I haven't seen many dive reports from Sunday yet, but Saturday was really a day to be out! We had sun, warm weather, and truly ideal conditions topside - high tide in the morning at the ramp (sort of) and flat seas inside and outside of the cove.
One of my buddies had a catastrophic (OK, hilarious) wing failure last dive, so he arrived with a brand new DSS torus, ready to go.
By the time we hit the ramp, the Beach Hopper II was pulling into the cove. We must have looked especially pathetic, since the captain offered to throw us a line and tow us out of the cove! Visions of shark decoys and Waterworld flashed through my head...but man, we had to try it once. So we each grabbed some rope and hoped for the best. First lesson: dive boats go pretty darn fast. Second, when huge walls of kelp come barreling toward you at 10-15mph, you hold on with one hand and shield your face with your other
Anyways, we were lined up with Coal Chute Cove in maybe 45 seconds. We waved thanks to the BH2, which continued to points unknown, and we spent a minute to make sure we (and our gear) were still in one piece.
I was amazed as we descended. We usually get to gauge the visibility on our surface swim out, but we didn't have the chance to do that today. I hit my deflator, and saw the sand 10ft below me. How could that be? Then, as I started descending, I realized the floor was 40ft below me. Viz was really that good. Blue-green water, zero particulates, and tons of tiny mysid shrimp all over. This was going to be a great dive.
We kicked out to Hole in the Wall, and then veered left to Lone Metridium, which we hit at 15min bottom time. We turned north towards and over Sea Mount, and easily found Beto's. This was our first time descending to the reef itself, so we had a conservative dive plan allowing for maybe 15 minutes at a max depth of 100ft. The reef is characterized by some amazing structure. There are cracks, overhangs, arches and swimthroughs, and the reef was absolutely covered in life - elephant ear sponges, gorgonians, and definitely fish and inverts I've never seen in shallower water. We hit turn pressure way before MDL, and we motored back the way we came, along the Sea Mount massif, Lone Met and back to HitW and the sand channel.
We spent the next hour or so at 30-40ft working on drills (two months out of class and boy have we let ourselves go). Our next team dive is going to have some time dedicated to getting back into diving shape.
Anyways, the link to a larger format video is at: YouTube - Dive at Beto's Reef, but it looks like you can now hit "HD" in the embed to get a higher bitrate feed as well:
One of my buddies had a catastrophic (OK, hilarious) wing failure last dive, so he arrived with a brand new DSS torus, ready to go.
By the time we hit the ramp, the Beach Hopper II was pulling into the cove. We must have looked especially pathetic, since the captain offered to throw us a line and tow us out of the cove! Visions of shark decoys and Waterworld flashed through my head...but man, we had to try it once. So we each grabbed some rope and hoped for the best. First lesson: dive boats go pretty darn fast. Second, when huge walls of kelp come barreling toward you at 10-15mph, you hold on with one hand and shield your face with your other
Anyways, we were lined up with Coal Chute Cove in maybe 45 seconds. We waved thanks to the BH2, which continued to points unknown, and we spent a minute to make sure we (and our gear) were still in one piece.
I was amazed as we descended. We usually get to gauge the visibility on our surface swim out, but we didn't have the chance to do that today. I hit my deflator, and saw the sand 10ft below me. How could that be? Then, as I started descending, I realized the floor was 40ft below me. Viz was really that good. Blue-green water, zero particulates, and tons of tiny mysid shrimp all over. This was going to be a great dive.
We kicked out to Hole in the Wall, and then veered left to Lone Metridium, which we hit at 15min bottom time. We turned north towards and over Sea Mount, and easily found Beto's. This was our first time descending to the reef itself, so we had a conservative dive plan allowing for maybe 15 minutes at a max depth of 100ft. The reef is characterized by some amazing structure. There are cracks, overhangs, arches and swimthroughs, and the reef was absolutely covered in life - elephant ear sponges, gorgonians, and definitely fish and inverts I've never seen in shallower water. We hit turn pressure way before MDL, and we motored back the way we came, along the Sea Mount massif, Lone Met and back to HitW and the sand channel.
We spent the next hour or so at 30-40ft working on drills (two months out of class and boy have we let ourselves go). Our next team dive is going to have some time dedicated to getting back into diving shape.
Anyways, the link to a larger format video is at: YouTube - Dive at Beto's Reef, but it looks like you can now hit "HD" in the embed to get a higher bitrate feed as well:
