Where did I go with my force fins?

[Soakedlontra]

Soakedlontra,
Great to hear from you! Top of the World! Please give my best to Clancy at the Fire Station. I am sure you will not forgot how to dive. Matthew Ferraro and I did a shore dive in front of the Top of the World Hotel for the Gray Whale Obstacle Course episode for PBS. ---Stick to above water while in Barrow.
Be sure to keep us posted on the Bowhead whales, Polar bears and your adventurers!

Shore dive in front of the Top of the World Hotel? That must have been quite something...Where you wearing a special underwater parka made of a polar bear skin and did you eat raw frozen caribou meat with seal oil before splashing?

My time in the Arctic is over! I will be flying back to Seattle tomorrow. I certainly loved the flights on bush airplanes...what a sea-land-scape!

The only really bad news is that my camera broke at Kali (Point Lay) after two weeks of exciting freezing snapshooting:depressed:

cheers

 

[Bob Evans]

Soakedlontra, Welcome home. We have missed you and your adventures. Your fan, Bob

 

[Soakedlontra]

Last Thursday I 'tested' the water with my right hand at La Conner marina to convince myself that I was not in the Arctic anymore. Whuauh! Here in WA the water is actually 'soft'!

Where the Force Fins were not allowed to go:

Sea water in Southern Alaska

Land fast ice meets the sea ice somewhere in the distance at Tikigaq (Point Hope)

On Sunday I felt ready to go back diving again. I thought about doing my first dive after two months of being dry at Langley because it is a good place to dive if you are a bit 'rusty and you don’t want to deal with currents', but my buddy wanted to go to Keystone. If the current would be a problem we would do a drift dive.

Once again we missed slack and the current was flowing nicely westward. I don't know how we managed not to forget pieces of gear because my buddy also hadn't been diving in two months as well! But we didn’t. Dressing up with all that scuba stuff reminded me of my daily dressing routine in the Arctic where I usually wore about three layers of clothing (more when riding on a snow machine).

So we decided to walk and wade to the pilings and drift from there to the jetty. We have done this several times now so it seemed a ‘piece of cake’ to us. Unfortunately we did not anticipate what would come next… When it was time to drop as fast as we could next to the pilings my ears would not clear and I had to swim back up while my buddy kept going down disappearing from view. I embraced one piling so the current would not take me downstream and waited for my buddy’s head to pop out from the restless water.

I kept telling myself that he was experienced enough to handle the situation without problems. However I could not see what went on underwater (he probably could not see me either! We were not in the tropics after all and the visibility was not that great! I guess the depth must have been about 20 ft). I knew that if I had let myself stress out it would have been more likely that I would have released my grip on that mussel encrusted piling and in no time I could have turned into an hopeless piece of drift wood at the will of the current …

So I kept my cool... However after a short while a slight sense of anxiety began to linger in the back of my mind… While I was waiting with my arms wrapped around that prickly upright piece of timber smeared with creosote I tried to figure out what to do in the remote possibility that my buddy would not surface …Eventually the plan to swam back to shore and call for help ended up not being necessary because after some ‘eternal’ few minutes I finally saw my buddy’s bubbles reaching the surface. What a relief!

Fighting the current, he began to grab one piling at a time like a rock climber surprised by a storm to get closer to me. Then we decided to let ourselves go to the current away from the pilings and try to submerge again. My left ear was pretty stubborn and it took me at least three tries to be able to clear it! We were moving up and down and forward like a couple of roller coaster carts! When my left ear finally popped we slowly reached a depth of 40 ft and drift to the jetty without any further problems.

At last we were able to relax and enjoy the view of the bed and bull kelp waving like blades of tall grass in the wind. We missed the wolf eel and the octopus at the pilings…I didn’t care! We had had enough thrills there already! Drifting between two big Lewis’s moon snails, a bunch of bright yellow-orange female kelp greenlings and in the middle of a parade of ling cods was our reward!

Lewis's Moonsnail (picture taken during a different dive)

 

[Blair Mott]

Keeping your cool on the surface is key! I think it is a great welcome back as you have once again proven to yourself you are ready to begin safe and rewarding diving! The picture you paint at the end of the dive is a sure sign the Ocean has welcomed you back!

 

[Scuba.com]

Soakedlontra... Thanks so much for taking me "diving" in so many sites I've not visited in way too many years. Your photo skills are fantastic and I've loved seeing some of the marine life I had honestly forgotten all about. Just one question... where are the Wolf Eels??? While not a member of the Force Fin Club, even though I've had many friendly dealings with Bob over quite a few years it's really fantastic to see you all chiming in here in a very fun and friendly way!

 

[Soakedlontra]

Soakedlontra... Thanks so much for taking me "diving" in so many sites I've not visited in way too many years. Your photo skills are fantastic and I've loved seeing some of the marine life I had honestly forgotten all about. Just one question... where are the Wolf Eels??? While not a member of the Force Fin Club, even though I've had many friendly dealings with Bob over quite a few years it's really fantastic to see you all chiming in here in a very fun and friendly way!

You are welcome mysterious Scuba.com! (I guess I am not very familiar with on line scuba shops…When it comes to buy scuba gear my buddy cannot help himself, rushes to the computer and makes deals on line before I even have the chance to check what's going on&#8230

Where are the Wolf Eels? Uuuuhhmmm…

Last time I saw them they were hanging around at the Seattle Aquarium! Unfortunately they did not invite me to share their tanks!

On a more serious note…If you want to see a couple of Wolf Eels that I saw during a past dive you may watch this video:

[vimeo]8663384[/vimeo]

(Since I have switched from You Tube to Vimeo a lot of video links don’t work anymore in my old posts:depressed: Sorry for the video links mess. Personally I don't understand why Scubaboard doesn't allow its members to edit their old posts after the 24hours? deadline has expired)

Let’s move on and forget about the Wolf Eel for a while!

Can you guess what I did see for the first time since I have been diving in the Pacific Northwest during my first dive last Sunday? It’s a creature not as glamorous as a six gill shark but still rare enough that has stirred some attention from the REEF folks (after every dive I do an on-line REEF survey Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) | Diving That Counts )

Recently the tides have been really low during the day. My buddy and I did not want to get up at crack of dawn or wait until night to catch the high tide so we scratched our heads to figure out where we could go diving to do a skill dive safely and then dive at depths below 60 ftw. We also did not want to walk on a mud flat with the risk to sink up to our knees under the weight of our gear to reach the water; drive for hours; spend money on ferry tickets and encounter potential current troubles.

We both came up with the same dive site: Possession Beach Waterfront Park! The Orange Sea Pens heaven in the south- eastern coast of Whidbey Island. When we were ready to hit the water at about 1pm, the eel grass bed was flat out on the dry bottom, baking under a warm sun. It looked rather miserable and not exactly thriving with life as it does when its blades gently wave underwater. We avoided walking on the grass to prevent damaging it (eelgrass creates a very important habitat for all sorts of critters). After a short surface swim we submerged right on top of a field of orange sea pens at a depth of 30 ft. The visibility was about 3 ft!

All that orange must have cast a spell on us. It did not take very long that we looked at each other and I wrote on my slate: “Skills NO!” I showed the message to my buddy and he agreed to change our plan. We did not realize until then that by practicing skills there we would probably ended up crashing onto those delicate colonies of polyps , which already had to put up with a stream of hungry striped nudibranchs, and the visibility was rather off-putting.

We swam in what looked like an ebb- spring- soup to a depth of 83 ft where the visibility improved a little. We hung around for a while scrutinizing every particle of mud, sand and silt like two keen archeologists. You never know what might pop out from that soft and slimy looking bottom. At the same time we were hoping that sooner or later a gray whale would show up to greet us (they are back feeding in the shallow water of Puget Sound). Well…of course the whale didn’t show up! Nevertheless we were still happy to sharpen our eyesight on that featureless underwater-sea-scape.

It was my buddy who spotted it! He was cruising several feet in front of me and at some point he suddenly stopped. He then signaled me with his light to get closer. I did and there it was! A three and a half foot long Longnose Skate was resting playing dead! The rear part of its body was semi-buried, but its head was clearly visible. I was delighted to notice that when I got really close to it to sketch on my slate (no camera! :depressed the head and ‘eye’ spot on one of its pectoral fins, that would help me identifying the animal more precisely later, the fish stood still as if it was made of stone.

Eventually after spending some time in the company of this, apparently, rare marine finding we had to leave. The skate didn’t notice a bit when we leisurely began swimming toward shallower water. It still pretended that it was not here. Later on we noticed a flat piece of plywood resting on the bottom. It must have been the only human made object for miles! My buddy decided to lift it up gently so he wouldn’t stir up a mushrooming cloud of silt…and voila’! A cute red octopus appeared like a white rabbit from the hat of a magician! It was clinging with its small suckers on the underside of that piece of thin wood.

It was probably not very pleased to see us…I actually felt sorry for it. It looked so naked and vulnerable in that immensely shapeless environment. I then made a pathetic attempt to find a new home for the now homeless cephalopod. I looked around and spotted an empty clear beer bottle. I swam to it and picked it up, turned around and: “Ah!Where is the octopus now! Darn!”

Luckily I was able to find it again. First I tried to gently laying the bottle next to the tentacled animal but my clumsy movements displeased the invertebrate and began to move away from the bottle. Then I swam head of it slowly and laid the bottle in front of the animal and left it alone. Who knows whether the octopus eventually called those round glass walls encrusted with barnacles home… I couldn’t wait and see it for myself, we had to head back to shore.

You never know what can happen next! After a long surface interval characterized by taking a nap under a pale, yet pleasant sun, while a family was having a birthday party in Russian (so it sounded like) at the next picnic table, we got ready to do a second dive. By then the tide had turned and was slowly moving up. This time, contrary to the general rule that your deepest dive should be first, we reached the depth of 98 ftw. The feeble daylight was struggling to reach us down there. The orange sea pens didn’t seem to like it that much. I don’t recall seeing any at that depth. After several minutes we turned around and in shallower water we encountered another red octopus! And guess what? It was standing in front of the ‘doorsteps’ of its home: a brown beer bottle.

 

[Soakedlontra]

I still remember the day when I was checking my e-mails in the library of a village in the North Slope of Alaska. I immediately noticed a special one: it was from a REEF outreach coordinator inviting me to join a group of divers to carry out marine critters surveys in the waters of the San Juan Islands! At that time Washington State seemed to be a vague distant planet rotating in another galaxy!

I did not reply immediately to that message. For a moment I thought that I could not make those dives because I was planning to apply for a two weeks artist residency in Barrow and by the time April came I wouldn’t have been diving for two months. It was a thought which made me slightly anxious. Several days later it was clear that I could not apply for that residency after all because I was not a resident of the North Slope. I then decided to take the opportunity to do the REEF dives and without wasting any more time I sent a message of confirmation to the REEF coordinator. My earlier sense of silly anxiety dissipated instantly. I was determined to catch up with diving and refresh my skills as soon as I would come back to Washington.

However I did not anticipate how long it would take me to connect with fluid water after being confined in a world of ice and snow for two months. Eventually, ten days passed and I began to dive again. I was very happy to notice that I still remembered how to operate my scuba gear. Time went by really fast and voila'! I did three dives only and it was already Saturday morning April 24th: the day of the REEF survey diving trip.

And guess what? I nearly missed the boat because I forgot to load my tanks in the car! I don't know how but while my buddy and I were driving to the Anacortes Skyline marina somewhere between my house and the marina, all of a sudden I began to think about scuba cylinders and slowly realized that I did not have any gas with me! Sometimes the workings of the mind are rather inexplicable, yet helpful! We immediately turned around and drove back home to pick them up hoping for the best.

At the marina it was a relief to see that the Diver’s Dream Charters boat captain and his helper were patiently scrutinizing the parking lot for any signs of the last diver missing from the boat. Hurriedly we unloaded the gear in front of the slip where the boat was moored and while my buddy drove off to look for a parking spot (he has yet to join the ranks of REEF surveyors, but decided to join the REEF crowd as a passenger and extra dry-hands) I carried my gear aboard of the Lu-Jac's Quest. The weather was actually better than the forecaster had predicted. It did not rain too much and during the second part of the trip the sun decided to show up. The other REEF folks were really nice and I had an enjoyable boat ride with them. My insta-buddy was a friendly and easy going guy from Oregon. We planned two dives and the first one turned out to be my favorite: James Island North Wall.

The visibility was not ideal but who needs it when you are surrounded by magnificent, crawling, small invertebrates?
I was able to spot a shrimp that I had never seen before, the Candy Stripe Shrimp, by gluing my eyes to the stony face of the wall and the surrounding rocks rather than let them wander in the distance that was densely populated with suspended particles. The tiny crustacean (it reaches the maximum length of about 2 inches) was not swimming in that mess of a water column but was standing on a rock at the base of the pink-red column of a Snakelock Anemone, its life buddy. It looked real pretty and delicate like a figurine made of the finest Bohemian crystal.

After admiring the transparent shrimp for a short while, I pointed my dive light at the spot where it was so my buddy could look at it too. Then we moved on to scrutinize more rock surface while the wall dropped down into a dark nothingness to a depth that we did not know (ours was in the 50-40 feet range) and ended the dive with my slate full of marks in the invertebrate section and my buddy commenting that he liked my fins.

​

 

[Soakedlontra]

My 200th dive did not happen in some distant waters renowned for excellent visibility and teaming with exotic life like the Galapagos or Indonesia; nor in some hidden corner of British Columbia where walls are apparently covered with strawberry anemones and gorgonians. It was not at the ultimate current swept diving spot on Whidbey Island: Deception Pass. My 200th dive took place at a far less flamboyant site: Camano Island State Park.

My buddy and I wanted to explore a new diving location close to home. We consulted all the books that we had on scuba diving sites and beachcombing. One in particular mentioned that Camano Island State Park, which is situated between Whidbey Island and the mainland, has a marine park. As far as I remembered I had never heard of local divers mentioning a marine park in that area unless they were referring to an artificial reef that it is reachable only by boat. The WA State Parks website had hardly any information about the park at all, never mind the supposed underwater park.

I should have realized that the lack of information about this site was a 'red flag'. I guess I wanted to believe that there was something worth seeing down there. A possibility that made me ignore all the evidence that would otherwise have convinced me to pick a different dive site. Aren't true explores the ones who embark on journeys along unfamiliar and unbeaten paths, after all?

We reached the island after one hour of driving. Out of curiosity, we stopped at Cama Beach first to check it out before heading further south to our original destination. But when the ranger told us that to reach that beach we would have to walk a quarter of a mile from the parking lot we did not even bother to get out of the car to look at it. We drove off to the North Beach of Camano Island State Park instead. It was the dive site that I had originally picked, and the parking lot was closer to shore.

A steep short wooden staircase down a bluff of clay and sand lead us to the beach. It was a calm, semi-sunny and warmish day. The sea looked pretty, still and relaxed, where a couple of loons were diving close to shore, while in the far distance several dark round heads of harbor seals were popping up and other waterfowl were floating, feeding and having the occasional fight. It was a perfect spot to do whale watching if only the whales would have bothered to show up. Once the clouds lifted above a horizon blocked off by the landmass of Whidbey Island, we could see the snowy peaks of the Olympic Mountain Range.

The tide was high and close to switching. We agreed to use a dive flag because the body of water that we were facing is usually very busy with boats. For the first time in nearly two years of diving I tended the dive flag. My buddy took care of the navigation. We decided to submerge right from the beach instead of surface swimming. So off we went and kept swimming above a bottom of cobblestones matted with kelp whose topography eluded us…On one hand it seemed to be as flat as a Midwest plain, on the other the computer would tell me that it was getting deeper.

We were not surprised to be enveloped by poor visibility (lately, it seems to be like that no matter where we are diving). The layers of ribbon and sugar kelp blades were so thick that we could not see what it was lurking underneath it. The bottom was like an inviting giant water mattress swinging in the weak current. Finally after swimming underwater for 20 minutes we reached a depth of 20 ft! We stopped and looked at each other wondering what to do. Then we decided to swim further out and when our computers showed us that we were at 30 ft we decided to turn around.

I began to have a closer look at that tan-brown colored kelp because there was no more hurry to find out how deep the bottom would go! Baby Opalescent Nudibranchs were crawling in almost every single blade of kelp. A lot were only a few millimeters long. In an opening where kelp had not grown we spotted the unmistakable fleshy foot and big round shell of a Lewis’s Moon Snail. Then, here it was! The tail of a great sculpin hiding underneath the seaweeds and...look there! The head of another great sculpin appeared resting on the bottom. Later the gentle rocking movement of the kelp blades revealed some bright red splotches. It was a buffalo sculpin who was resting on one side because its belly was unusually bloated and round. ‘It must be pregnant’ I thought. Small shrimps with visible guts and others with a white band on the top of their bodies were resting on the kelp. In a flash they would jump to safety underneath neighboring kelp blades as soon I touched them lightly by mistake.

Time seemed to have disappeared from our conscious minds. I had been holding the line that was attached to the dive flag without any problems, hoping that I was not pulling it too hard drowning the flag. Eventually we encountered a bunch of male Tubesnouts who were ‘flashing’ their bright orange fins to us (a behavior that, apparently, helps them to attract females. I had observed it once before in captivity at the Seattle Aquarium only). These little cute needle–like fishes were hanging around close to wired weed. I slowly swam closer and I saw a cluster of light transparent golden eggs attached to one the seaweeds stalks. Were they Tubesnouts? I could not tell for sure.

When finally my body began to ‘protest’ and wanted me to drag it out of the water, get rid of my scuba gear as quickly as possible and sprint like a cheetah to the nearest restroom , I signaled my buddy to swim back to shore. I surfaced thinking that I did not waste my time diving at Camano Island State Park, but, at the same time, I had also a feeling that I would not dive there again anytime soon. Then I looked at my computer: the dive time was 80 minutes. My 200th dive turned out to be the longest dive I have ever recorded in my log book.

Opalescent Nudibranch (Hermissenda crassicornis).One of my first underwater photographs shot at Driftwood Beach​

 

[Soakedlontra]

Few days ago I thought that I had experienced all different types of poor visibility known to divers of the Pacific Northwest. Last Wednesday Nature caught me by surprise once more. I showed up at Rosario Beach with my regular buddy convinced that the ocean was waiting for us in a good mood because, according to the weather forecaster, the wind was blowing South/South East, the beach faced West and was protected by a hill on its southern end.

How wrong I was! Despite the lack of wind on the beach 4ft waves were tumbling down crushing on the gravel shore with a rather loud thud! The surface beyond that point was choppy but without whitecaps. I watched the wave action on the beach with some disappointment trying to figure out whether I wanted to face that watery instability loaded with scuba gear or not. I was probably more concerned than my buddy because after looking at the restless sea for a short while, he did not hesitate to walk back to the parking lot to assemble his gear.

I soon followed him, brushing any traces of anxiety from my mind. When we were all dressed up we walked to the northern side of the beach while listening to the thundering sound of the collapsing waves. Contrary to my thinking, entering that water was not that difficult even if its restlessness made the donning of our Force Fins a bit more challenging than usual. In this kind of situation I want to be able to wear the fins as quickly as possible and the bungee cords at the back of my fins helped to achieve that more rapidly than a buckle.

We were bouncing around like two medium size buoys. After making sure that we were both OK we tried to surface swim for a while but gave up after few kicks because the surface of the water was too unsettled. We submerged while the waves were rocking us back and forth and plunged into a cloud of silt so fine that it was like being surrounded by thick fog on an early morning in November in the Po Valley (the area of Italy where I come from). Pieces of seaweed in all different stages of decomposition were floating around us heading toward shore.

We swam close together dodging boulders that would appear out of nowhere as dark unrecognizable shadows while the sea kept rocking us back and forth like broken kelp. It was not the first time that we dove there. We knew that the bottom was pretty shallow and we would have to swim a hell of a lot out to reach maybe 40ft. However, I was a bit surprised to notice that when we finally reached a depth of 20ft we were still tossed around by the wave action. If there was any consolation, the visibility improved a little.

It was very clear who was the master in that churning, yet full of life, underwater world. I saw red urchins as big as cantaloupes populating the base of the boulders and rocks without any sign of discomfort. Different fuzzy shapes of fish zoomed by leaving us wondering what the hell they were and a red pen point gunnel entangled its slim body in red seaweeds in the attempt to avoid us. Northern Kelp Crabs were swinging on blades of kelp as kids in a playground. At times we would swim through clouds of tiny shrimps. I almost bumped my nose into the jaws of a ling cod and all of a sudden the bright fleshy spotted small bodies of a leopard and clown dorid would appear without any notice.

We were at the mercy of a force that on one hand was unsettling but on the other not scary. It was actually fun to let ourselves swing like those crabs! However we were also careful to not let this fluid force crush us against the boulders and rocks. After one hour we were ready to face the rolling surface again. This time exiting the water in our usual manner, by standing up, was a bit problematic and we decided to bend our knees and crawl out as if we were two pinnipeds. It was something that we have never done before. What a disconcerting reminder of the law of gravity! Now I know what a plumped seal must feel every time it hauls on shore and I am glad that my only ‘flippers’ are small and forked.

Rosario Beach at the end of a smiling day in June 2009

Clown Dorid

Leopard Dorid​

 

[Soakedlontra]

[vimeo]8673929[/vimeo]​