
Bottom temp: 63 F
Temp at end: 64 F
Gas mix: ~26% nitrox
With the tech contingent back on the boat, Ray headed up to Isthmus Reef and anchored toward the western side, around which there's a nice wall that drops down to about 100. Jon, Susan and I headed down to a depth of about 70 ft and began a leisurely swim along the wall, shadowed by other teams of doubles-toting divers. At one point we ran into 3 or 4 fried-egg jellyfish, and had to be careful not to cross paths with their tendrils. Also several bright orange tube anemones, a white band that looked like an egg ribbon of some kind, and a blackeyed goby with full cheeks chowing down on a piece of kelp. Having the smallest gas supply with my single steel 100, after 25 minutes or so I suggested we start gradually angling up. Susan demonstrated an uncanny ability to find the boat.
Dive #3
Date: 05/30/2005
Buddy: Jon and Susan
Location: Indian Rock, Catalina
Max depth: 32 ft
Run time: 44:20 min
Visibility: ~40 ft
Bottom temp: 63 F
Temp at end: 63 F
Gas mix: ~22% nitrox
For the final dive of the day Ray anchored at Indian Rock -- a shallow site, but one that proved to have some points of interest. Before long we ran into a large cabezon, which sat for a photo session. Then, emerging from one cluster of kelp, we saw a bunch of fish swarming around a spot against the rocks. We discovered they were taking turns grabbing pieces of a dead lobster. Next to the carcass was a large, gray moray eel. After a few photos, we continued on and I ran across an outcropping of Kellet's whelk eggs -- strange, we were just talking about those here last week. And finally I came across a couple of speckled sanddabs, one of which hung around for a little while I got a few photos (see above). All in all, a nice day out on the water!
