Race Rocks Steller Sea lion video

[DaleC]

Some of us from the mainland and Seattle did the sea lions at Race rocks last Sunday out of Ogden Point. Most of the sea lions were away (herring spawn season started) but a somewhat shy group paid us a visit.

[video=youtube;98-Tw07K4k8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98-Tw07K4k8[/video]

 

[FishLovingStudent]

Going there in two weeks! Hopefully will see lots Its good to see the viz on the island has not deteriorated as much as on the mainland.

 

[MarkH]

Nice video! It's hard to tell with wide-angle lenses, since they force the perspective to make things look farther away, but it seems the visibility was about 20'? It looks like you saw more sea lions than I expected for this time of year. I've been a couple of times in April and saw none underwater. Because of the current that day they must have dropped you off in the shallow areas sheltered from the current (maybe around Helicopter Rock?). I've heard from a few divers who've been to Race Rocks that they were disappointed. They were expecting a riot of colour, but they just saw urchins and pebbles. They were a bit scornful of the fuss over Race Rocks. From what I've seen, the shallower, protected areas are good for sealions (in season), but the riot of invertebrate life is on the steeper, deeper walls, where there is a canvas of anemones, soft corals, basket stars, hydrocorals, sponges, etc..... Very current dependent and not always visited.
It was a nice surprise to see you at Ogden Pt. How was the dive there? How far out did you go?
-Also, since I'm full of questions, I noticed that you had 2 Gopros mounted on your camera tray at the breakwater. Was one of them pointing back at you in the above video and one pointing ahead?

 

[DaleC]

Last question first. Yes. I usually turn my rig around for selfies but Cali showed me her rig and I realized I could reverse one of my cameras. I wanted to do this on the sea lion dive because I knew there would be action behind me that I could not see so when they came in I just turned both cameras on and hoped for the best.

At Ogden we started from shore but, as you suggested, things did not get interesting until flag 2. That's ok though as it was my first time and I wanted to get the lay of the land, so to speak. We didn't see too much but the girls were shooting macro and looking for stalked jellies which they found so mission accomplished.

The boat did drop us in the shadow of a rock, forget which one, and we had to stay in that small area or get taken by the wicked current. In the shadow though it was calm. Only big urchins rock and kelp but those urchins were nice. I think the closest sea lion to me was 3 feet, it was at the end of the video when it is looking down at me while I look up. Not the mob that you can get but I was happy, it was a good introduction. We will probably go back in the fall and then I will use my doublehose so the bubbles don't effect the interaction as much. We also did Albert Head wall which was nice with lots of small stuff, some juvenile wolf eels, octo and puget sound king crabs.

It was nice to see you there, small world eh. I also met Ian, a guy I just did Fundies with.

 

[TSandM]

Oh, lucky you! The one time Peter and I did Race Rocks, we didn't load fast enough and missed the slack to do the sea lions. But I can't complain, because the lighthouse site we did was one of the most magically beautiful underwater places I have ever been. Still, I'd like to get back up there and see the sea lions.

 

[DaleC]

Our scheduled boat broke down the day before so we really lucked out when they got a replacement on short notice

Same dive as the above video but I shortened it and reworked some scenes.

[video=youtube;Vkc9Qp3SA1U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkc9Qp3SA1U[/video]