Where did I go with my force fins?

[Soakedlontra]

I hope this is the end of it so I can move on and finish the rest of the story!

[vimeo]8661560[/vimeo]

 

[Bob Evans]

Octopus, They lived in my room, Hermosa Beach, California, for two years. In my salt water tanks I Studied two Octopus which won me first place in my high school science faire (1968) They are super smart. Thank you Dad for driving me each week to the Redondo Beach Breakwater to capture fresh sea water in several large containers. I sure enjoy reading your adventures, this weekend I plan to pull out my gear, and be out diving each month. I will be on SCUBA RADIOScubaRadio-The worlds first radio show devoted to diving with Greg The Divemaster. Powered by ClickToBoat.Com. this week end 11-14-09 with my friend Greg Holt. My best trips have been with Greg.

 

[ickis]

im kinda curious but i gotta ask- what fins do you use when you go diving ?

and concerning octopi (i think thats the correct plural...), theres a dive club in israel called "octopus" because they have (i still think they do) a pet octopus in the sea and he was super smart and he would play with the instructors and the regular divers and do tricks like fitting inside soda bottles and other stuff

 

[Soakedlontra]

Octopus, They lived in my room, Hermosa Beach, California, for two years. In my salt water tanks I Studied two Octopus which won me first place in my high school science faire (1968) They are super smart. Thank you Dad for driving me each week to the Redondo Beach Breakwater to capture fresh sea water in several large containers. I sure enjoy reading your adventures, this weekend I plan to pull out my gear, and be out diving each month. I will be on SCUBA RADIOScubaRadio-The worlds first radio show devoted to diving with Greg The Divemaster. Powered by ClickToBoat.Com. this week end 11-14-09 with my friend Greg Holt. My best trips have been with Greg.

Did you have a permit from theee.....Department of Fish and Wildlife maybe?

I guess there must be a Redondo Beach in CA too. At Redondo Beach here in WA there were two octopuses living under two small wrecks. One was Pepper the star at the Seattle Aquarium until she was released after a romantic encounter with the male aquarium male octopus on St. Valentine's Day last year. (Her capture stirred up a controversy among the local diving community)

Have fun at the radio show and underwater!

 

[Soakedlontra]

im kinda curious but i gotta ask- what fins do you use when you go diving ?

and concerning octopi (i think thats the correct plural...), theres a dive club in israel called "octopus" because they have (i still think they do) a pet octopus in the sea and he was super smart and he would play with the instructors and the regular divers and do tricks like fitting inside soda bottles and other stuff

I use Force Fins Pro and Flying Force Fins.

Octopuses is the correct plural according to the Seattle Aquarium folks. According to an article on Wikipedia ( Octopus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Octopi is another plural form. I personally think that the right plural is octopuses.

I used to eat them when I lived in Italy and I was not a vegetarian and was not thinking about the overfishing of the Mediterranean Sea. In British Columbia they are commercially harvested and they end up used as bait to catch other fish....What a waste!

 

[Soakedlontra]

I hope this is the end of it so I can move on and finish the rest of the story!

87LwzbUoymc​

Alleluia! The rest of the story is finished and the link above doesn't work any more. I tried to edit the four different video clips that are part of the work Force Fins All Over The Place to create one longer piece but I could not figure out a way to do it that did not take until 'the end of time' with Windows Movie Maker (the only movie editing program that I am familiar with right now). So here it is divided up in four parts:

Happy Thanksgiving diving!​

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I just spent the most relaxing 30 minutes I have spent on the Internet in a long time.

This thread makes me smile.

Thanks, Betty ... well done.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Soakedlontra]

I just spent the most relaxing 30 minutes I have spent on the Internet in a long time.

This thread makes me smile.

Thanks, Betty ... well done.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Thank you very much Bob..after all that work! It was actually a lot of fun and sometimes a bit frustrating (Windows Movie Maker kept freezing up!)

Last Sunday Sam and I did two great dives at Keystone Jetty despite the gloomy weather forecast. It turned out that there were not 6/8 ft waves crashing on the beach but just 1 ft so the entry and exit was easy.

During the first dive we tested just the camera housing empty because Sam, who sometimes cannot keep his hands steady, took almost all the buttons apart to clean them and reassembled them afterwards. Luckily it worked out fine and the housing did not leak. So during the second dive I was able to take pictures and shoot the view of the wall of plumose anemones down to a giant pacific octopus den (Sam's suggestion) and...but this is another story!

 

[Soakedlontra]

November 22, 2008 and November 7, 2009 are two dates that I will never forget:




The Pink Matriarch was not alone in those waters, some of her neighbors were:

Sailfin Sculpin

Red Irish Lord

A confusing gunnel ​

 

[Soakedlontra]

On Sunday November 8, my buddy and I went back to Possession Beach. This time we were really careful to park the car in the notorious distant parking lot after double checking that all our gear was on the picnic table.

The sky seemed to promise nothing else than trouble and the sight of snow on the distant mountains made me feel even colder than it really was. However once in the water small waves rocked me gently and I was a grown-up baby who floated peacefully in a liquid cradle and the sense of chill disappeared.

The surface was deep gray brownish…not very inviting. Who knew what the visibility was going to be like after days of wet weather. If the lack of sunshine makes everything look darker above the surface, it is even more so underwater. At that moment the cloudy sky was holding its breath: the wind didn’t blow like crazy and rain wasn’t falling. An overall calm and harmony reigned over the shore. However underwater was a different matter…

Goofing around before surface swimming

Off I go!

The orange sea pens faithfully began to appear at a depth of about 35/40 fsw

and their most tenacious enemy too:

the striped nudibranch.

An orange sea pen can hide all its body into the sand making itself invisible but so can the nudibranch. As far as I can remember the latter can cruise around undetected like a submarine and emerge from the sand whenever it wants unlike the unfortunate sea pen which, if it moves at all, it certainly doesn’t do it as fast as the nudibranch. Orange sea pens always seem pretty much stuck in one spot with dreadful consequences…

The drama that unfolded under our eyes was interrupted by the sound of our bubbles. If you imagine us holding our breaths for several seconds the scene of the striped nudibranch’s meal would have been in utter silence to our ears. The sea pen doesn’t squeal like a terrestrial creature and if it is injured its body doesn’t spill blood. In an uncanny way the lack of sound and blood reduced the emotional impact of what was going on. The horror of one animal eating another one alive was somewhat ‘diluted’.

Unfortunately the striped nudibranch is not the only one to hunt for orange sea pens. After taking few pictures we moved on and I spotted a bright red ‘object’ lying on the distant insipid featureless bottom. I got closer and realized that it was a spiny red star

I was surprised to see one in this desert where it seemed that the only reliable source of food available was the orange sea pen…
(After the dive I checked my ID book and sure enough I discovered that the spiny red star feeds primarily on orange sea pens!)

Later I saw another bright red star

I am still debating whether it is a vermilion or gunpowder one.

Those bright-colored invertebrates did really stand out. They added an unexpected element of surprise in an environment whose inhabitants are mostly inconspicuous animals with dull and boring colors, a part from the orange sea pens of course.

Time went by and we slowly reached the depth of 15 fsw where we did the safety stop in the company of hooded nudibranchs. They were all busy competing for blades of eelgrass or opening and closing their enormous hood-like mouths to feed.

After three minutes we were forced to say good-bye to those small jelly like remarkable creatures and surfaced.
Another amazing dive was over.​