We have a little virtual dive club here in the PNW, like a miniature ScubaBoard. It's a fun group of generally very active divers, and every couple of months, a very nice lady named Penelope organizes a "club dive". It's a meet and greet combined with a big buddy dive and an excuse for a barbecue, and it's generally held at a place called Redondo Beach, because it's not current-sensitive and there is a LOT of parking.
Yesterday's event was a tremendous amount of fun. We are blessed (although it's verging on a curse at this point) with stunningly beautiful weather. Blue skies and no wind meant a beautiful view of the Sound, but for some reason that I don't understand at all, we had some of the worst water conditions I've ever seen at Redondo. Although by LA standards, the surf was modest at best, by our standards these were waves worthy of world-class surfers, and I looked at the water the way a skittish horse looks at a flying plastic bag -- eyes rolling, whites showing, and nervousness visible in every inch of me. We Puget Sound divers know that water SHOULD NOT MOVE!
Nonetheless, having trekked all the way down there, I was going to make a good effort to dive. I had expected to be hooked up with a new diver, because that's one of the main reasons I go to the club dives, is to be a big buddy. But there weren't any . . . so my friend ADeadlierSnake suggested I dive with a nice fellow who goes by Yelloweye on our local forum, because both of us are photographers. I was very pleased that my prospective buddy wanted to go over one another's gear and weights and so on, and discuss signals and protocols before diving. By the time we got in the water, we were completely on the same page, which always makes a dive go so much better.
The entry went more smoothly than I had feared, although I reminded myself that entries are ALWAYS easier than exits, and the exit was going to be "sporty". (I had a fallback position, if it wasn't possible -- there's another place to get out, it's just a much longer swim and walk than the normal one.) We swam out and dropped into VERY nice visibility, and a higher density of life than I had ever seen in the daytime at this site before. The bottom was completely carpeted with thick sea lettuce, which was sheltering literally hundreds of blackeyed hermit crabs.
Amid the greenery were many small sculpins, and to my utter delight, my buddy was no more interested in covering ground than I was, so I took photo after photo of the little guys, with the hope that I could study them at home and figure out what kinds they were. Unfortunately, I clearly need to take remedial sculpin ID, because the one I posted with a tag was quickly and gently corrected by our local fish guru, REEF's Janna Nichols. I thought it was a scalyhead, and apparently it's a beautiful ID picture of a padded:
One of the great things about diving Redondo is the little red octopuses. We see the Giant ones there, too, but I actually like the little reds better, because they are more often active, and frequently very amusing. We found four of them on this dive, including one of the biggest I'd ever seen. He was on a surface and moving, and although I took many photographs of him, none of them turned out well. Another, smaller guy was more cooperative about posing:
Because of the visibility, I played with some more wide-angley type shots, with varying success, but I ended up with two I liked:
We ran into a couple of big baitballs of little silver fish (I can't be more specific, because they will never let me close enough for an identification; my buddy, on CCR, was able to swim into the swarm, and for a brief moment, I wanted a rebreather
) Watching them swirl and glitter is one of my biggest pleasures in the water, so that would have made the dive superb all by itself. But we also had big groups of shiner perch (and I think I saw two doing a mating dance; at least, I had never seen them do anything like it before) and collections of tubesnouts like pick-up-sticks scattered in the pale, green water.
It was actually fun diving with a rebreather buddy -- it was one of the rare times when I was able to continue a dive until I wanted to end it, and I ended it on thermal tolerance. A word here -- I am amazed at the Thermal Fusion undergarment I'm using these days. It's not very thick, and when I get in the water, I can feel that the water is cold, which has always been a bad sign about my insulation. But this dive was 70+ minutes of really not moving much at all (I'm not sure we covered 100 feet during the whole dive) and although I turned it on "I think I'm probably going to get cold soon," I wasn't cold yet, and I wasn't cold when I got out. Of course, the water's still 50, so we'll see how the winter goes, but right now, I'm toasty, and liking it.
The exit proved as interesting as I was worried it might be, although I was doing extremely well at the beginning. One of the frustrating things about being a miniature diver is that I often have to stand to take my fins off right where the waves are breaking, whereas the taller guys can stand out in the swell, take theirs off, and run through the surf break. But I survived the waves for the period of time I needed, and began walking to the stairs. Because of the sea lettuce and the waves, it was impossible to see the sand, which is studded with large rocks, so I was taking things very slowly and feeling for each foothold before I committed to it. Unfortunately, when I was in about a foot of water, a larger wave came in and knocked me off my feet, thus preserving my perfect record of having been rolled on every surf exit I have ever done The results were rather spectacular:
Anybody ever taken a pressure washer to their dive gear?
Anyway, dive reports from the PNW have been thin on the ground here, so I thought I'd share a beautiful day of diving!
Yesterday's event was a tremendous amount of fun. We are blessed (although it's verging on a curse at this point) with stunningly beautiful weather. Blue skies and no wind meant a beautiful view of the Sound, but for some reason that I don't understand at all, we had some of the worst water conditions I've ever seen at Redondo. Although by LA standards, the surf was modest at best, by our standards these were waves worthy of world-class surfers, and I looked at the water the way a skittish horse looks at a flying plastic bag -- eyes rolling, whites showing, and nervousness visible in every inch of me. We Puget Sound divers know that water SHOULD NOT MOVE!
Nonetheless, having trekked all the way down there, I was going to make a good effort to dive. I had expected to be hooked up with a new diver, because that's one of the main reasons I go to the club dives, is to be a big buddy. But there weren't any . . . so my friend ADeadlierSnake suggested I dive with a nice fellow who goes by Yelloweye on our local forum, because both of us are photographers. I was very pleased that my prospective buddy wanted to go over one another's gear and weights and so on, and discuss signals and protocols before diving. By the time we got in the water, we were completely on the same page, which always makes a dive go so much better.
The entry went more smoothly than I had feared, although I reminded myself that entries are ALWAYS easier than exits, and the exit was going to be "sporty". (I had a fallback position, if it wasn't possible -- there's another place to get out, it's just a much longer swim and walk than the normal one.) We swam out and dropped into VERY nice visibility, and a higher density of life than I had ever seen in the daytime at this site before. The bottom was completely carpeted with thick sea lettuce, which was sheltering literally hundreds of blackeyed hermit crabs.
Amid the greenery were many small sculpins, and to my utter delight, my buddy was no more interested in covering ground than I was, so I took photo after photo of the little guys, with the hope that I could study them at home and figure out what kinds they were. Unfortunately, I clearly need to take remedial sculpin ID, because the one I posted with a tag was quickly and gently corrected by our local fish guru, REEF's Janna Nichols. I thought it was a scalyhead, and apparently it's a beautiful ID picture of a padded:
One of the great things about diving Redondo is the little red octopuses. We see the Giant ones there, too, but I actually like the little reds better, because they are more often active, and frequently very amusing. We found four of them on this dive, including one of the biggest I'd ever seen. He was on a surface and moving, and although I took many photographs of him, none of them turned out well. Another, smaller guy was more cooperative about posing:
Because of the visibility, I played with some more wide-angley type shots, with varying success, but I ended up with two I liked:
We ran into a couple of big baitballs of little silver fish (I can't be more specific, because they will never let me close enough for an identification; my buddy, on CCR, was able to swim into the swarm, and for a brief moment, I wanted a rebreather
) Watching them swirl and glitter is one of my biggest pleasures in the water, so that would have made the dive superb all by itself. But we also had big groups of shiner perch (and I think I saw two doing a mating dance; at least, I had never seen them do anything like it before) and collections of tubesnouts like pick-up-sticks scattered in the pale, green water. It was actually fun diving with a rebreather buddy -- it was one of the rare times when I was able to continue a dive until I wanted to end it, and I ended it on thermal tolerance. A word here -- I am amazed at the Thermal Fusion undergarment I'm using these days. It's not very thick, and when I get in the water, I can feel that the water is cold, which has always been a bad sign about my insulation. But this dive was 70+ minutes of really not moving much at all (I'm not sure we covered 100 feet during the whole dive) and although I turned it on "I think I'm probably going to get cold soon," I wasn't cold yet, and I wasn't cold when I got out. Of course, the water's still 50, so we'll see how the winter goes, but right now, I'm toasty, and liking it.
The exit proved as interesting as I was worried it might be, although I was doing extremely well at the beginning. One of the frustrating things about being a miniature diver is that I often have to stand to take my fins off right where the waves are breaking, whereas the taller guys can stand out in the swell, take theirs off, and run through the surf break. But I survived the waves for the period of time I needed, and began walking to the stairs. Because of the sea lettuce and the waves, it was impossible to see the sand, which is studded with large rocks, so I was taking things very slowly and feeling for each foothold before I committed to it. Unfortunately, when I was in about a foot of water, a larger wave came in and knocked me off my feet, thus preserving my perfect record of having been rolled on every surf exit I have ever done
The results were rather spectacular:
Anybody ever taken a pressure washer to their dive gear?
Anyway, dive reports from the PNW have been thin on the ground here, so I thought I'd share a beautiful day of diving!
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