To Deadman's Reef! FasTrak fun on the DiveXtras Expressway, Sunday October 28, 2012

[HBDiveGirl]

The third perfect SoCal day was trying to dawn as I zoomed down the freeway to meet Shawn B. in Laguna Beach.

It was Scooter Day! Finally.
We'd been trying to get his new Cuda 400 out to play for several weeks and today was the day!

Bunches of dawn-patrol divers were all over Laguna as I parked.
Rick Guerin was meeting friends, as was Russ.
The SoCal shore diving community is charmingly small

The sky was pure blue at sunrise.
The sea was high-gloss aquamarine with hints of gold.
The surf was elsewhere.
Crescent Bay was meditatively quiet.
Wooo-Hooo!
Right day, right place, right gear: scooters.

I was having tiny flashbacks to the dozens of times I'd kicked and kicked and kicked...and kicked to dive Deadman's Reef.
(Ask Lynne! It convinced her we were all mad down here.... with long walks, moving water, and surface kicks that were stoopid. It got better.)

Deadman's Reef is a lovely dive, but it's a spectacular scooter dive.
There was literally a boat anchored on the reef, with 4 happy divers rolling into the water.
They were very small because they were so very far away.

Shawn and I surfaced scootered out to the big wash rock, descended, and motored out at 210 degrees.

After 4 minutes of relaxed moseying we arrived at the Reef. (I had a lovely and patient Sierra in my hand so we really did mosey.)
I started the best part of the dive with over 3000psi in the cylinder.

The water was spooky nice, with perfectly vertical giant kelp towering upwards.
20 feet of nice vis, with shadowed reef visible up to 30 feet away.
So we clipped of the scoots and frogged our way out to the far left end, enjoying the wild density of life:

• Barred sand bass
• Gorgonia
• hordes of little silver jobs jostling through the immature kelp
• Tiny babies! Garibaldi and sheephead cutie-pies, flitting between boulders.
• Swell Shark. A very swell Swell Shark, no less than 5 feet long, sleeping in a huge crevice with its head up on a rocky pillow.
• Huge Moray eels, in crevices wall-papered with red shrimp. Laguna Morays are jaw-droppingly big. Love it!
• Octopus! Including one with a plan: a fat live clam stored on his rocky doorstep, like a Bento Box lunch for later when he might be peckish.
• FedEx nudibranchs to the exclusion of any other species. Where was everybody else?
• Bunches of patient kick-divers enjoying the lovely conditions. All good.

We enjoyed using all our available gas exploring the beauties of the reef.
We rose easily through the forest canopy and surfaced above the reef in a glassy sea.
The beach was tiny and far away.
Click-Click and away we went, zig-zagging through the lusciously thick kelp growing in the bay now.
The surf was so small that Shawn made a great suggestion: Let's scooter to the center of the cove and haul the powered beasties out, closer to the steps. It was hot and sunny and the shorter walk was much appreciated.

An hour later I was home in Hermosa Beach, all smiles.

Thanks, Shawn, for a nice power-assisted ramble to Deadman's Reef.
Your scooter fun is just beginning!

~~~~~
Claudette

 

[riguerin]

Hi Claudette. It was nice running into you this past weekend.

Deadman's is also one of my favorite local shore dives and I'm glad you got to score it with the nice conditions we enjoyed this past weekend.

I totally agree that those long surface swims out to Deadman's are no fun...but a nice relaxed underwater swim can be In fact when the conditions are this nice, connecting the inner and outer reef systems as one extend dive can also be a nice option. After exploring the outer reef, poking around the expansive shallow inner reef system is wonderful place to spend time while warming up and off gassing.

Here's some video footage from our extended inner-outer reef crawl. Hope you enjoy

[video=vimeo;52363205]https://vimeo.com/52363205[/video]

 

[fnfalman]

Nice video! A bunch of scallops at the 1-minute mark.

 

[HBDiveGirl]

Rick! It was good to see you, too.

As we were laughing before the dive, it's almost like two different sports: kick-diving and scooter-diving.

Similar to road biking vs mountain biking.

Each offers unique rewards and a different, though related, experience.

I love 'em both.

~~~~
Claudette






"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
--Albert Einstein

 

[riguerin]

Thanks for the laughs, hugs and thoughtful words Claudette.

Glad to hear that you still appreciate a nice kick dive. If you're ever feeling nostalgic for the old days and don't mind trading the weight of that scooter for a little extra gas, you are always welcome to join the local crew. I Guerin-tee that you won't have to kick past that wash rock You will have dress warmly because we like to go really slow and stay uber long

p.s. Will you be able to join our mutual friend David Watson for his farewell dive in Laguna Beach next month before he takes off for Thailand ?

 

[Sam Miller III]

RIGUERIN,

Great to read your posts! Welcome back to Kalifornia- Have you completed your doctorate at Purdue U in Hoosier land?

Enjoyed your video of Deadman's reef...well done! The reef appears to be some what healthy with lots of growth.

An interesting side bar....

In the earlier days of diving Deadmans reef was only dove by a hand full of locals ..It was one of our private hunting grounds.--Spearfishing for Yellow tail, shell collecting and lobster diving..and the remains of a huge whale ! all a things of the past.
In 1971 Ron Merker and I wrote the OC section to the first California diving guide "Diving West." The guide's target reader was the average sport diver, and although the basic diver of 1970s was better trained and better physical condition they were certainly poorly equipped- wet suits were only a generation old, instumentation what there was of it was unreliable, and the now popular BCs were just being introduced, so we were concerned about including Deadman's reef in the guide, along with a number of evidently still unknown and unexplored OC reefs.
After much discussion and soul searching we deceided to include Deadmans reef.

In the insuing years with the advent of better equipment it became a meca for a certain class of divers-- Now Dead mans reef has the potential of being a new exciting dive destination for still another class of diver "The Scooter Diver" --what what ever is the correct or current name for divers who use these scooters?

Keep up the good photography work and stay wet!

SDM

 

[TSandM]

what ever is the correct or current name for divers who use these scooters?

Lazy . . .

 

[riguerin]

RIGUERIN,

Enjoyed your video of Deadman's reef...well done! The reef appears to be some what healthy with lots of growth.

An interesting side bar....

Thank you very much Dr. Miller. Always appreciate your insightful commentary on the history of our sport...especially as it pertains to our local sites in Orange County (where sport diving began).

It's actually very encouraging to hear your observations regrading the relative health of the reef in the video. As you're probably well aware, just a few years ago most of the popular dive sites around Laguna Beach were nearly complete urchin barrens. We've now started to see the benefits of years of grass-root efforts, such as urchin relocation, kelp restoration and most recently the MPA designations. The kelp beds at sites like Crescent Bay, Shaw's, Fisherman's/Diver's Coves, etc., are starting to come back. With the return of the kelp beds, we are also seeing a marked increase of marine life - increases in both quantity and size as well as frequency sightings of previously rarely seen species .

We're in a unique position here in OC, where we are actually beginning to witness a reversal in decades of decline of our local underwater habitat. We have a small group of local volunteer divers that are interested in documenting this shift in baseline. Since your baseline dates back to the very beginnings of the sport in this area, your first hand knowledge and insight of how these sites used to look would be an excellent reference. We'd certainly be very interested in any suggestions that you may have for site(s) that we could monitor/document for this project. In particular, any sites that you may have early pictures, video, or just strong memories to use as a comparison would be very valuable. If you're interested in helping, we'd love to hear from you. We can PM or start a new thread, so as not to high-jack this one. Thanks again

 

[HBDiveGirl]

Lazy . . .

Rarely does Ms. TSandM err in spelling.... but gotcha this time.

It's "S", "M", "A", "R", "T".

I knew what you meant.

~~~~~
Claudette

Click-click...ah, you know....


"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
--Albert Einstein