The Pasley "Hurry Home" December '06 Dive Report Thread

[Jake]

Quick Report:

Location: Corona Del Mar breakwater
Date: 2006-12-09
Time: 8ish, and then 10:30ish
Wave height: 0-1'
Surge: 1-2'
Viz: 20-30'
Temp: 60ish

Working with an OW class today, fully expecting the dives to be called on account of swell. To my great surprise, conditions were phenomenal at CDM today. Just a couple miles down in Laguna, however, conditions were absolutely terrible. Hooray for CDM! Couldn't see any of it because of the usual OW silt storm, but it was nice nonetheless.

 

[divekim]

Top reason Pasley should hurry home: diving with the girls brings good luck - we beat all odd today

Location: Santa Cruz Island
Time: 9:15am descent
Temp: 60
Vis: 25
Max Depth: 51 feet
Bottom Time: 62 mins
Buddies: Marianne

Location: Santa Cruz Island
Time: 11:18am descent
Temp: 59
Vis: 25
Max Depth: 62 feet
Bottom Time: 61 mins
Buddies: Marianne, Jen, and Janene

Location: Santa Cruz Island
Time: 1:49pm descent
Temp: 58
Vis: 10 feet tops not pretty
Max Depth: 40 feet
Bottom Time: 35 mins
Buddies: Marianne, Jen, and Janene

I will take this moment to grieve for all the divers on land who did not get wet yesterday!!

So the Dive Goddesses planned and executed a girls only trip on the Truth to Santa Cruz Island. I had many a dire warning of the conditions that were awaiting us but there is a reason we have been given the name hard core dive goddesses and this is one of them. We had an uneventful crossing, not a swell in sight and not a drop of rain going out or back. I never said I wasn't worried about it just that it wasn't going to stop us.

We got 3 dives in, would have had 4 but the captain had a hard time anchoring for the third and took so long it precluded us from doing another dive after, actually we cut out 3rd dive short because he wanted us on the boat by 2:30 to go home which was fine with me the vis on dive 3 sucked and it was really surgy.

Critters, San Diego Dorids, Monterey Dorid, Lemon Peel, Spanish Shawls, Porostomes, the usual kelp fish, Kelp Bass, Blacksmith, the larges Giant Kelp Fish I've ever seen, lots of Rockfish including Treefish, Vermillion, one Copper, Brown, Blue, several Perch of different varieties, also my first Island Crevice Kelp Fish, a Snubnose Sculpin, an Octopus with lots of debris in front of his home, 1 very large Scorpionfish, several legal Lobster that none of us pointed out to the hunters, and one Harbor Seal that swam in front of Marianne and I as we approached the boat, he just glided thru the kelp. My favorite sighting was on the first dive this 2 1/2 foot Horn Shark just starts swimming about Marianne and I, he landed on the rocks a couple of times but not sure if it was long enough for a photo to be taken. You could clearly see all his coloring and markings, it was really cool.

After our last dive we had a nice lunch and the trip home which included a pod of dolphins that followed the boat for nearly an hour before our paths were no longer the same. The girls had an awesome time, we were the only women on the boat which always has a few perks and from some of the blushing I'm guessing the men were not used to it....no I won't go into details...what happens on the boat stays on the boat!!

Thanks to my girls for a wonderful trip,

Kim

 

[Jake]

Quick Report:

Location: Corona Del Mar breakwater
Date: 2006-12-10
Time: 730ish, and then laterish
Wave height: 0-2'
Surge: 2-3'
Viz: 0-8'
Temp: 59 and 60

Did my dry suit checkout dives today. Unfortunately, because of the rain, conditions were pretty poor. At the very least, swell was nonexistent which was nice.

Hooray for dry suit certification!
Boo to leaky wrist seal on a rental suit!

 

[Mo2vation]

Date: 12/8/06
Dive Location: Vets
Buddy(ies): HB-Can-We-Dive-Vets-Again-Chica
Time: about the same time as Thursday
Bottom Time: 86+ minutes
Max Depth: 93 feet
Vis: Unreal. Not as good as Thurs - but still in the 20+ range
Wave height: Zip. Boot top licking
Temp at depth: 58
Surface Temp: Drysuit. Who cares.
Tide information: Low tide 6:11 PM - rising on the dive
Gas mix: Goodyear
Top reason Pasley should hurry home: Two great nights on the front of the storm. Vets is on Nudi Alert!

Thursday Rocked. One of the all time great Vets dives.

And I had no camera....

So Chica and I decided to rush back the next night (Friday) and bring the cam and capture some of the magic we had on Thursday.

It was a good dive. Excellent conditions. Easy entry and exit. The Ocean just didn't feel like putting on the show it did on Thursday. No Pacific Electric Ray. No baby GSB. No party coconut. In place of the dozens of D. Iris served up on Thursday night, we saw ONE on Friday. But we did see 6 species of nudis this night: Hermissenda, D. Iris, Fed Ex (the same one, same place as Thursday!), Dirona Picta (the largest one I've ever, EVER seen), Polycera Atra (about 1/4 size of a pea...) and get this: a Sandiegensis. I've never seen a Sandy at Vets before.

There was a mass moult (molt?) of the Mole Crabs over night. Holy cow. There were a ZILLION mole crab skins cast about the place. Thousands. The sand was barren on Thursday night, but 24 hours later, crab suit city. Kinda weird.

I had the 105 clamped onto the camera. Not a great lens for night diving in the mild serge we had. After so many excellent shots last weekend on the Spectre, it was quite humbling to get so many terrible shots on this trip. Lots of great subjects, just a photographer who couldn't get solid focus lock at night. I was blowing it... I did no justice to this dive with these limp shots.

Claudette was money, as usual - finding lots of fun things to shoot. I just was having a really, really bad night with the cam.

Thankfully, Friday's dive wasn't half the dive Thursday's was or I'd feel twice as inept as I feel now for delivering pictures that were only half as good as usual... :mooner:

We saw TONS of little rock fish. 1 to 1.5 inches. They were just everywhere. More than our usual share of tiny octos, too. With my nose to the silt for the last 20 minutes of the dive, looking for D. Iris Nudis, I was kinda in a zone when a sizable guitar fish leaped out of the muck right in my face and scared the poopdeck out of me.


The Vet's Fakeyssenda's are back!
The star of the show tonight were the Hermissenda's. In Vets, I call them Faksyssendas, as they just look different here. They are very clear footed, and their serrata take on this cinnamon core, with a clear outer jacket. The blue line on their feet is the deepest bright blue. They're very different looking from other 'seendas I see around.

I saw tons - but none on the sand... they were all on stuff.

On Friday, I got two shots I like - one laying eggs. I mean LAYING EGGS - as in I was watching eggs some out of her / him / it. Way cool.

The other was this Fakey all upside-down on a stick. Loaded with eggs.

Sad shots, but you'll get the idea. It was a good dive. A long dive. We kept looking for the D. Iris invasion and never found them. I got off one bad shot at the beginning of the dive, and just KNEW we'd find more D. Iris later on the way back... we never did.

Thanks for another great dive, Dette!

---
Ken


The only D. Iris of the night - also on a stick with a couple of Fakey's

Mini Octo

A Sandy at Vets? Who knew. First one I've ever seen there. (Original Size Here)

Couple of Fakey's with a mini-scallop. On a Stick. Always on a Stick. Fakeysicles?

Mah-Mah-Mah-My Dirona. Close to 3 inches. Biggest I've ever seen here (fuzzy original here)

Another fuzzy Picta pictcha. Just facial detail

Fakey laying eggs while we watched!

Puppy! Dozens of these little rockfish all over the place

One Fish, Two Fish, RED FISH!!! - what up with his eye?

Fakey full of eggs - upside-down on yet another stick. Probably climbing up the stick and it fell over!!! I like this pic a lot. My fav of the night! Full size here

Our own DMO (Diminutive Pacific Octopus) Little guy is about an inch long. Its all about the skin for me and Octos. Love it! Nice full size image here.

Remember - if you get the red X of death, right click and select "Show Picture" and the image should come up.
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[scottfiji]

nice report and photos Ken.

fyi, the rockfish is some type of sculpin, and the D. Iris looks like one of the undescribed Dendronotus species with white spots in the D. Behren's nudibranch book.

I saw some huge Picta's earlier this year, largest one was around 4 inches.

Scott

 

[MaxBottomtime]

It looks like Dendronotus frondosus. They're fairly common in sandy plains and canyons, although had to spot sometimes.
http://www.divebums.com/FishID/Pages/dendronotus_frondosus.html

 

[scottfiji]

It looks like Dendronotus frondosus. They're fairly common in sandy plains and canyons, although had to spot sometimes.
http://www.divebums.com/FishID/Pages/dendronotus_frondosus.html

maybe, but I thought it looked more like this guy, who I found at vets park in may of last year:

I emailed the photo to dave behrens, he agreed it was the unknown species on page 77 of his nudie book (the version of the book at that time)

scott

 

[ICY ICE]

Nice photos Ken....we were going to do vets tonight....

Hope to see the same next week.

 

[Mo2vation]

Whatever they are, there were dozens of them last Thursday.

They were in the field of juicy Dendy egg strings at the 24' - 28' line, right in front of the stairs.

I can't wait to get back there.

---
Ken

 

[alaity47]

Location: south sides of San Miguel and Santa Cruz
Date: Dec 8-10, 2006
Boat: Conception
Temps: 52-56
Vis: 10-50'
Surge: WHOAH

For the last 3 years, we've gone out on a 3-day trip with Truth Aquatics, and had fantastic conditions every time, with at least 2 whole days spent at San Miguel.

This was not one of those years.

The lovely swell rolling in from the northwest meant we had a hard time finding dive sites. I have to give major kudos to the captain and crew for effort, but sadly we spent a lot of time cruising around looking for spots with diveable current/surge, so didn't get in as many dives as in previous years.

We did make it to San Miguel on Friday, which I didn't expect after seeing those swell models. I was happy to get to spend a day with all the sea lions out there. I love pulling up to the first dive site at San Miguel, and seeing all the sea lions leaping out of the water and racing towards the boat. We dived Cooke Point, Tyler Bight and Wycoff Ledge, and had no shortage of pinnipeds.

Play with us!!

We also had no shortage of surge. The swell on the surface didn't seem all that bad except for the occasional big roller coming through. But the long wavelength meant those big rollers were REALLY INTERESTING underwater! The first one that hit us took me completely by surprise. We were in about 50 feet of water, in fairly thick kelp and nice vis. All of a sudden I saw the kelp in front of me start whipping around like it was in a washing machine, and then BLAMMO! I went flying backwards in the turbulence; it felt quite a lot like getting caught in a breaking wave on a beach dive! I quickly learned how to hang onto a stalk of bull kelp and "tarzan" my way along to avoid getting slammed into rocks and urchins. One time I had a good hold, but my buddy went flying, and wound up a good 40 feet away. Forty foot surge. That was a unique experience.

That was the worst surge we had all weekend, but the occasional 10'+ surge wasn't unusual at all the rest of our dive sites!

A rare non-surgy moment:

Still, I had fun. We were on a limited load trip with a bunch of photographers, so there was plenty of room for everyone's enormous camera rigs. I think I even got some fun footage of the effects of the surge - though it may make me seasick to watch it!

Critter highlights of the trip: a school of what I think were kelp pipefish, high density of rainbow surfperch at Coches Priestos, a cormorant underwater, several super-juvenile sheephead that weren't too camera-shy, nudis by the dozen, courting snubnose sculpins, enormous abalone, and lots of chestnut cowries.

Juvie sheephead, feeling safe in his gorgonian:

My favorite dive site was actually the last one: 9 o'clock reef, off the east end of Santa Cruz. It's not always diveable due to current, but when we anchored there it was pretty mild. We dropped down into 50' vis and an absolutely BEAUTIFUL kelp forest: equal parts bull and giant kelp, with each enormous, healthy plant spaced about a foot away from the next. Absolutely gorgeous. However, the vis started to deteriorate and the surge picked up, which made the beautiful kelp forest a beautiful entanglement hazard - I've never had to untangle myself so many times on one dive! Then we couldn't find the anchor line to go back up (turns out the wind changed and the boat pendulumed away), and surfaced to some serious wind chop and a long swim against-current to the boat. Well, it STARTED as my favorite dive!

The ride back was... bumpy. But again, not as bad as I'd feared from those swell models last week.

The rest of Jeff's pics are here:

3 Days on the Conception

If any of my surge footage is watchable, I'll try to put together a few clips for your enjoyment.