The Pasley "HURRY HOME" April '07 Dive Reports

[headhunter]

Date:
Dive Location:
Buddy(ies):
Time:
Bottom Time:
Max Depth:
Vis:
Wave height:
Temp at depth:
Surface Temp:
Tide information:
Gas mix:
Top reason Pasley should hurry home:
Comments:

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Date: April 1, 2007
Dive Location: Marineland
Buddy(ies):Merry Passage
Time: 9:33
Bottom Time: 1:04
Max Depth: 38'
Vis: 15'
Wave height: 0
Temp at depth: 52F
Surface Temp: 52F
Tide information: High at 9:18
Gas mix: 21%
Top reason Pasley should hurry home: Marineland will be paved over soon
Comments:Today was the last day to dive Marineland without carrying your gear even further than we already do. The new, temporary parking lot is open a couple hundred yards east of the old lot. We will now have to hike in to dive here. The old sign was removed on Tuesday and work will now begin on the road down to the beach. We had a cold but clear day for our goodbyes. Reverand Al even saved my parking space for me one last time.
Today was a test dive for my strobe, so Merry and I decided to stay shallow.
We explored the small reef near shore before heading out over the sand. We found several piles of hermit crabs plus moon snails, sea stars, globe crabs, flat fish and a lot of Spanish Shawls laying eggs. The water was a brisk 52F and the sand was stirred up a bit since yesterday but we managed to get out after a little over an hour and keep the icycles from forming.

 

[divekim]

Location: LJS North Wall
Time: 07:51am descent time
Temp: 54
Vis: 15 at depth 5 above 60 feet due to thermacline
Max Depth: 86 feet
Bottom Time: 57 minutes
Buddies: Vetdiver and Hubby, Divinman, Steve, Jesus, and Craig

Meeting at the shores for Calvin's first foray into diving San Diego and La Jolla Shores. He couldn't have asked for nicer conditions, 1-2 foot no power waves, pretty glassy surface, no current or surge and typical vis to be had. More diver in attendance but Juan and Ron made into the water before us and headed to Vallecitos.

Deciding on the North Wall for today's outing we geared up and headed out, dropped in 47 feet of water, headed West for a bit and then North. Terry had decided it was my job today to navigate to the North Wall, thank goodness we had dropped right in the draw so it was pretty damn easy. There are lots of baby Rockfish out and about, Sheephead, Brittle Stars, Blacksmith, Lobster, Brown Rockfish, 1 Vermillion Rockfish hiding up under a ledge way back in a hole.

I had stopped to take a picture of 2 Cockerells Dorid's that were within inches of each other, with a very pretty White Spotted Porostome above them. The Dorids cerata rows seem to be opening and closing, and I was there a long time taking pictures, along came the rest of the group headed back in. We swam along the wall headed east, I was swimming toward the bottom of the structure checking out the holes and ledges, as we got to the area where it turns South, Terry and I were checking out some tube worm structure and I realized no one else was with us. As we followed the structure South I saw the rare and elusive, TerrySharkFish. It was truly an amazing sight and I laughed so hard I flooded my mask. The encounter was so much for me to take it wasn't long before I decided I needed to head east and make my way in. Not much on the way in, and I think I only saw 1 Hermissenda today.

Location: LJS Vallecitos Point
Time: 10:39am descent time
Temp: 55
Vis: 15 at depth 5 above 60 feet due to thermacline
Max Depth: 69 feet
Bottom Time: 57 minutes
Buddies: Steve, Jesus and Keira

Waited for Keira to make it to the shores for dive #2, in town long enough to get at least one in with us. Craig left just as she was pulling in so parking was a breeze. We geared up and headed to Vallecitos Point for dive 2. Again Juan and Ron were ready and in the water before everyone else.

Kicked out and dropped in about 50 feet of water this time, right below the new 50 foot contour of structure, so we followed it South having something to explore all the way to the point. Blue Banded Goby's, and Black Eye Goby's, an Octopus with a razor clam in its tentacles trying to pull it back into its hole. Lots of baby Rockfish, Sheephead, even some baby Sheephead out there. There were Doto Amyra on the Kelp again, but they are so small I can't get pictures of them. Scorpionfish, big Rockfish, Sea Stars, a very big Sea Hare which I haven't seen for awhile. Jesus found a very nice Octopus with his eyes sticking up out of the hole and a little one scampering up the structure and hiding into a hole.

Steve and Keira turned back near the point, Jesus and I followed it as far as it goes East and a portion of the new walls to the South before we finally turned around. Jesus found a beautiful little baby Horn Shark just as we were getting ready to head back. 2 very pretty CO Soles on the swim in as well as lots of Purple Olive Snails. We stood up in 3 feet of water right in front of V Street, pretty convenient for rinsing before heading to the cars.

2 wonderful dives today with great buddies, thanks everyone who came out today.

http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r319/surfhopper/040107 LJS/

 

[divekim]

Location: LJS south walls
Time: 06:23am descent time
Temp: 54
Vis: 20 at depth/ shallows was swimming in salad though it was clear not soupy
Max Depth: 84 feet
Bottom Time: 63 minutes
Buddies: Divinman and ChickoftheSea

Definitely not greeted by the impending swell we keep hearing about, waves, what waves, it was pretty much lake La Jolla this morning. No currents or wind either so it was glassy as could be. Can't believe no one took a picture of it.

We swam straight out from the bathrooms and dropped in 40 feet of water and headed South. The hunt for Black Dorid's was on, not a single one found. Oh well, I understand Jen found a plethora of different nudi's today, not one of which I saw as I seemed to be in my own little world this morning, purusing the deeper sections of the walls and such.

The baby Rockfish are getting bigger and starting to form schools. There are a lot of Coonstripe or similar Shrimp moving into the cracks and crevices of the new structure. Female Sheephead have moved in for good as well. I saw lots of little Octopus, Gobys of both varieties, not very many Squid Eggs anymore they have pretty much disappeared. I found a beautiful what I think is a Sculpin of some type, maybe someone can ID it for me and the only nudi I found was a very big Spanish Shawl.

Its interesting to me how the boulders that fell when the new walls were created are all falling apart and getting smooth edges. They have growth and abundant life on and around them, like they've been there for ages. Strange how as you move south at 50 feet it is still all tube worm structure with lots of hidden critters and you go just 10 feet deeper and it is sheer walls with boulders and debris strewn about below.

Finally hit a turn around point and started our trek northeast. Once again not a lot of critters on the swim in though Terry found a softball size Moon Snail and a little Jellyfish who looked like a cross between a Jelly and an Octopus. Lot's of salad floating in the water above 40 feet but the water has cleared up and is not so soupy anymore.

Was a wonderfully relaxing dive this morning, I guess that is what happens when you drift away. Thanks guys

http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r319/surfhopper/040407 ljs/

 

[divekim]

Top Reason Pasley should hurry home: The vis has cleared and the divers have become acrobats

Date: 04/06/2007
Location: Vallecitos Point
Time: 06:09am descent time
Temp: 55
Vis: 20 feet easy
Max Depth: 62 feet
Bottom Time: a staggering 75 minutes enough to make the toes numb
Buddies: ChickoftheSea and Divinman

Lake La Jolla it remains, no surf, chop, or current this morning. Nice calm conditions and beautiful vis this morning. Should be some incredible diving this weekend at the shores.

We headed out to Vallecitos point for an easy peasy sort of dive. Dropping in about 40 feet of water right above the beginning of the structure and headed south for the point. The water is so nice and clear right now making it easy to see down into the depths without actually having to trek deeper. Tons of baby Rockfish and an overabundance of Blue Banded Goby's this morning, I even spotted one Zebra Goby before it retreated to its burrow. Lots of Anenomes on the point now, orange and white, some of the striped ones as well.

Found a strange new type of worm I've never seen before. Got Terry's attention so he could take a pic and I moved away to explore all the detris below the ledge. Terry started south again and I soon found the palest Black Dorid I have ever seen. I must have taken a couple dozen photos trying to get it in focus without too much light. Kept trying to get Jen and Terrys attention but they just wouldn't budge. I hate to admit it, but I finally picked up the blade of grass and brought it to them, I mean, you don't see them this pale, I never have. I tryed in vain to hold it still as my feet got floaty and I was bobbing up and down, Terry trying to follow with his camera. Finally shoved the blade of grass in his hand as I laughed so hard I flooded my mask.

Continuing south saw lots of Octopus, Scorpionfish, Sea Stars and Brittle Stars, then come upon the biggest Aegires any of us have ever seen sitting on the wall. A pretty Porostome was sitting back in a hole with vivid white spots, a baby Cabezon sitting in the algae on the top of the point. Kelp Crabs and Hemphill Crabs are all over. Stearns and a very pretty San Diego Dorid was found just as I motioned time to head in.

We did another one of those swim in the middle of the water column returns instead of close to the bottom. I flooded my mask a couple more times from all the laughing. You know you can really do some acrobatics when you're in 30-40 feet of water but swimming at 18-20 feet. Of course once the playing begins it just doesn't end and with vis this nice you can play instead of just concentrate on going east. My little photographers got so wrapped up in taking pictures this morning it was like a little runway show all the way back to shore.

Was a beautiful morning for diving and fun diving at that.

http://s147.photobucket.com/albums/r319/surfhopper/040607 ljs/

 

[JDog]

Date: 4-2-07
Dive Location: F4, South China Sea, near Subic Bay, Philippines
Buddy(ies):snakedr
Time: 09:24
Dive Time: 43
Max Depth: 140ft Avr. 76ft
Vis: 35-50ft
Wave height: 0
Temp at depth:79
Surface Temp: 84
Tide information: N/A
Gas mix:EAN 27% Start:2913psi , End:500psi
Top reason Pasley should hurry home:He needs a nice long rest.
Comments: Just another calm quite sunny morning.
Using his GPS Mike our divemaster dropped the anchor and marker bouy over the side. Down we went and sure enough the F4 became visible around 90ft. Evidently this aircraft was tossed overboard in the early 70's she was pretty much stripped of everything but the fuselage. The engines, radome and seats were missing. Now a days the seats are occupied by 4 lion fish, we had planned on taking a couple of photos sitting in the cockpit, but those plans were cancelled. The Phantom is sitting uprite in 145ft of water. Although bottomtime was limited, the jet isn't that big so after about 15minutes you have pretty much seen the whole thing.

 

[LLKZ16]

Date: 4/6/07
Dive Location: Vets
Buddy(ies): Angelique
Time: 9:10 pm.
Bottom Time: 50 min
Max Depth: 93 fsw
Vis: 10-15 feet
Wave height: 1-2 feet
Temp at depth: 53F
Surface Temp: 62F

I met up with Angelique on Friday night at Vets. The wind was mellow and the waves were not a factor at all. Our plan was to leisurely go out to around 100 feet then and then circle back out of the canyon.

On the way out the visibility did not look too good but as we made it to the end of the pier, I could tell that it was going to be nice. When we dropped down, the visibility was a beautiful 10-15 feet.

As we made our way down the canyon we were taking an easy slow swim looking for the normal critters out this evening. We noticed a ton of baby rockfish everywhere. They all were hanging out right above the sand and were not afraid of us. The cool thing about these fish is that they have a silvery glow when you shine a light on them. Surprisingly, we came across a few squid egg clumps. I thought that they would all be gone at this point. As we reached around 75 feet, Angelique got spooked by a sea lion which I ended up never seeing. Oh well. We took our time coming out of the canyon and on the way back up the slope we ran into a few thornback rays and a lobster scurrying across our path.

Even though it was a pretty uneventful dive, there was a lot to see and we had a great time.

Here are some highlights from the dive.

Fringehead

Tube Anemone

Baby Something?

Baby Ocean Whitefish

Brown Shrimp

Roughback Sculpin

Hermit Crab

Squid Eggs

Pipefish

Midshipman

Spiny Sand Star

Lobster

Sanddab ?

 

[Jake]

2007-04-07

Quick Report for Catalina via the Magician

First off, as always, the crew of the Magician was excellent. If you haven't given this boat a try yet, you should.

Water was warmish at about 59 degrees.
Viz was about 80 or so on the first dive at Indian Rock, got to about 40 by the end of the day.

Items of note: I saw at least 2 species of jellyfish, and possibly another two. The first was a large white animal with brown markings. It looked like it was half eaten. The second was a small animal about the size of my hand. It was clear to milky-white with brown colorations and cilia/flagellum (if either of those is correct?) that seemed to be rainbowish.

One of the others probably wasn't a jelly, but rather some kind of a clear living "orb" about 2-3 centimeters in diameter with what looked like small spikey protrusions. Might have been something from a plant, but it seemed to be moving.

Nice day, though the channel was a little rough at times.

 

[Roughwaterjohn]

Marine Room reefs, 04-07-07

Info:
Cool, overcast morning
Surf 1’ or less
Swells were very mild
0.5’ tide, on a 0.6 knot flood
Air temperature was 60 degrees
Temperature at any depth is unknown, forgot to check.
No surge present
Visibility averaged 10’-15’, depending on depth
Max depth 21’
Average depth 10’
Total bottom time 53 minutes

Buddies: Laura, Spencer and Anna

The Report:
My earlier request for dive buddies was answered by 3 gullible souls, all hoping I’m sure, for a wonderful dive with an experienced diver who knows the area. If instead, their only hope had been to get up early and get wet in the ocean; their dreams were fulfilled this morning.

Our original plan had been to drop down into the Marine Room canyon, which seemed like a sensible choice earlier in the week. As the weekend neared and reports of calm seas and good visibility started coming in, I thought it would be more fun to see the reefs, despite the very low tide. Did I mention the very low tide? An experienced diver, one familiar with the area, would probably put 2 and 2 together. In coming up with the predictable “4”, they would have opted for the canyon dive. Someone else though, someone who’s aptitude with math mirrors their knowledge of quantum physics and the one-minute solution to the Rubik’s cube, virtually nothing in other words, would certainly choose the shallow reefs……….at low tide.

Having done this dive at least 100 times it seems, and enjoying the reefs each and every time, I took our band of gullible guppies out to about 8’ of water, before heading out on a normal 240 course. The mere fact that our ‘current’ 8’ of water was actually the location of 20’ of water under normal conditions did not seem to faze me, despite a strip of land between the restaurant and the sea you could land a nice sized commuter jet on. Smiling the smile of blissful ignorance I lead our band of merry lads and ladies to the reefs. We encountered the reef in its expected place and decided to drop and start our dive.

As long as we’re busy missing obvious things, I’d like to add one more, that being the experience of all the visible reefs being east of us, with no structure visible out west. Well, if blissfully ignorant was good enough for the kick out, how could it serve us less efficiently during our dive? As is our normal procedure, we continued on a 240 course after encountering the first reef. We came across one or two more, relatively small reefs, not unexpected mind you, then sand, also not unexpected. We continued on course, more sand…. Not “exactly” unexpected, but lets just say, not as common. More sand, expectations starting to crumble a little around the edges. A little more sand and some of the infrastructure that supports all I hold dear and believe in started slowly dissolving before my eyes.

Over the next 10 minutes or so, we saw enough sand that if a Bedouin on camel back had materialized out of the gloom, I would not have blinked, and would have merely asked, “hey pal, which way to the oasis?” Realizing the error of my ways (starting with getting up this morning), I sheepishly turned us north / east, taking us back to the reefs we had so obviously missed. We did see the now expected reefs in short order, but we were back, surprisingly enough, in 8’ of water. As expected, the reefs continued off in a north / east direction, that direction surprisingly enough, also being the direction of water shallower than 8’. "Much" shallower.

Lets just say, we swam around, saw some stooopid fish, saw the occasional stooopid bit of kelp, before finally packing it in and heading north away from this entire stooopid reef and it’s laugh in your face shallowness. Continuing north, we saw quite a bit more sand, much to our mutual joy. On the swim in, we saw one stooopid stingray, before throwing our cards down on the table in frustration and surfacing.

Now the upside to all this is, I had a wonderful time underwater with some very nice dive buddies. It is always a pleasure to dive, regardless of the sights seen or unseen, and all 3 of my cohorts were not put off by my abysmal navigation skills. I’m hoping that they may, given enough time, forget about this whole debacle, and choose to dive with me again. Only time will tell. We did have a nice breakfast after the dive though, as my land based navigation was much more accurate than my underwater one. Once encountered, the restaurant was, thankfully, where I expected it to be.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Wow! Just wow! Merry and I went with Scott and Margaret Webb to the wreck of the Avalon this morning. It's been awhile since I've seen blue water, but there was plenty to see today. The swell models predicted high surf, which was correct. I expected to see the green plankton-filled murk, but as we motored along the westside of Palos Verdes the water was a consistant blue. Margaret had to check the temperature on her computer to make sure she wasn't in Cozumel.

Scott rolled in and we were ready to visit the wreck.

We were all smiles as we found great vis of 35'+ on the bottom.

A Rubberlip surf perch cleaning station hovered next to the wreck while a single seniorita cleaned up.

I was having so much fun in the great vis that I forgot to set my camera in macro mode. I have a lot of fuzzy nudis and dock shrimp to delete. We did find several Cadlina luteomarginata nudis mating and laying eggs on the nearby rocks.

I thought I saw a train coming down the tracks until I realized it was just Margaret.

The wreck is covered by several fish species, anemones, nudibranchs and sponges. When the vis is this good there is so much to see.

All good things must end, and so we travelled along checking out the rest stops.

The wind came up so we cancelled our second dive. After arriving back at King Harbor Marina the wind died down, naturally. It was a beautiful day for a dive, though. In fact, it was nice weather for ducks out there.