Where did I go with my force fins?

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Witnessing the Sea Star Wasting Syndrome in my two favorite local dive sites

My buddy and I came back from California all charged up and went diving at Possession Point Fingers in the southern end of Whidbey Island on January 5. This is one of my favorite local dive sites because of its geology and the abundance of marine life. I have been aware of the sea star wasting syndrome before going to California but I have never seen sick sea stars during my dives until this day. A the Fingers the species that were affected by the disease were the sunflower sea star and maybe a spiny pink sea star. It was a weird experience witnessing with my own eyes what a sick sea star looked like after seeing pictures on the internet. I guess my heart sunk and I thought:"Oh My God! Not Here!" :depressed:

Ten days later I went diving at my other favorite dive site: Keystone Underwater Park. At the pilings and jetty I spotted exciting marine animals like a giant pacific octopus and a wolf eel but close by there were sunflower sea stars in distress and their severed arms scattered all over the place. :depressed:


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Sea Star Wasting Syndrome at Possession Point Fingers


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Sea Star Wasting Syndrome at Keystone Underwater Park
 
I might be the first diver to witness Sea Star Wasting Syndrome here in Santa Barbara, what a story to share later, off for our morning swim. Thanks for sharing Betty.
 
DevonDiver: Was this wreck in the Philippines? It's hard to believe it. Sorry but it looks like Puget Sound on a bad day. I tend to assume that tropical water diving is always equal to great visibility! Good to see advanced diving on force fins! The side mount set up seems awkward to me but a lot of divers rave about it. I wonder how easy is to operate a camera and dealing with those cylinders at the same time.

---------- Post added January 23rd, 2014 at 08:38 AM ----------

I might be the first diver to witness Sea Star Wasting Syndrome here in Santa Barbara, what a story to share later, off for our morning swim. Thanks for sharing Betty.

I did not see it in Monterey and I hope you won't see it in Santa Barbara.

This disease is a disturbing "mystery-puzzle". In California the ochre stars seem to be the target, while in the Pacific Northwest entire populations of sunflower sea stars have been wiped out.:confused:
 
Betty, back in early 1980, Santa Barbara, I viewed and photographed Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. Several Sea stars looked like their arms were blow torched. A wave of the's hand just blew them away. Then what ever " it " was just took over the entire Starfish community. I would keep arm's distance, since my diver partner Andy McMullen took samples and ended up with a eye infection that came and went during his life time.
 
DevonDiver: Was this wreck in the Philippines? It's hard to believe it. Sorry but it looks like Puget Sound on a bad day. I tend to assume that tropical water diving is always equal to great visibility!

Yep - that's the USS New York ACR-2 armored cruiser, in Subic Bay. I do chuckle when people dismiss tropical diving as easy. Subic is an enclosed bay and is fed by several rivers that transport ash deposits remaining from the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. That ash forms very fine particulate and dense silt. The USS NY lies only 300m in front of the river mouth... it's brackish water, very influenced by the tide and rainfall. Average viz is 5-10m. It can get a lot worse (<1m). Occasionally it gets much better.

That said, I do LOVE that wreck. It'd be one of the best wrecks in the world if it had sunk just a km or two further out.

It's also a great training location for advanced diving courses - it demands good situational awareness, communication and navigational technique. The penetrations range from sublime to ridiculous - enough to put a smile on the face of the most grizzled wreck-wriggler.. :D

Good to see advanced diving on force fins! The side mount set up seems awkward to me but a lot of divers rave about it. I wonder how easy is to operate a camera and dealing with those cylinders at the same time.

3-4 cylinders through the confined spaces of the dive shown in the picture, especially the confined areas, can be challenging. I'd normally leave the deco cylinders staged outside and only carry primaries and, occasionally some stages, inside. But, I do regularly take all the tanks through for the practice value. When doing so, my hands are pretty busy - with reel/guideline also and for propulsion (finger walking - as many areas too silty and/or confined for effective fining). The Force Fins do, in my opinion, make excellent penetration fins - especially due to their small size and control in propulsion... when I try more traditional tech fins, I feel like a bull in a china shop.

I put a GoPro on my helmet for filming (filming my students for review/feedback).

In open-water sidemount, or less severe penetrations, it's quite possible to operate a camera hand-held. The tanks don't require much manipulation during the dive under those circumstances.
 
Yep - that's the USS New York ACR-2 armored cruiser, in Subic Bay. I do chuckle when people dismiss tropical diving as easy. Subic is an enclosed bay and is fed by several rivers that transport ash deposits remaining from the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. That ash forms very fine particulate and dense silt. The USS NY lies only 300m in front of the river mouth... it's brackish water, very influenced by the tide and rainfall. Average viz is 5-10m. It can get a lot worse (<1m). Occasionally it gets much better.

That said, I do LOVE that wreck. It'd be one of the best wrecks in the world if it had sunk just a km or two further out.

Would it be covered with marine life then? Judging from your photos its "nakedness" reminds me of the barren wrecks of the Great Lakes

It's also a great training location for advanced diving courses - it demands good situational awareness, communication and navigational technique. The penetrations range from sublime to ridiculous - enough to put a smile on the face of the most grizzled wreck-wriggler.. :D

you said it! Jeezz your students must be either masochists or incredibly dedicated divers considering that they could get a wreck diving certification in the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas, for instance, instead of diving inside the "epicenter" of a swirling silty pit. Great job guys! :)

This reminds me of the time when I traveled in Central America for the first time. My regular buddy Sam, and I went to Belize. He was a certified scuba diver and I was not. He tried to convince me to take an OW class there but after thinking about it for a little while I decided to take the class back home in the cold and green water of Puget Sound rather than in that inviting warm and clear tropical water. I did not want to spend my vacation attending a class and the majority of my diving would have been in the Pacific Northwest. Now I do not regret that decision. It is far easier to switch from cold to warm water diving than the other way around! :wink:



3-4 cylinders through the confined spaces of the dive shown in the picture, especially the confined areas, can be challenging. I'd normally leave the deco cylinders staged outside and only carry primaries and, occasionally some stages, inside. But, I do regularly take all the tanks through for the practice value. When doing so, my hands are pretty busy - with reel/guideline also and for propulsion (finger walking - as many areas too silty and/or confined for effective fining). The Force Fins do, in my opinion, make excellent penetration fins - especially due to their small size and control in propulsion... when I try more traditional tech fins, I feel like a bull in a china shop.

Talking about Force Fins being small. I do like that too. Their small size turned out to be very handy while climbing ladders on boats or in certain circumstances when I choose to walk for a short distance on land. At Point Lobos in California, after crawling out of the water another scuba diver, who was helping a friend and us, kept trying to pull my fins off my feet and I had to keep telling him that the fins were not a problem. I appreciated that he wanted to help but honestly he was making things more difficult. Eventually he understood and let my fins alone. I then stood up with the straps off my ankles and in no time I was able to slide my feet out of the fins pockets one at a time without using my hands.

I put a GoPro on my helmet for filming (filming my students for review/feedback).

In open-water sidemount, or less severe penetrations, it's quite possible to operate a camera hand-held. The tanks don't require much manipulation during the dive under those circumstances.

I don't see myself switching to side mount any time soon. It's a miracle that I am able to keep diving with one tank right now.

---------- Post added January 25th, 2014 at 10:43 AM ----------

Betty, back in early 1980, Santa Barbara, I viewed and photographed Sea Star Wasting Syndrome. Several Sea stars looked like their arms were blow torched. A wave of the's hand just blew them away. Then what ever " it " was just took over the entire Starfish community. I would keep arm's distance, since my diver partner Andy McMullen took samples and ended up with a eye infection that came and went during his life time.

Sorry for your friend. It is the first time that I read about a person getting sick after handling sea stars with SSWS. Did he ever find out the cause of his eye infection?

I have read that there have been other outbreaks of SSWS in the past, as you mentioned, but as far as I know they were not as widespread and deadly like the one that we are witnessing now.
 
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In Winter the meandering topography of Puget Sound offers a good number of shore dive sites sheltered from inclement weather. However, its relentless overcast sky can significantly increase a craving for sunlight. Last December my buddy had a whole week off work for Christmas and we decided to escape the gloomy Pacific Northwest by driving to sunny Monterey and diving in California waters for the first time.

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We did five dives at the easily accessible “breakwater” or Coast Guard Pier in Monterey where we were surrounded by the unfamiliar colors of bat stars, strawberry anemones and other invertebrates. We also had a real close encounter with a curious harbor seal; it was so close that the only thing that I could see through my mask was the spotted skin of its belly; my nose almost touched it. I must say that the temptation to pet the animal was very strong.


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Luckily, we were able to do a couple of dives at Point Lobos State Reserve near Carmel. We parked at Whaler's Cove and after checking the site we chose to explore the middle reef which required the least amount of surface swimming.The swells did not seem particularly powerful but soon I discovered how deceptive my first impression was. We entered the water at a boat ramp crammed between rocks. As the day progressed, we realized that entering was easier than exiting. The visibility was pretty bad in shallow water but cleared up at 30 ft. Ten feet deeper we still felt the action of the surge.
After exploring the reef and the giant kelp we spent the remaining time away from the churning bottom and in the water column. We hovered with a bunch of blue rockfish (a species that so far we have never seen in the Pacific Northwest) for a while and have a good peaceful time observing their inquisitive behavior.


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On the second dive we surface swam further out the middle reef. At the end of the dive we misjudged the distance to the boat ramp, surfaced and realized how far it was still. So we figured that submerging again and swimming under a few feet of water would have been easier than kicking on the surface. It turned out to be a mistake. The combination of zero visibility and what seemed to be stronger wave action made me feel seasick. We re-surfaced, surface-swam and reached the point of entry without any other problems. However, the low tide had exposed the entire boat ramp and the breakers were crashing against our clumsy bodies more forcefully than before, so we felt that it was safer to crawl out rather stand up on our feet and walk on slippery rocks and concrete.


We spent the last day in Monterrey diving the breakwater. While sea lions were lazily taking a nap on rocks, diving birds kept showing up underwater frantically searching for fish. We scrutinized the artificial reef with sharper eyes and finally in narrow cracks we began to see abalone. Then, unexpectedly, my buddy spotted a brave one crawling in the sandy bottom revealing its beautiful shell in its full glory.


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The following morning, we packed our car to its loading limit and instead of following the slow, yet breathtakingly scenic coastal road as we did on the way down, we drove east to reach I5 and then north. On the road, as we watched the weather progressively deteriorating, our spirits remained invigorated by the Californian sun. Our minds were filled with terrific lasting memories of animal encounters and underwater southern dazzling beauty. There was no doubt that we would be back
.



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You can read the full version of this story in California Diver Magazine! :)


 
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