OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
[vimeo]8681287[/vimeo]
Where did I go with my force fins?
- Thread starter Soakedlontra
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OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
[vimeo]8683387[/vimeo]
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
[vimeo]8682486[/vimeo]
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
[vimeo]8684178[/vimeo]
(....Now I feel better!)
The other day somebody from Virginia contacted me and asked me if he could show this video to his family members so they could see that scuba diving is fun, safe and relaxing!
(....Now I feel better!)
The other day somebody from Virginia contacted me and asked me if he could show this video to his family members so they could see that scuba diving is fun, safe and relaxing!
Last edited:
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
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!
Here are the links that work!
[vimeo]8661560[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8662470[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8662916[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8663384[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8661560[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8662470[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8662916[/vimeo]
[vimeo]8663384[/vimeo]
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
Last edited:
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
At last! On May 9 I was able to do the southernmost shore dive on Whidbey Island: The Fingers at Possession Point State Park!
The site faces a bluff of clay and sand and it is exposed to S/SE winds, which can make the entry difficult. Last Sunday it was a calm day without surf so it was pretty easy to get into the water but another hazard was waiting for us: boats very close to shore. We carried a dive flag with the plan to anchor it on the bottom with a weight at 20 ft, instead of keeping it for the whole duration of the dive. We wanted to do our first dive to 100 ft, so anchoring it was easier than holding the line of the flag all the way down there.
The bottom is a gentle slope of cobblestone with bed kelp that switches to sand and silt where the current can be pretty strong. Then it drops down first at a 45 degree angle, or even steeper, and then becomes a vertical wall of clay powdered with a layer of fine silt. Here the current shut itself off by magic. I found myself peacefully hovering between an unknown deep darkness and the imposing presence of raw earthly overhangs. Large chunks of clay were protruding from the edges of channels as if they were the heads of ancient sleepy giants.
The visibility was lousy in shallow water, but after 25 ft it opened up and became 15/20 ft. A big school of rock fish was hovering above our heads while we were descending as if they were checking whether we had any business to proceed any further or not. We kept going down with their blessing and spotted the den of a Giant Pacific Octopus.
The cephalopod was tucked way inside its long and skinny home and was probing the entrance with one of its arms. Meanwhile an array of marine creatures began to appear all around us: Coonstripe Shrimps, Squat Lobsters, swimming anemones, Copper, Quillback, big-belly (pregnant?) Brown Rockfish, Ling Cods, Painted and Kelp Greelings.
The wall truly looked like a massive modernist sculpture that offered a variety of holes, burrows and 'shelves' that could fit any animal size from extra-large (Giant Pacific Octopus) to extra-small (baby shrimps). Almost each of them had a tenant. As my former AOW instructor told me once about clay walls: "They are like condominiums'. I would add that they are condominiums with precarious foundations...
The current and wave action probably keep re-modeling that underwater malleable world constantly evicting its inhabitants. Unfortunately I got a bit clumsy on the way down and bumped the steep slope with the tip of my fins generating a landslide of silt. It dragged a slow moving Spiny Pink Star down until something well planted on that precarious floor blocked the invertebrate‘s fall, otherwise unstoppable.
After a relaxing surface interval, our second dive was at a depth in the 80 foot range but it was as amazing as the first one. While we were having a nap basking in the sun in the quiet, cozy meadow overlooking the beach I was thinking that the only animal we did not encounter in such a lively watery neighborhood was a Wolf Eel. When we descended for the second time I did keep my eyes super- glued to the wall with the goal to find one.
At depth we encountered another somewhat rare inhabitant of the deep; a chimaera was doing slow lonely sweeps of the wall. Maybe it was an omen of what was to come. Unexpectedly, my earlier wish was granted by some unknown sea entity because on the way back to the surface there it was! A big reddish-brown juvenile Wolf Eel was leisurely checking the surroundings of its den and exposed its whole head and part of its slick body to our eyes. Later another marvelous surprise was waiting for us.
I remember swimming towards the direction of our dive flag in 50 feet of water, turning my head towards the surface and, like benign sentinels on a tower of a loyal castle, I was greeted by the cheerful silhouettes of Orange Sea Pens. They were strategically located nearby the den of the biggest Giant Pacific Octopus that I have ever seen.
The entrance of its den was littered with a neat and clean pile of crab remains. The hole in the clay was not very deep so we could clearly see the shape and size of its mantle and intimidating suckers, one snoozing eye and the gills inside its pulsating siphon. After watching over its sleep for a short while we swam away quietly. We did not want to wake it up even if the idea of luring the animal out of its home to see its tremendous whole body in the open was really tempting.
It was time to head back. I reluctantly began to swim to the bad visibility in the shallows to end our dive. ‘Farewell octopus, sweet dreams and I hope that an underwater landslide won’t kick you out any time soon!” I wished him. Further inside my heart I also wished that Possession Point Fingers were a protected marine park.
Dive #1
Dive # 2
The site faces a bluff of clay and sand and it is exposed to S/SE winds, which can make the entry difficult. Last Sunday it was a calm day without surf so it was pretty easy to get into the water but another hazard was waiting for us: boats very close to shore. We carried a dive flag with the plan to anchor it on the bottom with a weight at 20 ft, instead of keeping it for the whole duration of the dive. We wanted to do our first dive to 100 ft, so anchoring it was easier than holding the line of the flag all the way down there.
The bottom is a gentle slope of cobblestone with bed kelp that switches to sand and silt where the current can be pretty strong. Then it drops down first at a 45 degree angle, or even steeper, and then becomes a vertical wall of clay powdered with a layer of fine silt. Here the current shut itself off by magic. I found myself peacefully hovering between an unknown deep darkness and the imposing presence of raw earthly overhangs. Large chunks of clay were protruding from the edges of channels as if they were the heads of ancient sleepy giants.
The visibility was lousy in shallow water, but after 25 ft it opened up and became 15/20 ft. A big school of rock fish was hovering above our heads while we were descending as if they were checking whether we had any business to proceed any further or not. We kept going down with their blessing and spotted the den of a Giant Pacific Octopus.
The cephalopod was tucked way inside its long and skinny home and was probing the entrance with one of its arms. Meanwhile an array of marine creatures began to appear all around us: Coonstripe Shrimps, Squat Lobsters, swimming anemones, Copper, Quillback, big-belly (pregnant?) Brown Rockfish, Ling Cods, Painted and Kelp Greelings.
The wall truly looked like a massive modernist sculpture that offered a variety of holes, burrows and 'shelves' that could fit any animal size from extra-large (Giant Pacific Octopus) to extra-small (baby shrimps). Almost each of them had a tenant. As my former AOW instructor told me once about clay walls: "They are like condominiums'. I would add that they are condominiums with precarious foundations...
The current and wave action probably keep re-modeling that underwater malleable world constantly evicting its inhabitants. Unfortunately I got a bit clumsy on the way down and bumped the steep slope with the tip of my fins generating a landslide of silt. It dragged a slow moving Spiny Pink Star down until something well planted on that precarious floor blocked the invertebrate‘s fall, otherwise unstoppable.
After a relaxing surface interval, our second dive was at a depth in the 80 foot range but it was as amazing as the first one. While we were having a nap basking in the sun in the quiet, cozy meadow overlooking the beach I was thinking that the only animal we did not encounter in such a lively watery neighborhood was a Wolf Eel. When we descended for the second time I did keep my eyes super- glued to the wall with the goal to find one.
At depth we encountered another somewhat rare inhabitant of the deep; a chimaera was doing slow lonely sweeps of the wall. Maybe it was an omen of what was to come. Unexpectedly, my earlier wish was granted by some unknown sea entity because on the way back to the surface there it was! A big reddish-brown juvenile Wolf Eel was leisurely checking the surroundings of its den and exposed its whole head and part of its slick body to our eyes. Later another marvelous surprise was waiting for us.
I remember swimming towards the direction of our dive flag in 50 feet of water, turning my head towards the surface and, like benign sentinels on a tower of a loyal castle, I was greeted by the cheerful silhouettes of Orange Sea Pens. They were strategically located nearby the den of the biggest Giant Pacific Octopus that I have ever seen.
The entrance of its den was littered with a neat and clean pile of crab remains. The hole in the clay was not very deep so we could clearly see the shape and size of its mantle and intimidating suckers, one snoozing eye and the gills inside its pulsating siphon. After watching over its sleep for a short while we swam away quietly. We did not want to wake it up even if the idea of luring the animal out of its home to see its tremendous whole body in the open was really tempting.
It was time to head back. I reluctantly began to swim to the bad visibility in the shallows to end our dive. ‘Farewell octopus, sweet dreams and I hope that an underwater landslide won’t kick you out any time soon!” I wished him. Further inside my heart I also wished that Possession Point Fingers were a protected marine park.
Dive #1
Dive # 2
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
Almost two weeks have already rolled by since I came back from my last diving trip outside Whidbey Island. However, a concoction of earthly and watery flashbacks keeps pulling me back in time. It is not like traveling inside a time machine, though, as if I had some knowledge in such matter, but rather being nagged by an invisible double-self, who is whispering inside my ears fragmented chapters from an ancient tale. They are following me wherever I go.
On Friday morning, May 15, I consulted all the current and tides tables of the four corners of the Pacific Northwest until my head was clogged up with too many possibilities and a lot of indecision. So in order to accelerate the process of picking up a diving destination because the weekend was already on a fast moving pace, I patiently figured out what was my diving budget for the week-end and started looking for a diving location that did not require an expensive ferry ticket, endless hours of driving, had a campground and was not swept by troubling currents. Eventually I settled for an area of the Washington coast that I have read a lot about on Northwest Dive News magazine and visited in the past as a backpacker: Hood Canal in the Olympic Peninsula.
Of course I was too late to make a reservation to secure a spot on the ferry...My buddy agreed to take the risk of not being able to board at the Keystone ferry terminal. In haste we packed camping and scuba gear and whatever food we could find in the kitchen. Thankfully we got lucky and after waiting for only about an hour we were on our way to Port Townsend. After disembarking the ferry, we drove south on a two lane winding road where on one side the serene, blue and sparkling waters of Hood Canal were increasingly seducing us and on the other steep mountain slopes reminded us that in that area parking space close to shore was limited. In the early evening we reached our final destination: the campground of Mikes Beach Resort.
I t was the first time that we stayed at a cold water dive resort. The place was packed with divers. A lot of them were students from other states. At the reception we were immediately told that there was no electricity because a vehicle had rammed into a power pole on that same winding and narrow road, not far away from the resort. Workers from the power company frantically worked all evening and part of the night to restore the electricity. For us this unexpected surprise was not a nuisance but made our diving trip to the somewhat urbanized Hood Canal more adventurous.
When darkness inexorably fell over us and the other guests, the resort was dotted with beams of head and diving lights, as if flashlight fishes were swimming in dark air rather than water. A cozy campfire was burning on the beach. There was a nice wooden deck that jutted out into the canal. Before hitting the sack in my tent, which was located an eighth of a mile up the road, I walked to the end of the deck to gaze at the starry sky for a while. The stars seemed to be brighter without the interference of the resort artificial lights. The air was mild, not exactly tropical but pleasant enough. All of a sudden I felt like I was in Roatan on my first warm water diving vacation. More precisely on a West End deck where, before going to bed, I used to stare at the clear sky, free of mosquitoes because of the sea breeze, until I would see a shooting star, while other folks would tell each other the diving tales of the day over beer and rum cocktails in the nearby beach-bar. However, after a while, the increasing night chill brought me back to that Pacific Northwest shore and made me want to crawl inside my sleeping bag.
The following morning we decided to skip diving at Mikes Beach Resorts, where as campers we would have to pay an extra $ 10 a head diving fee, because after talking to some divers the previous day, we realized that we were not very interested in exploring an artificial reef, something that we do regularly at home. We were hoping to explore natural features such as a rock wall or boulder field. So instead of spending $ 10, we ended up spending $ 17 each to have the privilege to get what we wanted and park the car a reasonable distanced from a privately owned beach called Sund Rock.
When we unloaded the gear near the water after driving down a short steep hill, the place was crammed with divers like at Mikes. We planted ourselves there in the late morning determined to make the most of those $17. By the time we did two dives, had a picnic and took a nap, all the other divers were gone. By a magic spell we had the whole beach for ourselves and did a dusk-dive.
While we were busy diving, eating and basking in the sun, the menacing road was hovering above our heads on a rocky bluff crowned by tall trees. On one hand I was pleased to notice that it was somewhat hidden from view but on the other I kept looking up with a slight sense of uneasiness hoping that another wacky driver would not miss a curve slamming into one of those trees with unpredictable consequences. Small rocks were already falling from the unstable cliff at regular intervals. Thankfully none of that happened. Instead a bald eagle, chased by a crow, appeared in the sky and a harbor seal showed up on the surface of the water and checked us out.
The water looked sleepy and uncomplicated from shore. We did not have any idea what was waiting for us under the surface, though. When we were ready to begin our first dive, we surface-swam straight out for a while to get closer to a deep wall called Fish Pen and submerged into a liquid wall of small white jelly fish as if we were diving in a sea water lake in Palau rather than the Pacific Northwest. I had never seen so many jellies in my entire life! I was glad that from the tip of my toes, and beyond, to the tip of my hair I was encased inside a layer of plastic because later the bigger and fatter egg yolk jellies showed up as well in every corner of the shallows.
The wall was smooth, steep and rocky but also covered with several inches of fine silt so it looked like it was made of mud. When we reached a depth of 60 ft ghostly and flimsy shapes of sea whips began to reveal themselves in front of our masked eyes. Unlike the orange sea pen, the sea whip can grow to a length of 9 feet! Ours did not reach that impressive size but nevertheless their delicate white skinny appearance was truly charming for us who had never seen these colonial invertebrates before. We kept swimming down the slope under their supervision and reached a depth of 97 ft.
Our second dive took place at Sund Rock South Wall. We wanted to keep our depth to 60 ft but the visibility was worse than in the previous dive. In an attempt to escape it we kept swimming downward until we reached a threshold were clouds of silt? Plankton? (We could not figure out what it was exactly) that would separate from clearer water making us think that we were floating in the atmosphere of a gassy planet like Jupiter. We kept going down leaving those clouds behind immerging ourselves into a visibility of 20 ft and reached the depth of 88ft.
On the way back to the shallows the water was somewhat less turbid and Holy Moly! Look what is peering out from that hole between those boulders: the huge lumpy head of a mature male wolf eel with a white scar that runs from its forehead to its nose!
And look who is here, few feet below Scarfaces den! A couple of wolf eels! Did Scarface get his scar from fighting with this other male or a bullying homeless giant pacific octopus? Or simply scraped its skin onto the rocky walls of its home in the rush to safety because it was pursued by a predator or a pestering underwater photographer?
While my head was jammed with all those questions, a glimpse at my pressure gauge reminded me that it was time to end this second remarkable dive at Sund Rock. We swam back to the beach underwater taking care to dodge the jellies with a desire to further explore the underwater world of this corner of Hood Canal with a third dive.
By the time we were ready to hit the water at around 8 pm the weather had changed. A layer of thin clouds was obscuring the now fading blue sky from view, an insistent breeze picked up turning the sea surface choppy and small waves were breaking close to the lower parking lot because the tide was high.
Once in the water we headed north to visit the Fish Bowl and another wall. The jellies were not as dense as in the two previous dives but still we had to keep our eyes wide open to avoid the long tentacles of egg yolk and lions main jellies (the latter apparently already had bells three feet wide, according to some divers). This time we were able to stick to a depth of 60ft. After checking the wall in one direction we turned around and moved upward to a boulder field where juvenile copper rock fish were transfixed by our lights and the black eyes of black eye gobies were staring at us between the blades of kelp. Close to the edge of the Fish Bowl a messy pile of crab remains was laying on sand and broken shells. It looked suspicious. Behind it there was a narrow crevice, which I promptly checked out to find out whether I would be lucky to see a giant pacific octopus or not. And there it was!
After paying our respects to the sleepy cephalopod , we hung around at a depth of 30 ft until our air no longer allowed us to stay, then we swam back to the rocky entry thinking that the $ 17 diving fee, despite being pricy, was worth every cent. Next time, though, I may consider hiking to the water on the free public trail located further south from Sund Rock and endure a long surface swim. However, the real challenge will be to convince my buddy that making our diving life less comfortable can make us stronger and richer!
The next morning we drove to a different site not far away from Sund Rock: Octopus Hole. Once again we were blessed with luck because we found a parking spot in a section of the road that was conveniently wider where only five vehicles could barely fit in it. Freshly soaked divers told us about the octopi and wolf eel that inhabited the wall of Octopus Hole. We couldnt wait to get into the water. After plunging into another jelly soup we began to look for the wall but swam too deep and could not figure out where it was. We turned back and bumped into another three divers. We decided to follow them because they looked like they knew where the wall was.
I dont consider myself to be an expert in silt-free kicking; I havent mastered that art yet, but Man! Those fellow divers in front of us were churning that silt in such a way that we felt like we were swimming inside a blender full of chunky vegetable soup that had been switched on for a while! I looked at my buddy and signaled to him to swim head of them. So we did. We had enough time to scrutinize the biggest Lewiss Moon Snail that we had ever seen that the other divers caught up with us. Out of frustration we gave up on continuing exploring the wall. We let them pass, turned around and began to swim in the opposite direction.
I dont know what the other divers back on the beach were talking about when they had remarked that there were octopi and a wolf eel living in the wall of Octopus Hole! We did not see any, but spotted what looked like an abandoned octopus den. We ended up spending a lot of time in shallow water forgetting all about cephalopods and wolf eels. Gunnels were popping out from under every cobblestone and then cockscombs, poachers etc. and I managed to see a shy grunt sculpin tucked inside a shallow crevice. In the water column we encountered the weirdest comb-jelly like creature that we had ever seen. Its body had the shape of a cork screw and a long tail. It turned out that it was a Tailed Jelly, one of the longest free swimming marine animals to inhabit the ocean. It can reach the length of 120 feet!
We ended the dive amazed at how Nature seems to have an endless supply of surprises even when you think that you have experienced them all! Back to the tiny parking lot we packed the car one last time. We had to head back to Port Townsend and face the reality of not having a ferry reservation once more. In the end catching the ferry back home turned out to be no problem. As I was watching the waters of Admiralty Inlet sweeping by from the ferry, I reflected on how I would have never expected that a diving trip to Hood Canal would also have taken me to tropical diving destinations and even the surface of Jupiter!
[vimeo]12035831[/vimeo]
On Friday morning, May 15, I consulted all the current and tides tables of the four corners of the Pacific Northwest until my head was clogged up with too many possibilities and a lot of indecision. So in order to accelerate the process of picking up a diving destination because the weekend was already on a fast moving pace, I patiently figured out what was my diving budget for the week-end and started looking for a diving location that did not require an expensive ferry ticket, endless hours of driving, had a campground and was not swept by troubling currents. Eventually I settled for an area of the Washington coast that I have read a lot about on Northwest Dive News magazine and visited in the past as a backpacker: Hood Canal in the Olympic Peninsula.
Of course I was too late to make a reservation to secure a spot on the ferry...My buddy agreed to take the risk of not being able to board at the Keystone ferry terminal. In haste we packed camping and scuba gear and whatever food we could find in the kitchen. Thankfully we got lucky and after waiting for only about an hour we were on our way to Port Townsend. After disembarking the ferry, we drove south on a two lane winding road where on one side the serene, blue and sparkling waters of Hood Canal were increasingly seducing us and on the other steep mountain slopes reminded us that in that area parking space close to shore was limited. In the early evening we reached our final destination: the campground of Mikes Beach Resort.
I t was the first time that we stayed at a cold water dive resort. The place was packed with divers. A lot of them were students from other states. At the reception we were immediately told that there was no electricity because a vehicle had rammed into a power pole on that same winding and narrow road, not far away from the resort. Workers from the power company frantically worked all evening and part of the night to restore the electricity. For us this unexpected surprise was not a nuisance but made our diving trip to the somewhat urbanized Hood Canal more adventurous.
When darkness inexorably fell over us and the other guests, the resort was dotted with beams of head and diving lights, as if flashlight fishes were swimming in dark air rather than water. A cozy campfire was burning on the beach. There was a nice wooden deck that jutted out into the canal. Before hitting the sack in my tent, which was located an eighth of a mile up the road, I walked to the end of the deck to gaze at the starry sky for a while. The stars seemed to be brighter without the interference of the resort artificial lights. The air was mild, not exactly tropical but pleasant enough. All of a sudden I felt like I was in Roatan on my first warm water diving vacation. More precisely on a West End deck where, before going to bed, I used to stare at the clear sky, free of mosquitoes because of the sea breeze, until I would see a shooting star, while other folks would tell each other the diving tales of the day over beer and rum cocktails in the nearby beach-bar. However, after a while, the increasing night chill brought me back to that Pacific Northwest shore and made me want to crawl inside my sleeping bag.
The following morning we decided to skip diving at Mikes Beach Resorts, where as campers we would have to pay an extra $ 10 a head diving fee, because after talking to some divers the previous day, we realized that we were not very interested in exploring an artificial reef, something that we do regularly at home. We were hoping to explore natural features such as a rock wall or boulder field. So instead of spending $ 10, we ended up spending $ 17 each to have the privilege to get what we wanted and park the car a reasonable distanced from a privately owned beach called Sund Rock.
When we unloaded the gear near the water after driving down a short steep hill, the place was crammed with divers like at Mikes. We planted ourselves there in the late morning determined to make the most of those $17. By the time we did two dives, had a picnic and took a nap, all the other divers were gone. By a magic spell we had the whole beach for ourselves and did a dusk-dive.
While we were busy diving, eating and basking in the sun, the menacing road was hovering above our heads on a rocky bluff crowned by tall trees. On one hand I was pleased to notice that it was somewhat hidden from view but on the other I kept looking up with a slight sense of uneasiness hoping that another wacky driver would not miss a curve slamming into one of those trees with unpredictable consequences. Small rocks were already falling from the unstable cliff at regular intervals. Thankfully none of that happened. Instead a bald eagle, chased by a crow, appeared in the sky and a harbor seal showed up on the surface of the water and checked us out.
The water looked sleepy and uncomplicated from shore. We did not have any idea what was waiting for us under the surface, though. When we were ready to begin our first dive, we surface-swam straight out for a while to get closer to a deep wall called Fish Pen and submerged into a liquid wall of small white jelly fish as if we were diving in a sea water lake in Palau rather than the Pacific Northwest. I had never seen so many jellies in my entire life! I was glad that from the tip of my toes, and beyond, to the tip of my hair I was encased inside a layer of plastic because later the bigger and fatter egg yolk jellies showed up as well in every corner of the shallows.
The wall was smooth, steep and rocky but also covered with several inches of fine silt so it looked like it was made of mud. When we reached a depth of 60 ft ghostly and flimsy shapes of sea whips began to reveal themselves in front of our masked eyes. Unlike the orange sea pen, the sea whip can grow to a length of 9 feet! Ours did not reach that impressive size but nevertheless their delicate white skinny appearance was truly charming for us who had never seen these colonial invertebrates before. We kept swimming down the slope under their supervision and reached a depth of 97 ft.
Our second dive took place at Sund Rock South Wall. We wanted to keep our depth to 60 ft but the visibility was worse than in the previous dive. In an attempt to escape it we kept swimming downward until we reached a threshold were clouds of silt? Plankton? (We could not figure out what it was exactly) that would separate from clearer water making us think that we were floating in the atmosphere of a gassy planet like Jupiter. We kept going down leaving those clouds behind immerging ourselves into a visibility of 20 ft and reached the depth of 88ft.
On the way back to the shallows the water was somewhat less turbid and Holy Moly! Look what is peering out from that hole between those boulders: the huge lumpy head of a mature male wolf eel with a white scar that runs from its forehead to its nose!
And look who is here, few feet below Scarfaces den! A couple of wolf eels! Did Scarface get his scar from fighting with this other male or a bullying homeless giant pacific octopus? Or simply scraped its skin onto the rocky walls of its home in the rush to safety because it was pursued by a predator or a pestering underwater photographer?
While my head was jammed with all those questions, a glimpse at my pressure gauge reminded me that it was time to end this second remarkable dive at Sund Rock. We swam back to the beach underwater taking care to dodge the jellies with a desire to further explore the underwater world of this corner of Hood Canal with a third dive.
By the time we were ready to hit the water at around 8 pm the weather had changed. A layer of thin clouds was obscuring the now fading blue sky from view, an insistent breeze picked up turning the sea surface choppy and small waves were breaking close to the lower parking lot because the tide was high.
Once in the water we headed north to visit the Fish Bowl and another wall. The jellies were not as dense as in the two previous dives but still we had to keep our eyes wide open to avoid the long tentacles of egg yolk and lions main jellies (the latter apparently already had bells three feet wide, according to some divers). This time we were able to stick to a depth of 60ft. After checking the wall in one direction we turned around and moved upward to a boulder field where juvenile copper rock fish were transfixed by our lights and the black eyes of black eye gobies were staring at us between the blades of kelp. Close to the edge of the Fish Bowl a messy pile of crab remains was laying on sand and broken shells. It looked suspicious. Behind it there was a narrow crevice, which I promptly checked out to find out whether I would be lucky to see a giant pacific octopus or not. And there it was!
After paying our respects to the sleepy cephalopod , we hung around at a depth of 30 ft until our air no longer allowed us to stay, then we swam back to the rocky entry thinking that the $ 17 diving fee, despite being pricy, was worth every cent. Next time, though, I may consider hiking to the water on the free public trail located further south from Sund Rock and endure a long surface swim. However, the real challenge will be to convince my buddy that making our diving life less comfortable can make us stronger and richer!
The next morning we drove to a different site not far away from Sund Rock: Octopus Hole. Once again we were blessed with luck because we found a parking spot in a section of the road that was conveniently wider where only five vehicles could barely fit in it. Freshly soaked divers told us about the octopi and wolf eel that inhabited the wall of Octopus Hole. We couldnt wait to get into the water. After plunging into another jelly soup we began to look for the wall but swam too deep and could not figure out where it was. We turned back and bumped into another three divers. We decided to follow them because they looked like they knew where the wall was.
I dont consider myself to be an expert in silt-free kicking; I havent mastered that art yet, but Man! Those fellow divers in front of us were churning that silt in such a way that we felt like we were swimming inside a blender full of chunky vegetable soup that had been switched on for a while! I looked at my buddy and signaled to him to swim head of them. So we did. We had enough time to scrutinize the biggest Lewiss Moon Snail that we had ever seen that the other divers caught up with us. Out of frustration we gave up on continuing exploring the wall. We let them pass, turned around and began to swim in the opposite direction.
I dont know what the other divers back on the beach were talking about when they had remarked that there were octopi and a wolf eel living in the wall of Octopus Hole! We did not see any, but spotted what looked like an abandoned octopus den. We ended up spending a lot of time in shallow water forgetting all about cephalopods and wolf eels. Gunnels were popping out from under every cobblestone and then cockscombs, poachers etc. and I managed to see a shy grunt sculpin tucked inside a shallow crevice. In the water column we encountered the weirdest comb-jelly like creature that we had ever seen. Its body had the shape of a cork screw and a long tail. It turned out that it was a Tailed Jelly, one of the longest free swimming marine animals to inhabit the ocean. It can reach the length of 120 feet!
We ended the dive amazed at how Nature seems to have an endless supply of surprises even when you think that you have experienced them all! Back to the tiny parking lot we packed the car one last time. We had to head back to Port Townsend and face the reality of not having a ferry reservation once more. In the end catching the ferry back home turned out to be no problem. As I was watching the waters of Admiralty Inlet sweeping by from the ferry, I reflected on how I would have never expected that a diving trip to Hood Canal would also have taken me to tropical diving destinations and even the surface of Jupiter!
[vimeo]12035831[/vimeo]
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
one of the longest free swimming marine animals to inhabit the ocean. It can reach the length of 120 feet!
Auch! This is wrong! The Tailed Jelly doesn't reach the length of 120, but other Siphonophorae do.
OP
Soakedlontra
Contributor
Like a faithful comet, Memorial week-end appears on the skies of the American Gregorian calendar at the end of May. In the Pacific Northwest this long craved holiday lies on the borderline between spring and summer and inevitably tends to be characterized by atmospheric instability and unpredictability. It is a fact that local residents repeatedly emphasize when I engage them in casual conversations about vacationing in this corner of the world at this time of the year. Despite this uncertain weather outlook, my buddy and I booked a campsite for three nights at Porteau Cove Provincial Park in British Columbia, four weeks in advance. Since then we had kept sending positive energy to whatever sky-spirit may have inhabited that airy realm hoping for the best.
Unfortunately our humble attempts to induce favorable weather turned out to be fruitless, while the folkloric gloomy Memorial week-end meteorological predictions proved to be spot on. Our hopes to spend a sunny, warm break diving in Canadian waters were dashed by the presence of a stubborn low pressure system that hovered over our heads motionless for the whole duration of our stay. With clouds engrossed with rain and drizzle it made this camping trip the wettest ever experienced since I began camping in the Pacific Northwest in 2004. Thank heaven that, for the first time, I had the sense to borrow a tarp from a friend of mine just in case.
That life-saving tarp was one of the innumerable items that we were able to squeeze inside the trunk of our little Honda breaking all previous loading records. The weight was so much that that poor vehicle leaned backward and its hood was almost facing the sky instead of the road. Even the Canadian border patrol gave up the idea of searching the car after glancing at what must have looked like from the outside a pile of endless junk. After driving for a couple of hours on a winding and scenic coastal road we reached the campground at Porteau Cove Provincial Park on the shores of Howe Sound. The sky was heavy with moisture and the campers were all bundled up. Who did not care about the rain? Some barefoot teenagers and dogs.
The current-friendly Porteau Cove Marine Park is a popular shore-dive destination that attracts beginner and experienced divers alike. It is composed of several sunken vessels and artificial reefs made of tires, concrete blocks and H metal frames on a sandy and silty bottom. My buddy dove this site once before years ago when he explored the most famous wreck of the park: the Nakaya, a World War II minesweeper whose bow rests at a depth of 100ft. I was looking forward to see what a WWII relic looked like underwater. However things did not turn out to be so simple.
On Saturday morning, after soothing our damp bones with a warm breakfast under the cover of the tarp, we drove the car to the marine park parking lot. The tide was way out but the white buoys, which marked the boundary of the park looked quite far still. No matter how low the water would have retreated that day, reaching those artificial reefs would have involved doing some surface swimming.
Then we noticed that the yellow buoy that once located the Nakaya was gone from the surface of the water and the park map. We speculated that the wooden structure of the ship must have deteriorated so badly that it had collapsed entirely so the park officials decided to eliminate any visible traces of the wreck from land for safety. Reluctantly we gave up the idea to pay a visit to the Nakaya. So, if there was any consolation, we ended up diving in other areas of the park closer to shore that required shorter surface swims and explored two smaller metal wrecks instead: the Centennial III and the Grant Hall.
After those two dives we ran out of gas because our mileage efficient yet small car does not allow us to carry more than four tanks. Unfortunately, the lack of a dive shop at the nearby town of Squamish forced us to drive back to North Vancouver to re-fill them on Sunday morning. During the trip my head filled with flashbacks from my second dive at Porteau Cove. How mysterious and fascinating the Grant Hall looked under that green cloudy water! Its body skinny and pointed on one end and bulging on the other was covered with plumose anemones. Some of them drooped down toward the bottom stretching their soft columns to a length of over three feet as if they were stalactites made of melting marshmallow. The surreal fern-like feather stars not only crawled on the rusty body of the Grant Hall but, to my surprise, decorated the sandy bottom around the wreck together with an endless number of gray brittle stars.
Unlike the big wrecks that I saw in Roatan, which were almost devoid of life apart from a couple of green moray eels, a grouper and some sponges; this smaller vessel teemed with life. This comparison made me realize that wrecks in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest seem to sustain more marine creatures than their warm water counterparts. At the same time they also look somewhat more intimidating and dangerous. Maybe it has something to do with the ever present low visibility and the water's unwelcoming chilliness. However tropical wrecks can wickedly lure you into unplanned deeper depth because the good visibility is so reassuring that may end up relaxing your situational awareness.
While I was lost in those thoughts cramps began to rumble inside my belly making me realize with frustration that my monthly cycle was in the process to unleash its bloody force. Once the tanks were filled my buddy and I discussed whether it would have been OK to keep diving or not. We agreed to play it by ear and tentatively planned to dive The Cut at Whytecliff instead of Porteau Cove Marine Park because we also wanted to look at a natural rocky reef while in Canada.
By the time we drove to the parking lot at Whytecliff my cramps subsided and we decided to dive at the Cut. Entering the water at this particular spot can be a tricky business if the sea is too rough because the tiny beach is made of pebbles and rocks of various sizes and it flanked by rock walls on both sides. It did not feel very windy on the bluff but when we walked down to the beach to look at the water there was more breeze than we expected and the surface was a bit choppy. We decided to ask other divers about how the current was doing. A couple of technical divers told us that at 100 ft the visibility was 60 ft and they did not have to deal with current. If we did encountered any they suggested to ascend to shallower water and beside there had never been any current that they could not handle! ‘Huumm.. It is all well and good but those guys have doubles!’ I thought.
While I was digesting those pieces of information I began the usual routine of assembling my gear without knowing that another disappointing surprise was lurking inside the recesses of the car trunk: my main dive light was not inside my scuba bin. With disbelief I stripped searched the vehicle and almost turned it upside down. The light did not show up. I was dumbstruck by the thought that yesterday at Porteau Cove after we were through with our second dive and were moving the gear back and forth from a picnic table to the car that lay just few feet away from each other, somebody may have walked by and nonchalantly grabbed my light while I was not looking!
Eventually I had to resign myself to the fact that I did not have a magic wand to materialize the light effortlessly and cheaply. It was gone for good. So once again we discussed what to do and decided to dive anyway but without going too deep because I would have to use my back up light. When we were ready, we hiked down to the narrow beach and slowly entered the water watching every single step that we had to take on its slippery rocks. While we were putting on our fins the surf was bouncing us around a little and I felt cold water seeping through into my left wrist. I thought that it was the new dry glove with trapped fluff from my alpaca liner glove that did not seal properly and put up with it.
We surface swam to a rock and submerged. I was going down rocking gently into a visibility of several feet when I noticed that my dump valve was not working right. When I turned it did not make the familiar sound that I had learned to recognize with time and a lot of more water flushed inside my left arm soaking it down to the bone. Then it was clear that somehow the valve became loose leaving a substantial gap where the water had penetrated.
I immediately signaled my buddy to go back up to the surface. Once there I asked him to check the valve and he was able to screw it back in place. This time it sounded right when I turned it so we submerged for a second time and underwater I signaled my buddy to look at the valve again to make sure that it was dumping air. It did, so at last we were ready to enjoy the dive by exploring a rocky bottom characterized by several ledges filled with sand and a vertical wall that led into… the night - that’s how dark that abyss looked.
Our original plan was to swim to the tip end of the wall and then turn left into the adjacent bay and exit from the main beach because we thought that the surface would have been calmer. However at a depth of 66 feet we began to feel the current. It was pushing us backward toward our entry point. It was not really ripping, but not weak either. I don’t know why, maybe all those little problems that I had been encountering since we had arrived in British Columbia, piled up at once and created a short cut in my neurons, some light anxiety crept inside my brain and I began to breathe heavier than usual.
My inefficient breathing made me think that with our gas supplies and the rate of my air consumption keeping swimming against that current would have been foolish so I promptly signaled my buddy to stop fighting it and swim into shallower water. We then let it to drag us at its will making sure that we stayed close to the wall and the ledges. While all of this was happening, I regained control of my breathing. Around a depth of 50/40 feet we found a small ‘plateau’ where the current seemed to have slowed down so we hung around there for the rest of the dive.
We were not at a depth of 100ft with a visibility of 60 ft, facing, I imagine, a wall of cloud sponges and using a lot of gas. Instead we were in a place where we felt safe and could enjoy looking at other marine life that was all around us within our comfort zone. The patch of sand was crammed with tube dwelling anemones and orange sea pens. The rocks were covered with what looked like a carpet weaved with sunflower stars and we saw two magnificent pure white giant white dorids for the first time while kelp greenling would reluctantly get out of our way and small ling cods stared at us as if they were trying to figure out what we were.
On the way back to our entry point I began to feel lightly dizzy, ‘That’s it! Finally my body is telling me that enough is enough!’ I thought. My buddy and I followed both the contour of the bottom and the compass azimuth but ended up missing the small beach of The Cut of several yards and surfaced in front of a vertical rocky wall encrusted with mussels and acorn barnacles instead. There was no way that we could have climbed that wall even if we had a rope so we surfaced swam to the rocky beach. After being on land for a short while my sense of dizziness disappeared. Our last dive during the Memorial week-end in British Columbia was over with a sense of accomplishment because my buddy and I successfully worked as a team without bickering and I was able to deal with all those little technical mishaps without compromising my safety.
Under an imperturbable and foggy sky we drove back to the campground at Porteau Cove and checked whether, by a miracle, somebody had turned in to the lost and found my dive light. It did not surprise me that I was out of luck. On Monday morning we lazily listened to the rhythm of the rain tapping onto the tarp and the final pouring sound of the collected rain drops hitting the ground as if that stretched sheet of plastic was a syncopated eco-friendly fountain.
The thought of wearing our damp and chilled base layers, undergarments, socks and gloves for the fourth time was not very exciting. Slowly the realization that the Canadian rain had managed to erode our scuba enthusiasm surfaced into the humid atmosphere of the tent. We were ready to pack our mold-moss smelling stuff and make our way back to the US but not before eating one last breakfast warmed up on our camping stove and drinking a locally roasted cup of coffee in a nearby cozy café’.
At the border a welcoming sun finally bothered to show up! We soaked in its capricious warmth while waiting in line for more than one hour and a half. During that time I reflected on how this scuba diving trip had unfolded.
On one hand the loss of my dive light was definitively a bummer, on the other it had happened at a time when at last I could afford to buy the kind of dive light that I always wanted from the beginning of my diving carrier: a canister light. I would have to watch it with the determination of a well trained guard dog whose absentmindedness had successfully been eradicated, though.
Was the dump valve of my crotch leaking, second hand dry suit worth replacing? Had not the time come to finally taking the plunge and buying a brand new dry suit?
These technical ‘headaches’ and the unstoppable rainy weather had cast a shadow over my diving Memorial week-end in British Columbia. However through its ethereal darkness I can still perceive the thrilling sensations of enjoying the underwater surprises, such those intriguing invertebrates, that revealed themselves to us in this corner of the Pacific Northwest.
[vimeo]12397335 [/vimeo]
Unfortunately our humble attempts to induce favorable weather turned out to be fruitless, while the folkloric gloomy Memorial week-end meteorological predictions proved to be spot on. Our hopes to spend a sunny, warm break diving in Canadian waters were dashed by the presence of a stubborn low pressure system that hovered over our heads motionless for the whole duration of our stay. With clouds engrossed with rain and drizzle it made this camping trip the wettest ever experienced since I began camping in the Pacific Northwest in 2004. Thank heaven that, for the first time, I had the sense to borrow a tarp from a friend of mine just in case.
That life-saving tarp was one of the innumerable items that we were able to squeeze inside the trunk of our little Honda breaking all previous loading records. The weight was so much that that poor vehicle leaned backward and its hood was almost facing the sky instead of the road. Even the Canadian border patrol gave up the idea of searching the car after glancing at what must have looked like from the outside a pile of endless junk. After driving for a couple of hours on a winding and scenic coastal road we reached the campground at Porteau Cove Provincial Park on the shores of Howe Sound. The sky was heavy with moisture and the campers were all bundled up. Who did not care about the rain? Some barefoot teenagers and dogs.
The current-friendly Porteau Cove Marine Park is a popular shore-dive destination that attracts beginner and experienced divers alike. It is composed of several sunken vessels and artificial reefs made of tires, concrete blocks and H metal frames on a sandy and silty bottom. My buddy dove this site once before years ago when he explored the most famous wreck of the park: the Nakaya, a World War II minesweeper whose bow rests at a depth of 100ft. I was looking forward to see what a WWII relic looked like underwater. However things did not turn out to be so simple.
On Saturday morning, after soothing our damp bones with a warm breakfast under the cover of the tarp, we drove the car to the marine park parking lot. The tide was way out but the white buoys, which marked the boundary of the park looked quite far still. No matter how low the water would have retreated that day, reaching those artificial reefs would have involved doing some surface swimming.
Then we noticed that the yellow buoy that once located the Nakaya was gone from the surface of the water and the park map. We speculated that the wooden structure of the ship must have deteriorated so badly that it had collapsed entirely so the park officials decided to eliminate any visible traces of the wreck from land for safety. Reluctantly we gave up the idea to pay a visit to the Nakaya. So, if there was any consolation, we ended up diving in other areas of the park closer to shore that required shorter surface swims and explored two smaller metal wrecks instead: the Centennial III and the Grant Hall.
After those two dives we ran out of gas because our mileage efficient yet small car does not allow us to carry more than four tanks. Unfortunately, the lack of a dive shop at the nearby town of Squamish forced us to drive back to North Vancouver to re-fill them on Sunday morning. During the trip my head filled with flashbacks from my second dive at Porteau Cove. How mysterious and fascinating the Grant Hall looked under that green cloudy water! Its body skinny and pointed on one end and bulging on the other was covered with plumose anemones. Some of them drooped down toward the bottom stretching their soft columns to a length of over three feet as if they were stalactites made of melting marshmallow. The surreal fern-like feather stars not only crawled on the rusty body of the Grant Hall but, to my surprise, decorated the sandy bottom around the wreck together with an endless number of gray brittle stars.
Unlike the big wrecks that I saw in Roatan, which were almost devoid of life apart from a couple of green moray eels, a grouper and some sponges; this smaller vessel teemed with life. This comparison made me realize that wrecks in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest seem to sustain more marine creatures than their warm water counterparts. At the same time they also look somewhat more intimidating and dangerous. Maybe it has something to do with the ever present low visibility and the water's unwelcoming chilliness. However tropical wrecks can wickedly lure you into unplanned deeper depth because the good visibility is so reassuring that may end up relaxing your situational awareness.
While I was lost in those thoughts cramps began to rumble inside my belly making me realize with frustration that my monthly cycle was in the process to unleash its bloody force. Once the tanks were filled my buddy and I discussed whether it would have been OK to keep diving or not. We agreed to play it by ear and tentatively planned to dive The Cut at Whytecliff instead of Porteau Cove Marine Park because we also wanted to look at a natural rocky reef while in Canada.
By the time we drove to the parking lot at Whytecliff my cramps subsided and we decided to dive at the Cut. Entering the water at this particular spot can be a tricky business if the sea is too rough because the tiny beach is made of pebbles and rocks of various sizes and it flanked by rock walls on both sides. It did not feel very windy on the bluff but when we walked down to the beach to look at the water there was more breeze than we expected and the surface was a bit choppy. We decided to ask other divers about how the current was doing. A couple of technical divers told us that at 100 ft the visibility was 60 ft and they did not have to deal with current. If we did encountered any they suggested to ascend to shallower water and beside there had never been any current that they could not handle! ‘Huumm.. It is all well and good but those guys have doubles!’ I thought.
While I was digesting those pieces of information I began the usual routine of assembling my gear without knowing that another disappointing surprise was lurking inside the recesses of the car trunk: my main dive light was not inside my scuba bin. With disbelief I stripped searched the vehicle and almost turned it upside down. The light did not show up. I was dumbstruck by the thought that yesterday at Porteau Cove after we were through with our second dive and were moving the gear back and forth from a picnic table to the car that lay just few feet away from each other, somebody may have walked by and nonchalantly grabbed my light while I was not looking!
Eventually I had to resign myself to the fact that I did not have a magic wand to materialize the light effortlessly and cheaply. It was gone for good. So once again we discussed what to do and decided to dive anyway but without going too deep because I would have to use my back up light. When we were ready, we hiked down to the narrow beach and slowly entered the water watching every single step that we had to take on its slippery rocks. While we were putting on our fins the surf was bouncing us around a little and I felt cold water seeping through into my left wrist. I thought that it was the new dry glove with trapped fluff from my alpaca liner glove that did not seal properly and put up with it.
We surface swam to a rock and submerged. I was going down rocking gently into a visibility of several feet when I noticed that my dump valve was not working right. When I turned it did not make the familiar sound that I had learned to recognize with time and a lot of more water flushed inside my left arm soaking it down to the bone. Then it was clear that somehow the valve became loose leaving a substantial gap where the water had penetrated.
I immediately signaled my buddy to go back up to the surface. Once there I asked him to check the valve and he was able to screw it back in place. This time it sounded right when I turned it so we submerged for a second time and underwater I signaled my buddy to look at the valve again to make sure that it was dumping air. It did, so at last we were ready to enjoy the dive by exploring a rocky bottom characterized by several ledges filled with sand and a vertical wall that led into… the night - that’s how dark that abyss looked.
Our original plan was to swim to the tip end of the wall and then turn left into the adjacent bay and exit from the main beach because we thought that the surface would have been calmer. However at a depth of 66 feet we began to feel the current. It was pushing us backward toward our entry point. It was not really ripping, but not weak either. I don’t know why, maybe all those little problems that I had been encountering since we had arrived in British Columbia, piled up at once and created a short cut in my neurons, some light anxiety crept inside my brain and I began to breathe heavier than usual.
My inefficient breathing made me think that with our gas supplies and the rate of my air consumption keeping swimming against that current would have been foolish so I promptly signaled my buddy to stop fighting it and swim into shallower water. We then let it to drag us at its will making sure that we stayed close to the wall and the ledges. While all of this was happening, I regained control of my breathing. Around a depth of 50/40 feet we found a small ‘plateau’ where the current seemed to have slowed down so we hung around there for the rest of the dive.
We were not at a depth of 100ft with a visibility of 60 ft, facing, I imagine, a wall of cloud sponges and using a lot of gas. Instead we were in a place where we felt safe and could enjoy looking at other marine life that was all around us within our comfort zone. The patch of sand was crammed with tube dwelling anemones and orange sea pens. The rocks were covered with what looked like a carpet weaved with sunflower stars and we saw two magnificent pure white giant white dorids for the first time while kelp greenling would reluctantly get out of our way and small ling cods stared at us as if they were trying to figure out what we were.
On the way back to our entry point I began to feel lightly dizzy, ‘That’s it! Finally my body is telling me that enough is enough!’ I thought. My buddy and I followed both the contour of the bottom and the compass azimuth but ended up missing the small beach of The Cut of several yards and surfaced in front of a vertical rocky wall encrusted with mussels and acorn barnacles instead. There was no way that we could have climbed that wall even if we had a rope so we surfaced swam to the rocky beach. After being on land for a short while my sense of dizziness disappeared. Our last dive during the Memorial week-end in British Columbia was over with a sense of accomplishment because my buddy and I successfully worked as a team without bickering and I was able to deal with all those little technical mishaps without compromising my safety.
Under an imperturbable and foggy sky we drove back to the campground at Porteau Cove and checked whether, by a miracle, somebody had turned in to the lost and found my dive light. It did not surprise me that I was out of luck. On Monday morning we lazily listened to the rhythm of the rain tapping onto the tarp and the final pouring sound of the collected rain drops hitting the ground as if that stretched sheet of plastic was a syncopated eco-friendly fountain.
The thought of wearing our damp and chilled base layers, undergarments, socks and gloves for the fourth time was not very exciting. Slowly the realization that the Canadian rain had managed to erode our scuba enthusiasm surfaced into the humid atmosphere of the tent. We were ready to pack our mold-moss smelling stuff and make our way back to the US but not before eating one last breakfast warmed up on our camping stove and drinking a locally roasted cup of coffee in a nearby cozy café’.
At the border a welcoming sun finally bothered to show up! We soaked in its capricious warmth while waiting in line for more than one hour and a half. During that time I reflected on how this scuba diving trip had unfolded.
On one hand the loss of my dive light was definitively a bummer, on the other it had happened at a time when at last I could afford to buy the kind of dive light that I always wanted from the beginning of my diving carrier: a canister light. I would have to watch it with the determination of a well trained guard dog whose absentmindedness had successfully been eradicated, though.
Was the dump valve of my crotch leaking, second hand dry suit worth replacing? Had not the time come to finally taking the plunge and buying a brand new dry suit?
These technical ‘headaches’ and the unstoppable rainy weather had cast a shadow over my diving Memorial week-end in British Columbia. However through its ethereal darkness I can still perceive the thrilling sensations of enjoying the underwater surprises, such those intriguing invertebrates, that revealed themselves to us in this corner of the Pacific Northwest.
[vimeo]12397335 [/vimeo]
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