Where did I go with my force fins?

[Soakedlontra]

The shorter version of my video Water Tale, titled Enchanting Cold Water, got a Honorable Mention at the Northwest Dive & Travel Expo Photo and Video Contest 2012
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You may watch Enchanting Cold Water here:


[video=vimeo;38178251]https://vimeo.com/38178251[/video]​

 

[Soakedlontra]

The manufacturing of Force Fins may be over but not the fun of diving with them...

First dives in two months: Keystone Underwater Park.

We missed slack so we ended up doing our second dive in more current than expected. However, in the water we did not have to fight with other divers over space (when we arrived the parking lot was packed to its limit). The current was moody: strong outside the pilings where there were 8 feet of water, slower between them than it picked up at the rope then changed direction and went south instead of west then it calmed down for a while, then it picked up again and went east. It was a good practice in current diving! The flash in the Canon S90 does not fire anymore so I took some pictures with the help of our canister lights and when it was possible with the available light. Unfortunately the visibility was pretty disappointing.





Surface interval under a beautiful sun, the cool breeze kept the temperature down so dressing up was not too sweaty.





An amazing intensely orange Sea Lemon on one of the pilings during the second dive.​

 

[Soakedlontra]

Bright encounter at Langley Tire Reef

Last Saturday I was able to go diving again and try my new camera and strobe light at Langley Tire Reef. What an unexpected bright encounter when my buddy and I bumped into a juvenile vermilion rockfish!​

 

[Soakedlontra]

At last snorkeling -play with water lilies under sunlight!

Today I went snorkeling at a local lake. There were just few screaming teenagers (one was howling like a wolf) and me. The water was still rather cold so I was covered with neoprene from head to toes. The water lilies are in full bloom, some flowers are already passed their prime but more are shooting up from the powdery bottom and they are eager to reach the surface. While in the water a juvenile bald eagle flew few feet over my head. I have never seen one so close. Unfortunately my memory card was full and I could not take a darn picture or a video clip.
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[Soakedlontra]

From salt to fresh water

There was not much water left at the end of our dive at Langley Marina on Saturday June 2nd. We did not have time to go diving at high tide. We put up with terrible visibility from the surface to 30 ft then less terrible at 40 ft. Still there were plenty of critters to see; in particular the crabs were making babies like crazy! I struggled with the camera and strobe light throughout the dive so the only decent pictures were the ones that I took above the water.

The following day my new buddy, Richard, and I had to deal with current and the ever present bad visibility, which was a bit better than at Langley. With my old Canon Powershot I did not have to worry about a lens cap but with the Olympus Pen it's a different story. I forgot all about it and when I tried to take a picture of large sea lemon at Keystone jetty the image turned out all black!

At the pilings, during our second dive, I had better luck because I remembered to take that bloody lens cap off. Despite the less-ideal conditions it was awesome hanging out with a school of black rock fish. We were both planted to the bottom because the current was pretty swift.

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It was amazing to see that in such a small area at 10/20 ft. there is so much life that can make a photographer endlessly happy.

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* * * * * *

On June 11 I found out that the water of a lake can be rather deceptive. Despite the bright sunlight and the lake shallow bottom I believed that wearing a torso heater without sleeves would have been enough to keep me warm for one hour or so at least.



As soon as I got into the water, as gently as possible to avoid stirring up the sediments on the bottom that seemed to be lighter than powder, I realized that I had been fooled. The water was far cooler than expected. The sunshine warmed up only a couple in inches of water at the surface and that’s it. I managed to endure it for about 30 minutes then I had to get out. By then a chilly wind had picked up and tree shadows were creeping in on shore. It was time to leave and move on. The water may have tricked me but it was the clearest that I have ever seen in WA.




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[Soakedlontra]

Unexpected cool and cold marine invertebrates encounters

Possession Point Fingers is the only Whidbey Island wall dive from shore that does not require a crucially perfect entry timing because of wicked currents like Deception Pass. However, you have to watch out for a surface current that can be unpredictable and surprisingly fast. Once you swim down past 30 ft the current usually slows down considerably or stops. Unfortunately, very often from the surface to that shallow depth the visibility can be pretty bad if not awful like it was last Saturday. This time was even worse than usual; my buddy and I had to drop down to 50 ft to be able to see anything at all that was not few inches away from our noses. One of the new creatures that I encountered there for the first time was a Golf Ball Crab:



If it were not for the white barnacles that had grown on top of its carapace, which delineated the typical triangular shape of this lithodid crab, it would have been very hard to spot it with that kind of background. The size of our tanks limited our depth to 100 ft. The clay wall at the Fingers kept dropping down to what looked like a black nowhere.



Surface interval time! Parking at this site is limited to few cars and the parking lot is located on top of a slope nowhere near the beach. A park ranger lives right next to the picnic area of the park. In order to haul our gear we have to use the ranger's drive and temporarily park the car there so we always call the ranger in advance to let him know which day and hour we plan to show up.


During the two dives that we did yesterday we saw countless cleaned crab shells scattered all over the place and we both kept looking for the den of a giant pacific octopus. Eventually at the end of the second dive we finally found one. The mollusk was semi-awake way down into its narrow home. From the size of its suckers we figured out that it must have been a fully-grown adult. I did not bother to try to take a picture because my bulky camera housing would not allow me to get to a decent distance and I was concerned that I did not have enough spare air necessary to mess with the camera. So I did not get a picture of the octopus but, during the first part of the dive, I did get a picture of a different kind of mollusk that I have never seen before called Giant White Dorid. At the last minute a Brown Rock Fish wanted to be included in the frame:


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[Soakedlontra]

In the company of frogs

Snorkeling at Lyman Lake in Eastern Washington was a challenge because it looked more like an African watering hole after it had been filled up with torrential rain rather than a pristine emerald green WA lake. A place more suitable for an alligator than a human with mask and fins. Despite the water off-putting and unnerving zero visibility I was able to have a memorable encounter with frogs.​

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[Soakedlontra]

Vacuum-packed diving

Last Wednesday I was able to do my first dive after two months of being dry in the shallow and protected water of Langley marina! (I had an issue with my dry suit and had to mail it back to the manufacturer and now I have a new suit suit size S instead of XS!). I packed everything without forgetting a single piece of gear...




Well that's what I thought.

I dressed up with trepidation looking forward to immerse myself into what looked like from shore a muddy soup. Everything went smoothly until I tried to insert the dry suit inflator hose into the new valve. It did not work. I assumed that the valve was the same as the one I had in my old suit so I did not bother to check it out back home. After looking at my buddy’s face and thinking about the possibility of diving with an airless dry suit I decided to give it a try.

As you can imagine, the squeeze increased as we gradually swam into deeper water. We reached a maximum depth of 35 feet and that was enough for me. A part from feeling like a vacuum-packed fish, eventually, after about 20 minutes the limited insulation of the suit could not handle the cold water that surrounded me any longer, even if the temperature was still pretty warm: 54° F.

The visibility was terrible even at depth so I spent most of the diving time goofy around with my super wrinkled suit and checking every single hole in the rocky reef in the attempt to see an octopus. Unfortunately only gunnels pocked their heads out from those crevices. On the way back I practiced navigation with my new compass ending up at our entry point without bumping into a piling while a school of perch were playing hide and seek: they would surround us when we would point our dive lights at the bottom (we could see some fainted shadows once in a while) and swam away as soon as we flooded them with light.

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[Soakedlontra]

From vacuum packed to arms-soaked, but at The Ranger I was dry !

I have read somewhere that human beings are creatures of habits. Well I guess last weekend I proved this theory to be right. When I was dressing up in the main street of Port Townsend, in front of the Northwest Maritime Center, I followed my usual routine like a robot thinking that I was wearing my old dry suit with dry gloves instead of neoprene ones. So I did not tucked inside the wrists the thumb loops of my undergarment. (I usually keep them out to let some air to reach my hands while wearing dry gloves, some divers use straws etc.). No wonder that at the end of the first dive both of my arms felt really wet! I have to say that that little gap looked like nothing but it did let a ton of water inside the suit that traveled all the way to the elbows and beyond. Instead of doing a second dive with such soaked sleeves I decided to make a post dive scuba sculpture, head for a nice coffee shop and then go to the framed-socks laundromat to dry up the undergarment and the top base layer.












The following day my buddy and I explored a medium size wooden wreck called The Ranger between 30 and 40 ft of water at the southern end of Port Townsend. A site that we have never dived before. Well if you need a picture of a Red Giant Dendronotid (Dendronotus rufus) that is the place to go right now! They were everywhere crawling around the Ranger. I have never seen so many in one dive site. The GRD is one of the largest nudibranch in the Pacific Northwest reaching a length of 11 inches. How does it look like it? A cross between a crawling cauliflower and curly kale?


(photo taken at Langley Tire Reef, I have not replaced the housing that I lost - darn-bummer!-several months ago yet)​

 

[Soakedlontra]

Thanksgiving weekend diving blast in Port Townsend, WA

Since Sam has joined a band he has become a semi-regular buddy. He did not have a gig during the Thanksgiving weekend so we took the opportunity to spend some time diving together! We also took the opportunity to dive with new friendly folks from the local Octopus Gardens dive shop. We did three dives in downtown Port Townsend and one at Keystone ferry terminal. We camped at Fort Worden State Park few miles away from the town center. This time we had to pitch the tent because the extra scuba luggage filled the entire rear of our Ford Escape (when we visited the Pacific Coast and rain forest few weeks earlier we were able to sleep inside it).

Thanksgiving Day was not very dive friendly and we did not bother to mess with dry suits, tanks and fins at all. Stormy clouds were hovering in the sky and a blasting wind was whipping the town streets. Instead of trying to be some kind of macho divers we treated ourselves with a nice meal at a warm and cozy bar called Sirens, then went to the nearby art house movie theater and watched Skyfall in comfortable seats! It turned out that Daniel Craig did the hard diving for us in icy dangerous waters, so I guess we picked a suitable movie to watch, after all.

Back at the campground, we buckled inside our sleeping bags while the wind picked up speed and was howling like a mad dog, the tent shook several times and branches from nearby trees kept making creepy creaking sounds. (Two nights later it was the howling of coyotes under moonlight that woke us up). The following morning a thick gray stillness greeted us. Eventually, a blue sky replaced the clouds and the town was flooded with sunlight .

We timed our dives properly so we did not have issues with current. For the first time I saw a showy snail fish during my first night dive and, maybe, a ribbed sculpin and other less common critters like the cute spiny blob-like lumpsucker and smooth alligatorfish. At Keystone I encountered the largest Puget Sound rockfish that I have ever seen while black rockfish were hovering above my head, male kelp greenlings were guarding eggs and lingods of any size where resting on rocks waiting to snatch their next meal.

While we were surface swimming to the dolphin, from where we would submerged to reach the Port Townsend barge, a bunch of cormorants were trying to figure us out.


Sam hovering in the middle of a school of black rockfish nearby the barge with his inseparable Tan Delta Force Fins .


Why is Sam growing mustache?




I hope you had a great Thanksgiving Weekend like we did!​