Upwellings

San Clemente, Catalina, Santa Cruz on The Vision

2010-07-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

The second day of a three-day Channel Islands dive trip is always the most relaxing. You seem to just spread out into the day like melted butter knowing that you get to dive all you want, then eat a great supper that someone cooks for you, hang out, have a beer, and go to sleep knowing that there is still another whole day in the water.

(photo by Linda McDowell)

Near the end of the third dive on Catalina, July 12 - the second day of my three-day trip on The Vision to the Southern Channel Islands - I had fully relaxed into my second-day trance when my dive buddy, Michael, grabbed my arm and animatedly pointed off to the left through some big kelp stalks. I thought someone was in trouble, and began to fold up my camera to clip it off and deal with whatever it was. Then I saw what he was so excited about: a huge Giant Sea Bass, resting motionless and partially hidden in the kelp forest. His stillness seemed that much more simple and clear than my own second-day quietude. I unfolded my camera strobes and inched toward him from the left rear. I took a shot and he moved a bit. Then I slowly flanked him to get in front as he began moving away. I got one picture of him before he disappeared. I felt a bit guilty for having disturbed such a magnificent creature, but glad too that I'd got a shot of him.

That Sunday at Catalina began under a thick overcast as we arrived at Farnsworth Banks from our first-day overnight anchorage at San Clemente. We were a bit disappointed to see that The Peace had already anchored on Farnsworth and sent divers down. Not wanting to get in their way, we moved in closer to the island to Pedestal Rock, a large round pinnacle jutting up off 105 feet and cresting at about 40 feet. My dismay at missing Farnsworth evaporated immediately as my buddy Greg and I found the east side of the pinnacle and dropped around counter clockwise to the bottom at the north side, which at that depth consisted of a large overhang with lots of frilly gorgonians, encrusted invertibrates and a fish haven. Our plan was to get to the bottom and then slowly spiral our way back up the pinnacle, as though climbing a staircase around it, except of course we floated in zero gravity just off the rock face, marveling at the tiny bits of life crowding and competing for every inch of surface as we slowly ascended. Visibility was about 50' and the water temps were warmish at 57-60˚. The sheer majesty of this structure, along with the richness of marine life made this my favorite dive of the trip. Farnsworth will have to wait; I was very happy the way it worked out.

The wind was coming up hard and the east side of Catalina was getting blown out by the time our divers were back on the boat. We ran for a long while around the top of the island and around the east side down to Ship Rock. But the wind was still making nasty chop and current so we moved a bit further in toward the island to dive Bird Rock.

Bird Rock has a long wall running east west, a sheer cliff face from about 20 feet of depth down to a bit more than 50'. We dropped about 200 meters northeast of the actual rock itself and descended through the lush, green kelp forest along the wall to the bottom, heading west. Visibility remained at around 45 ' and water temp stayed in the high 50s. The wall was completely draped with purple, red, and yellow sea fans or gorgonians. Bright orange Garibaldi were flitting about running up and down the wall and protecting their territories. Sheepshead and calicos wove in and out of the kelp forest that stretched out seaward from the wall.

My calm was momentarily broken as a group of divers dropped upon us out of nowhere. A knee crashed into the back of my right shoulder and then my camera housing. Another diver close behind the first landed on my back and kicked furiously while I veered off to the left to try to get out of the way.

My buddy, Kathryn was having her own troubles. More divers were on a collision course with us, but I saw them and began deflecting them away from me, as I continued to move left away from the wall into the safety of the kelp forest. Finally clear of the group, Kathryn and I waited out in the shadows. The great 40 foot visibility had been cut in half with all the sand and silt that had been kicked up. I was determined not to let this spoil my second-day dive trip mood, but it reminded me that people underwater can be very much like people topside, except more dangerous.

Kathryn, and I meandered further along the wall until we reached our turn pressure and then slowly made our way back toward the boat.

As we began to angle up toward our safety stop near the end of the dive we found a lovely sunny platform of eel grass and small kelp. Garibaldi were all around as were Calicos and Sheepshead. The colors were magnificent that close to the surface and we hovered over the tableaux well past our three minute stop time. But then I had 600 PSI and needed to end the dive.

We surfaced precisely where I thought the boat was but it wasn't there. I looked around and, over the wave tops, found the boat at least 200 meters away. Did I blow the navigation that bad?!?! I thought to myself. No. There was an anchor buoy just behind us. It marked the spot where the anchor line had broken and the boat had to move off and get under power. I took a picture of the boat over the waves, and felt my faith in my navigation skills a bit restored.

OK, live boat exit, was my thought at this point, but then I saw that the crew had sent the inflatable skiff out to retrieve divers and take them back to the boat. A conservative move that was going to take time but probably the safest thing to do. I didn't want to throw my camera and long-hose rig into the boat with all those people lurching around in the skiff, so I wasn't disappointed when they told me to wait for the next group. I noticed that the current was taking me away from the buoy and toward the boat and decided not to fight it too hard. Sure enough, when I was about 25 meters away from the boat one of the crew asked me if I wanted to just climb up the swim step. I was on in a flash and up the ladder as fast as I could go.

So far this doesn't sound like the most relaxing second day of a three day dive trip, but it really was. Wherever you go there you are was sort of my mantra, and despite the chaotic moments the peaceful feeling kept washing back over me like an incoming tide. My restored calm was in no small part due to the beauty of the rich, green kelp, which seems somehow a bit different and more lovely to me than the same stuff we have in Carmel. Maybe it's just the light.

Aside from the fine Catalina diving, the greatest improvement of the second day was that the sun came out.

Our first day on San Clemente was mostly overcast and cold. I was glad I'd brought two sets of drysuit underwear: one 300 gm polartec and a super warm 450gm thinsulate. I put on the polartec the first morning figuring I could handle 60˚ water, but what I didn't see coming was the drysuit flood that happened near the end of the second dive of the day, at Neptune's Wall. I just felt a sudden rush of very cold around my waist, sort of like if I peed a gallon or so of water right out of the fridge.

I was close by my buddy Gregg at about 40 feet or so and I signaled I needed to go up. I still had buoyancy from my wing so I folded up the camera and figured I'd just have a cold safety stop. On the surface waiting to get on the boat I thought, "maybe you're just cold and the polartec wasn't enough." I didn't think so, and once on the boat and peeling off the drysuit it was clear that my undies were indeed soaked. Seals were all OK, so WTF? In a way it was a blessing that I wore the polartec because the thinsulate would have been a lot harder to clean up. I shrugged, stuffed the drysuit in its bag, complained a bit, and went downstairs to dig out my backup wetsuit and hooded vest. On to plan B. I like wetsuit diving anyway.

It had been two years since my last cold water wetsuit dive and I shuddered a bit after my giant stride into the water at Bill's Hairy Crack, just off the southeast end of San Clemente. As soon as we descended onto this magnificent, fluted wall I forgot all about being cold. There were massive cracks and buttresses and overhangs with delicate gorgonians everywhere. Sheepshead and Garibaldi flitted in and out of the kelp, and painted greenlings hid in small holes in the wall face. We went left along the wall and then angled up from 70 feet when we turned. There was current going left to right that got stronger as we continued toward open ocean, and when the kelp was getting bent way over I thought it would be a good idea to stop and head back to the boat. We'd overshot the anchor line a bit and had about a 50 meter swim back to the boat.

I knew that the forecast called for increasing NW winds Monday and Tuesday, and we had a long trip that night back to the northern islands for a last day of diving on either Santa Cruz or Anacapa. Sure enough, all night after we'd got underway, The Vision was leaping off the crests of waves and crashing down with a shudder. It was fairly entertaining, and we had to be making no more than about 8 knots, so it went on for a while. I didn't sleep much.

Tuesday morning I awoke to find the boat in calm glassy seas, anchored just outside of Yellow Banks on the south side of Santa Cruz. Anacapa was out due to wind and current. So we wandered a bit west just past Albert's to a spot called Coches Prietos. It was a small cove with kelp and a fair current was running west around a small point. There was a good bit of kelp. Normally I would want to dive to the right, swimming first against the current and then drift back to the boat. This time, because Capt Tommie had said there was some interesting structure out by the point, my buddy Greg and I decided to head out around the point for 10 minutes or so, then beat back to the boat allowing lots of extra air for the return kick. This plan worked pretty well. On the way out I counted 7 Sea Hares, a few painted greenlings, and some cute little gobies. But on the way back in Greg and I stumbled onto a Sea Hare orgy. There must have been at least a dozen of the creatures all in a pile enjoying themselves. Most of the other divers who went this way saw them too. It was hard to miss. Current kept picking up and I had to stay very close to the bottom to make headway. This worried me when I thought about our safety stop, but when it was time to ascend there was a lot of kelp around so we just hung onto a few stalks and looked at each other stretched out like flags in wind.

Our last stop was at Little Scorpion, a site I'd dived a few times before. It's a lovely, easy dive in zero current to the south east of Scorpion Rock. Very shallow and sunny, with lots of purple urchins strewn about on the rocky bottom and in the cracks and rubble pile near shore. We saw a beautiful Spanish Shawl nudibranch, some sea hare eggs that look like plates of spaghetti (see pic), and all the usual fish suspects.

Looking out beyond the point from Scorpion Rock into the channel I could see big whitecaps and the wind was really whipping out there. It was going to be a fairly hairy crossing, with 6 - 8 ft wind waves hitting us at a 45˚ angle. This creates motion in four different directions of pitch and yaw, and soon after we were underway the bonine packets were coming out in the galley. Too late at that point, but whatever makes you feel better is good for you. Some people went down into the bunk area to lie down. This would not have been good for me; I was happy to sit in the galley hanging onto a table to ride it out. Anything not tied down was flying around the cabin.

The crossing took longer than usual since we had to go slow, and I was happy to see the oil rigs and pass the four mile mark to shore. The seas began to calm a bit and divers began packing up their stuff as soon as it was safe to move around the boat.

As usual, I was the last one off the boat - I don't know why I'm slow at this, except that I rarely leave anything behind. And if anyone else does leave something I'm usually still on the boat when a crew member finds it, which helps get stuff back to their owners.

The last surprise of the trip was to be reminded at the parking gate that they only take cash or checks. D'oh! I knew that. Yet I had only a credit card. The attendant took pity on me and gave me an envelope that I could use to send in the money, and I was on my way back up the freeway heading home.

Escape to Kona

2009-11-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

I must have looked lost as I stood scanning the lava-rock shelf extending out into Honaunau Bay, wondering where was the two-step entrance to the water. It was a bit late in the day; I'd landed around noon and immediately pointed my rental car south, first to pick up tanks at Jack's Diving Locker, and then to drive to the Place of Refuge in time for at least one dive. A local haole was kind enough to show me where the entrance spot was and sure enough, it was a natural step into a small protected inlet area.

I picked a heading -- due west -- and kicked out across the shallow coral reef. It was bathed in sunlight and danced with hues of yellow, red, orange and white. Small butterfly fish and Moorish Idols darted in and out of the coral heads and I could see the bottom from the surface as far in any direction as I looked.

My heading took me straight to the bowl-shaped wall that dropped on about a 45˚ angle to a sand bottom at about 90 feet. I descended at the edge of the wall and eased down the incline to about 50 feet where I leveled off and headed south along the wall. Immediately I saw a crown of thorns star eating coral. Ornate Butterflys were everywhere, along with trigger fish, and many other types of butterflys.

I crossed a large underwater canyon extending back toward shore and saw another larger canyon further to the south west. On the other side of this canyon there was a magnificent cascade of plate coral, a massive buttress of coral slabs cascading from near the surface all the way to the bottom. This was my turn spot, but I lingered a bit just to take in the size and beauty of the structure as sunlight spangles animated the coral through the slight blue tint of the crystal clear water.

On the way back I took a detour across a set of coral heads into another branch of one of the canyons and found the "aloha" sculpture in the sand at about 20 feet. It is a bunch of cinder blocks arranged to spell "aloha" and had been one of the sights I'd come to see.

Exiting the water at Honaunau at low tide was a bit of a challenge, and I lost my emt shears from my waist webbing after taking off my rig in the water and dragging it ashore after I'd climbed out. So it goes.

The next day I had four boat dives planned; two in the morning and two at night. The first dive of the day was a return to Lone Tree Arch, which was the site of my first ever OW dive, a checkout dive that was part of my initial Scuba Diver cert with Lynn. It was nice to be able to see more of the site than just the rock bottom, and swimming through the arch was exciting and fun. On that dive we saw three octopus! and also a juvenile rock mover wrasse flitting about under a coral head.

At one point I felt cold, even with my 5mm jumpsuit, and found out later that what I'd felt was fresh water upwelling. Since Kona has no rivers, all the water that falls on that side of the island percolates down through the lava rock and comes up ofshore as spring water. You can actually see it shimmering in the water column.

The peak moment of the whole day was the night dive with the Mantas at Garden Eel Cove. When we got there a bit before sundown only the Aggressor was anchored at the site, but by the time we came up from our first dive there were many boats moored around the campfire area. In the fading light we saw a number of large white-mouthed eels extending from their holes.

The bottom of Garden Eel cove is a lot like any campfire pit area. Desolate, black, sandy and sooty. But at night, with the lights blazing in the pit and divers kneeling around the circular arena, the scene becomes otherworldly and surreal. Then the Mantas arrive.

Slowly their numbers increase as the plankton gathers in the beams of the many lights pointed up into the black water. A 12 foot manta picks you out and soars directly toward your head, a kind of underwater chicken game, but the manta veers upward at the last second, often grazing your hair as it scuds past you into an upward arc that brings it right back down in front of your light. The mantas do lazy loop-de-loops like that right in front of you, their eyes passing within a foot of your eyes and their massive open mouths scooping up plankton.

After about ten minutes we had 11 mantas looping and soaring in their underwater ballet about the campfire area. They seemed so numerous that all you could see was swooping white wings and huge maws forming an Escherian tapestry of underwater life.

The next day I took one of Jack's advanced three-tank charters, and this made for an extremely relaxing and rewarding day. We only had five divers, all of them extremely competent underwater, so you didn't have to keep one eye out for the next out of control person on a collision course with you.

The highlight of this day was the drift dive at LAX. There was a big current at the site and we had to drop twice just to get to the entrance to this wonderland. Once headed down-current we entered a series of lava tubes that reminded me of Palancar Caves. The underwater structure was amazing and covered with healthy coral and reef denizens. We saw a frog fish and a couple of leaf scorpionfish.

But the unbelievable part of the dive was when we emerged from a lava tube ina a canyon full of little snow flakes: juvenile plate coral. This coral growth appeared everywhere on the rock faces and valley floor of the canyon, and looked for all the world like twinkling lights or flakes of small crystal spread out as far as you could see. We moved carefully above the coral and swam through gaps into other canyons likewise covered with the tiny polyps. Our guide, Jim, said that there was nowhere he know of in the world that you could see such an expanse of juvenile plate coral like that. I felt truly lucky to have been able to be there.

My final day of diving put me in a group with guide Elaine Blank, who is the PADI course director at Jack's. She took us to Kaloko's Arch, another great spot with collapsed lava tubes and ta'ape schools hiding just under the overhangs. The fish would skitter away as you swam past and then return to resume their positions under the arch.

This small taste of the underwater world off the Kona coast just got me thinking, on the flight back home, of my next trip to these waters. I think the plan then will be to do more shore diving, and also do some diving up on the northern side of the west-facing coast.

Beating the Heat off Carmel

2008-09-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

With inland temps hitting the 100s last weekend it was a great relief to sit a quarter mile off Carmel's "Butterfly House" in a cool capsule of fleecy white fog. The sea was calm and glassy, and there was no wind early Saturday as the Silver Prince dropped anchor over a pinnacle near the lip of the Monterey Undersea Canyon.

Silver Prince was crowded with groups of divers from both southern and northern California, in town for a "meet and greet" in Monterey. The agenda called for a dinner later and then shore dives Sunday, though I had to get back home Saturday night. The picture is from the ride out of the bay. That's Robin and Mark.

Anne and I dropped onto the pinnacle, and I followed the anchor chain over a few little peaks at about 50' to see it resting on the sand bottom at the base of the west wall of the structure in about 110'. Visibility was good at about 25-30'.

We dropped over the side and through the stalks of giant kelp and down the face. Anne aimed her light at the wall and it exploded in bright reds, purples, and oranges of big blooms of strawberry anemones, hydrocoral, and sponges. Immediately I saw a lemon nudibranch. In addition we saw lots of sea stars on rocks and in cracks and rock fish diving in and out of the kelp. We contented ourselves to traverse the wall at about 80' and after a while reached the north end of it, following the curve to the east.

On the way back we saw a blue ringed top snail on a blade of kelp. I tried to get a picture but it was always moving out of the frame.

Just about that time we saw Michelle and a few other divers converging with us on the anchor line. I took the opportunity to get a couple of photos which were closeups due to the fact that we'd swum into a narrow canyon that barely had room for all of us. Everywhere there were beautiful undersea gardens of hydrocoral, worms, corynactus, and palm kelp.

The water was 57˚! I can't remember it that warm in Carmel, and the warm water combined with the 70˚ sunny conditions topside made me glad I ditched the drysuit for the weekend. Diving wet in such warm conditions is simpler and very comfortable, though I do prefer the trim I get with the drysuit.

As the boat moved we sat in the sun eating Cliff Bars and drinking water. Soon we were positioned over the outer Pinnacle off Pescadero Point. This structure, one of three or so pinnacles out there, had a number of tall spires jutting up from the depths. We dropped into the midst of these steep peaks at about 75' and marvelled at the lush profusion of invertibrate life competing for every millimeter of rock face. Palm kelp waved gracefully in the light surge. Hydrocoral reached with pink and purple branches everywhere, towering over the beds of corynactus.

This would have been a better first dive of the day, since the pinnacle's spires jutted up from greater depths that would have been fun to explore but for the fact that divers on air, following the earlier deep dive at Butterfly House, had very short no-decompression limits at the upper reaches of the spires at 75'. We elected to cruise around at that depth to get as much bottom time as we could, and it was fun swooping around through the spires like birds dodging mountain peaks.

After an hour or so boat ride back to Monterey we turned the corner and almost immediately dropped anchor on Outer Chase Reef. This was to be a nice offgassing dive at about 30 - 40' on a nice reef with a kelp forest to the south. But the visibility was not good, maybe 5-8'. Anne and I elected to simply follow the rock dike we'd dropped onto. It ran roughly parallel with shore at about 40', and we wove our way through some nice structures and canyons, headed roughly back to the east where we could ascend on the stern of the boat. At one point we ran out of rock; it just dropped off out of sight in the crummy vis, so we shrugged and went up with around 1200 psi left. We'd timed it about right, though, because there was the stern of Silver Prince just to the north of us past a little kelp patch which we ducked under on our short swim to the boat.

On the way back into the harbor we chatted with the SoCal divers and made new friends. Now there is already a plan for a get-together next year on Catalina. Sounds like fun.

Here's one last photo of one of the incredible living rock faces near the Monterey Submarine canyon.

Pipe dreams

2008-08-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect time to head over toward the big pipe that extends into Monterey Bay in front of Reeside just north of the breakwater. Anne had just nailed the skills part of her second Nav Specialty dive, and the three of us, including her instructor, Bob, and I, had lots of air left.

We had picked the open area of San Carlos Beach at the foot of the steps where you enter to get to the Metridium Fields because classes had completely overtaken the area by the breakwater. In contrast, our spot, maybe 50 meters north, was completely clear and the vis looked inviting in the morning sunlight.

We were not far out; depth was about 15fsw, so we surfaced and kicked out a ways past the first few kelp beds to where the inner white rock to the north lined up with the small building on the breakwater just past the bathrooms.

We dropped, dialed in 330˚ and headed out.

Earlier that day we'd gone over to the big pipe from further inshore and had transected the jumble of smaller pipes. Lots of half moons were swimming around the small pipes as we passed. Back on the sand we began to see lots of tube anemones, and there were little sand volcanoes shooting up from shellfish under the sand.

Further out, vis was opening up to about 20 feet (it had been better earlier), and soon we could see the dark shape of the big pipe materializing ahead of us. The sunlight was streaming down and the pipe was full of color as we began our easy swim out the pipe on 30˚.

The pipe is an interesting dive because the topography varies from flat sand to rocky downslopes, and occasionally inshore there is kelp. We wandered out past the section of pipe that is more than half-buried in the sand to the little down-slope at around 35fsw where there are some rocks and the pipe angles down. The bottom drops away a little to form a small arch, too small to swim through, but good for finding things hiding in among the tube anemones there. I looked and saw a juvenile ling cod who skittered away as I moved in for a closer view.

I think there was another series of rocky outcroppings further out that were festooned with bat stars and sun stars. I saw a medium-sized sheep crab on the pipe.

Soon we were at the end of the pipe, and I faced around and dropped to shine my light in side the opening. Nothing there. We had planned for the possibility of hopping out the the metridiums, but an air check at the end of the pipe made it clear that, while safely doable, our return from the met fields would probably not be as leisurely as the trip out the pipe had been.

We decided to turn the dive right there and cruised back along the pipe. Anne saw a Dirona on the right side of the pipe near the down-angle with arch section, but I didn't see it because I was over on the left side of the pipe looking for nudis.

Our slow, relaxed pace had continued, and it was a joy to constantly see my buddies close by, checking me visually, and signalling if they saw something interesting. Anne found another sheep crab in the sand which I did get to see, but was sad I'd missed the dirona.

We turned onto 150˚ at the half-buried part of the pipe and headed out across the sand, then angled in on 210˚ after a while and picked up the little pipes, which we followed into a wonderful little grove of kelp. After nagivating single file through the kelp patch we came again out into a very sunny patch of sand in about 10fsw where we surfaced just a little north of our entry spot. Here is the view inshore from right on top of the big pipe.

This dive reminded me of how peaceful and relaxing it can be simply to follow the pipe out and back without even going out to the met fields. It also reminded me of how much fun it is to dive with skilled, reliable buddies content to slowly cruise, taking in every little detail of wherever we happen to be.

San Clemente Island Dive

2008-07-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

As I positioned myself at the stern of the charter boat, waiting for divers in our group to assemble at the anchor line for our first descent on the walls southeast of San Clemente Island last weekend, I glanced at my computer. The temperature reading was 70˚, almost tropical! I felt very warm in my 7mm jumpsuit and hooded vest, and felt a pang of sympathy for the drysuit divers sweating in the hot sun up on the dive deck, hustling to get in the water in vain hope of cooling off.

The weather and swell had been perfect for a week, and I was anticipating epic conditions. Indeed, the water was dead calm and glassy, and the Giant Kelp was shimmering gold in the sunlight. But as we dropped onto the steep wall at Pyramid Rock I was a little disappointed with the visibility, which was about 25'.

The anchor chain was draped over the top of the south-facing wall, but under the boat, less than 30 meters to the south, the depth was probably beyond recreational limits. Someone dropped a weight belt doing a giant stride off the port gate, and nobody was going to go after it. If it had fallen off the stern it would have only been in about 94' of water and retrievable.

These steep walls, dropping sharply into the abyss, are a feature of San Clemente, and it was fun to glide down the anchor line until we could see the face of the wall jutting up from the depths.

Later that day we anchored on a more conventional Channel Island rock pile onto sand bottom site called "Crevasse of Death." I glided onto the wall hovering at about 35 feet. Kelp was all around, and the fluted spires and crevasses of the wall were fun to wander through.

The place was thick with Garibaldi, female sheephead and a very gregarious Calico Bass who hung around me posing for pictures.

One Garibaldi was continually chasing the sheephead out of his territory, but they just swept back in, interested in something on the rock face.

Visibility had improved to about 40 feet and the rock faces were blossoming in color. Below me near the bottom other divers would cruise by. I would know this when a curtain of bubbles would envelop me for a moment.

During the late morning of the second day of our three-day trip, at a site called "Octopus's Garden," I swam through some kelp into the middle of a broad, concave depression in the irregular boulder field. Sunlight streamed down into the bowl, about 30' in diameter and curving down to about a 50' bottom from the lip at about 35'. The rock faces were alive with coraline algae and fish were everywhere. The color was vibrant and had a warm tint from the golden hues sparkling off the kelp at the perimeter.

I stopped in the middle and descended about halfway until I was directly in the center of cylindrical water column. I sat up vertical and drew my legs up under me, trying to become as motionless as possible. Then I waved my hands just enough to set up a rotation so that I could sit there and pan around the whole structure, getting a 360˚ view.

At that point time stopped for me, duality evaporated, and I sat there stilling myself to a singularity. It was an interlude of utter completion and peace that I will always remember. It is the experience I am always looking for underwater, but you can't arrange for it to happen. It just does. Sorry, no pictures, but if I'd had my camera I would have been busy and the moment would not have been there.

Earlier we'd done a deep dive to Pyramid Cove Arch, a large pinnacle rising out of a sand bottom at 110 feet on the north side and probably 140 feet on the south side. It features a 20' wide archway, really a hole in the wall accessible at about 80 feet.

I was with a class, but was able to sneak away for short distances to try and find the arch. I didn't find it, but then the class was finished and the instructor began a tour. I was thinking we'd find the arch after all, but within about 2 minutes someone signaled that they were below 1000 psi, so we all headed back up the anchor chain to make our ascent, including a deep stop.

By the third day we'd migrated north to Santa Barbara Island and anchored for our last dives at a spot on the south side called "Sea Lion Rookery." This was a shallow, flat sand bottom with small reef dikes running east west and protruding maybe a meter or two off the sand. On these reefs were some anemic corynactus, all withered and sick looking. Maybe the water was just still too warm for them, though 60 miles north at San Miguel they are certainly robust.

Visibility was the best we'd seen, probably 60 feet. But the main attraction at this spot were the Sea Lions. Most of the divers were taking pictures of the marine mammals darting around in all directions, but I was dialing in my new drysuit so didn't have my camera.

I was practicing my hover just off the sand bottom when a young Sea Lion spiraled up to me and gave me a soft bite on the right arm. For an instant I thought, "Great, my first day with my drysuit and I get a puncture." But the soft bite did not damage the tough trilaminate material, though there are still some teeth marks on it.

I was the last diver out of the water, and as soon as I was aboard the crew pulled up the swim platform and we got underway for Santa Barbara.

We had some increasing weather on the way in, and the ride was bumpy. I'm always a little sad to see the oil platforms materialize out of the mist, which are, for me, kind of the gateway back to the mainland, leaving behind the exquisite marine ecologies of the Channel Islands.

A fine, murky day at Gerstle

2008-06-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

As we unloaded the van at Gerstle Cove Sunday I quipped, "it's a mud-hole, but it's *our* mudhole." We had actually anticipated decent conditions, but as soon as we descended for our first dive we realized we were wrong.

We'd decided on a 200˚ heading to the right, sort of splitting the wash rocks, and see how far we get before turn pressure.

On the way down I absently glanced away from Anne to pick up the bottom. Nothing but deep, textured green noise. When I reacquired Anne she was reduced to a shadowy sillhouette, even though she was only 4 feet away from me at the time.

One of those days in the local mudhole. "OK," I thought. "So it's a nav dive." We'd practice the no-visibility skill of swimming out on a heading and swimming back without ending up in Antarctica. Actually, we were going to have to alter return heading to 330˚ at some point on the way back to get to the beach. So paying attention was going to be a virtue.

Earlier, just before we went in the water, Denise and Joy from Northcoastdivers.org had told us that Andy, Kevin, and Sean-Paul were at South Gerstle hunting around the wreck of the Norlina, and that they'd be along around 10am. Despite the foggy, cool weather, there were families arriving and kids playing around on the rocks.

After about 5 minutes of skimming across the rocky terrain, hugging the bottom so as not to lose sight of it, we entered an area with lots of baby bull kelp reaching upward on lone, slender stalks. There were the usual large abalone, urchins, and sunstars, along with lots of tealia anemones and palm kelp, but not many fish.

As we ranged deeper and further out the gloom increased gradually so that you couldn't see large rocks ahead until you were right on them. Going slow was a plus for a number of reasons, this among them. Another, of course, was so as not to lose your buddy. Anne and I assumed a wing on wing position to make staying in touch easier, and out we went until the curtain of gloom became almost opaque, punctuated only by billions of wriggling krill and the dark outlines of kelp stalks. Here's a shot of a blue rockfish and lots of krill.

I think we ended up turning at about 2500 psi, after about 10 minutes of this, and immediately things began looking brighter.

After we'd surfaced in about 12' inside the cove we immediately encountered Andy swimming out with a float for use by his advanced class. We told him what he already knew: crappy.

On the plus side, we'd nailed our navigation, and the water had been a tropical 50˚f.

As we hauled out of the water I was sure we weren't going to do another dive. Some days are like that. But then the damn sun came out and everything got bright and warm. The wind hadn't really come up yet and the surface of the cove looked inviting. The warm was welcome to those of us in wetsuites, and i sat down and ate my sandwich, still skeptical about another dive.

My skepticism increased when Denise and Joy popped up 20 meters from the beach reporting, "murky, way murky!"

A couple of hours later, after we'd gone back and forth on whether to get back in the water, Anne and I realized that it would never be easier to go do a dive than it would be right then. All our stuff was right there, all put together and ready for use. And, ever optimistic, I thought, "maybe it's gotten better."

Here's Anne as we were on our way out of the cove. You can see Kevin with his back to us on the beach.

Actually, as we dropped for our second dive it was clear that things had gotten better, if only because the sun was out and enlivening the colors of the coraline algae and bat stars on the bottom. Vis had improved from 2-4 feet to 4-6 feet. Whoopee! Temps had dropped a bit from 50˚ to 48˚ but it didn't feel that cold.

We went straight out on 150˚ to make it easy and were thinking of finding the metridium wall out in about 45 feet of water.

One the way out we started seeing fish, mostly blue rockfish, and Anne found a small kelp crab. That's her finger pointing to it. I found a Lemon Nudibranch, but the photo was destroyed by surge.

More tealia anemones and sunstars, but outside the cove we reentered the massive krill cloud and vis once again dropped to practically none. So, we turned.

On the way back we swam right over a medium sized Cabezon who wasn't afraid of having his picture taken. And by the time we'd got back into 25 feet of water or so the sunlight began opening up our path. Having escaped the plague of krill, we lazily kicked back into the cove and the rocks, algae, bat stars, and kelp blazed with color. I remembered why I think Gerstle Cove is such a beautiful place to dive.

We congratulated ourselves on doing the second dive and persevering to see some pretty animals and underwater life. It was a feeling of completion which made the day worth it for us, having actually had fun underwater afterall. Once we were drying off in our lawn chairs on the beach, in the sunshine with other divers, all of whom had managed to have good dives despite the conditions, the sight of our four used (though still half-full) tanks made the beer taste that much better.

Memorial Weekend on the Channel Islands

2008-05-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

As usual, I was the first one up and in the galley of the Truth Saturday morning, May 24. The sun was just barely up, and the low light was glowing gold on the east-facing cliffs of Santa Cruz Island, 18 miles off the California coast.

We'd been underway since a little after 4 am (the reason we left late to be revealed in a moment), and were approaching the north side of the island for our first of three days of diving.

I reached up to extract my 1/2 lb of Peets Major Dikason from its hiding place above the soda dispenser and pulled a filter out of my pocket. I'd learned to bring my own coffee on these trips. No offense, Truth Aquatics, I love you guys and you are the best boat crews anywhere. But I'd rather brew my own coffee.

But there was a problem. As I reached for the hot water spigot, Dennis, the crew chef shook his head: "there is no water."

I let this sink in a bit. No water. No drinking water, no water for washing hands or showers. No water for coffee.

Dennis had just come in with two cases of bottled water. "We'll have to drink this for now." Dennis did, however, have a bucket of water heating on the stove. He said, "In a few minutes this will be hot enough for you. We can draw water from the tank, but the pump blew a seal last night as we were about to leave and we had to patch it. The patch isn't dry yet so there is no water except what we can draw by hand." Perhaps, he suggested cheerily, there will be water later this afternoon if the patch holds.

No problem. I always think of these trips as camping anyway, and who has running water on a camping trip? But mainly, i was ecstatic to have, regardless of the emergency, an opportunity for a cup of coffee. All I needed was sufficiently hot water, which was moments away on the stove. Everyone else who didn't bring their own coffee, of course, was screwed.

Once I had brewed my coffee I sat at the far corner of the galley watching the steam curling up out of my cup. Others finally emerging from the bunk area saw it too, and they grabbed cups only to learn from Dennis that there was no coffee. At least not for them. This stunning inequality between the have coffee person (me) and the have nots did not bode well for my popularity right out of the gate, and I continued to collect dark glances from those newly informed of the situation.

The Truth was slowing as we approached Santa Cruz just west of Frye's Anchorage, which was to be our first dive site called "West Wall."

Back in the galley, Dennis was still busy explaining the no-coffee situation to individuals one at a time as they arrived, and at the same time he was making breakfast. You could tell he was muttering to himself, "I don't have time or patience for this," but he remained cheerful as ever, a true professional.

Here is a shot of the galley area on Truth. You can see my still-warm coffee cup near the bottom of the shot.

Regardless of the blown water pump, the main reason we were all there was to go diving on the Channel Islands for three days, and people began unpacking their gear and putting on their wetsuits and drysuits. The site we anchored offered a nice Santa Cruz boulder field dive in a rubble pile of slide debris tumbling down to about 50 feet on a sand bottom.

The sea was dead flat calm and there was no wind. I'd never seen it so calm and glassy. It looked like conditions were going to hold through the long Memorial Day weekend, and if so it meant we might have a chance to get out to the westernmost islands, beyond the shadow of Pt Conception and completely unprotected from the north west swell: Santa Rosa and San Miguel.

After a couple of dives on the north side of Santa Cruz, the last one at one of my favorite spots, Emerald Gardens, the skipper told us we might take a chance on heading for San Miguel that night. Everyone was pretty excited to hear this. San Miguel is closest to the open ocean and very deep water. The marine life out there is very robust and fish are huge and tame. But because of rough conditions, open ocean swell, current, and wind San Miguel is diveable only very infrequently during the course of the year.

This was a stroke of extreme luck for the Open Water certification class onboard for the weekend. They enjoyed the prospect of having their first logged dives as certified divers on the western islands. Here is the class with instructor (second from left), a certified diver who pitched in to help (third from right), and divemaster (bottom).

As this good news made its way around the boat a young sea lion hopped up on the inflatable skiff and jumped around being cute and entertaining. Here is a shot of him taken just before he decided to lope up onto the swim platform and onto the dive deck. That was about enough, and crew members gently ushered him out the starbord gate as we got underway for the western islands.

We headed out after supper and anchored half way on Santa Rosa, then continued at dawn to San Miguel for the first morning dives at Wyckoff Ledge on the south side of the small island.

Temps were a bit cooler at 50-52 than the water on Santa Cruz, and there were no Garibaldi, which don't range farther than Santa Cruz Island. But what we did have was 70' viz, and a magical underwater amusement park, full of deep canyons and walls covered with explosions of corynactus and other inverts, plus some of the biggest sheephead and rock fish I've ever seen.

We hung around the south side of San Miguel, jumping all day into the glassy flat water and dropping into mystical kelp forests harboring sea lions, huge fish, Sun stars, arches and tunnels, cowries, nudis, and horn sharks. Depths ranged from the hundreds off Wyckoff Ledge to the 60s on the boulder fields and kelp forests.

After Wyckoff Ledge we had an afternoon of marvelous kelp dives at Rainbarrel and East of Wyckoff. Each of these spots featured fantastically interesting boulder fields and rock walls, all under a thick canopy of kelp. Gliding among the kelp stalks, watching the rockfish and snooping for nudibranchs, you never stop noticing the quality of light filtering down from the openings in the kelp forest that let shimmering sunlight down into the depths. It's very much like cathedral light.

Meanwhile, the crew had jury-rigged a way for the water pump to work, sort of. You could be taking a shower and the water would shut off due to an overload of demand. then you just had to stand there all soapy and either wait for the water to come back or towel off and come back. It was like reverse russian roulette, except with the showerhead.

We were wondering if the incredible conditions could possibly hold through the next day, which would maybe allow us a rare treat: a visit to the pinnacles to the west of San Miguel between Wilson Rock and Richardson Rock, an area of treacherous shoals called the wilson Rock foul area. These pinnacles are in the open ocea and usually undiveable due to extreme swell and current.

We anchored at about 7:30 am over the last pinnacle before the underwater range dropped into the abyss and the skipper, Chris, took a look. There was a ripping current but the sea was just calm enough to allow a relatively advanced dive for those who were just drooling to get in the water.

The bow anchor had been flipped over the edge of the north wall, near Heebie Jeebies, and divers were going down hand over hand on the line to get to the summit of the pinnacle in about 17 feet of 52 degree water. The current was washing over the top of the pinnacle requiring you to get right to the edge and kick forward and down the vertical wall.

I was diving with Jeff, an adventurous robust individual who was on his first Channel Islands trip. We got past the lip of the precipice and soared down the dark north side of the wall. As we drifted down the wall we could see shadowy divers way below us, beyond recreational dive depths, and we slowed our descent, stopping at around 70 feet to examine the face of the wall. Viz was probably around 50-60'.

Illuminated by my LED light we could see that there was a 10 meter vertical band of fantastic small white anemones so tightly packed onto the wall as to look just like snow. Not Metridiums, they were like albino corynactus, except not. I didn't know what they were but they were unearthly beautiful in the dim north side morning light. On each side of the band of white anemones, extending right and left to the ends of the wall were huge plumes of regular strawberry anemones, coraline algae, sponges, and other inverts.

Turning to the open ocean we could see huge sheephead and vermilion rock fish. They were the biggest I've ever seen. Looking down, we saw the sheer north wall gradually disappear straight down into the blank depths, punctuated only occasionally by faint bubble trails emerging from divers somewhere out of sight below.

We decided to peek around the east side of the wall thinking of swimming around the pinnacle, but the current was just howling around the edge and we backed off content to simply zig zag our way back up the wall, inspecting holes, cracks, and overhangs with my light.

Back at the summit we let the current lift us over the top and onto the anchor line which we grabbed and stood out like flags in brisk wind doing our safety stop. Arriving at the surface, we rode the water to the stern of the Truth, and hooked onto the swim step. There was a quarter mile of current line out, and thank god we didn't have to use it.

As we pulled anchor we saw the Vision heading out to the pinnacles. Apparently Truth Aquatics crews had heard about the conditions and had taken the boat to sea for a "staff outing" that would perhaps be possible maybe a half-dozen days a year.

Seeking shelter from the current and wind that had sprung up, we headed in toward the north side of the island to a spot called Hare Rock. Hare Rock is a dome like rock jutting out of about 60' of water and featuring huge fluted spires and buttresses of invertibrate festooned walls falling nearly vertically off the rock to the bottom.

The vis was spectacular, about 60' and in sunlight finally, so we could really see everything. More huge rock fish and sheephead, and I found the biggest Treefish I've ever seen sitting in a crack. When I approached to get a picture of him he always just flipped his tail around and disappeared into the wall. Above is a shot of a Copper Rockfish that was a bit less shy.

Intensely beautiful were the bouquets of corynactus that billowed off the rock in huge patches. Here are a few photos.

Life is so plentiful out on San Miguel, and so infrequently visited, that you have to see it to believe it.

The run back to Santa Barbara from Miguel is a long one, and divers had plenty of time to pack up their stuff and log their dives.

At one point during the return Capt Bob spotted humpbacks slapping the water out in front of us and breeching gloriously, often completely out of the water.

All across the dive deck people with sunburnt faces smiled and talked about the conditions, their dives, and the incredible luck that allowed us two days on San Miguel. Nobody even remembered the intermittent shower failures, or that they had had no coffee the first morning.

Getaway to Oahu

2008-05-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

With Summer almost here and the kids watching movies in school it seemed like a perfect time to sneak over to Oahu for a long weekend. We stayed with friends, but the real reason for the trip was to get in a few days of diving.

There are a lot of dive ops on Oahu, but I knew I'd made the right choice to go with Island Divers in Hawaii Kai as soon as I pulled into the parking lot, saw the Sea Fox parked right behind the shop and L&L Drive-In right next door.

For those of you who don't know L&L Drive-In, it's one of the very best places to get great local food in the islands. We ended up having lunch there every day. I recommend the garlic shrimp, and the teriyaki beef plate lunch is hard to beat.

Dive ops on Oahu offer both morning and afternoon boat dives. So we had the option of sleeping in, having a relaxed breakfast, and then heading over to Hawaii Kai at about 11:30am, just in time for lunch at L&L.

When we got to the islands the weather was hot and muggy from Kona Wind, and there was a lot of vog in the air from the Big Island volcano. However, Kona Weather is really great for diving, with calm seas and basically no wind.

Here is the Sea Fox loading divers on Sunday afternoon.

We dropped Saturday onto the sunlit, circular porches of low reef off Hawaii Kai called "Koko's Crater." We descended onto intermittent sand channels and reef in about 35 feet of 77-degree water with about 50' viz, and wandered around looking at leaf scorpionfish, three different types of eels, and the usual assortment of colorful butterflies.

About a third of the way into our dive the DM, Judi, brought us to the large reef platform on which sits a Buddha statue. Naturally we all had to rub the Buddha's belly.

Our next dive was at "Turtle Canyons," a site featuring large reef walls with sand channels in the hollows between. We were rewarded for snooping around under ledges when we found a very large turtle trying to get some solitude. We moved on across the reef and immediately we stumbled on a very large Eel sitting about 8 inches out of his hole. He was waving in the current like a garden eel, except much bigger and with a very large mouth, which he didn't mind displaying to anyone dumb enough to get too close.

On Sunday the trade winds had come back up a bit and brought relief from the mugginess of the preceding days, but not enough to disturb the surface so the water remained calm until a small chop appeared in the late afternoon.

We took advantage of the great weather and Captain Scotty pointed the Sea Fox toward Diamond Head. We stopped just on the Kahala side of the extinct volcano at a spot called "Fantasy Reef." This was a spectacular site featuring large outcroppings of coral and rock with sheer walls and extending roughly north - south. In between the coral ledges were white sand channels.

We swam with our DM, Matt, on about a 30 degree heading toward the island and along one of the large coral dikes. Suddenly ahead we could see a hole in the wall where two expanses of reef came together. It was a very small arch, actually, providing the tiniest clearance off the bottom.

A bit later in the dive we encountered a cylindrical depression in the reef. A lava tube, and like the ones at Sheraton Caverns on Kauai, it had a branch tunnel leading off under the rock. On the other side we emerged into a small canyon with steep sides. Ahead of us on the north wall was a turtle pressed up against the coral.

After turning back we cruised along one of the walls and marveled at the intricate patterns and texture on the coral and rock face. Inside little holes were small eels, a zebra eel and a snowflake eel. I came around a corner and out from under an outcropping swam a large puffer fish.

Current was getting stronger as we approached the boat, and divers were grasping at the tag line. Eventually everyone pulled their way to the stern, climbed up the ladder and began the process of organizing their gear for the ride home.

Later that night we dined on take out from Mekong II, that we'd picked up on the way back to the house. Have I ever said that diving makes you hungry? There wasn't much left for the cats that night, and we slept without packing for the trip home the next day.

Sparkling, clear vis in Gerstle Cove

2008-04-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Dive stats:
Me, Anne, and Michelle

First dive
max depth: 46 fsw
time: 58 minutes
temp at surface 48
temp at depth 46
Gas: O2 29%
Vis: 25 feet

The forecast was for a perfect storm of good conditions this weekend. No swell, no early wind, sunny and warm, basically a diver's wet dream.

Annoying weekend work was behind me by Sunday morning, and Anne and I headed north on Hwy 1 along the Sonoma Coast. Surfers were getting good rides on 2-3 foot glassy waves. The ocean looked great.

After our arrival at Gerstle Cove, and before we had even peeked over into the cove, Michelle drove into the parking lot directly in front of me as I walked out of the bathroom. What a great surprise! The three of us schlepped our gear down to the beach and by 10:40 were in the water. Here's what the cove looked like when we arrived.

I had equipment issues. My Air Source 2nd stage was leaking a steady stream of air so i unplugged the low pressure inflator hose from the corrugated hose coupler. This stopped the leak but also put me in the position of having to inflate my BC orally. OK, we're trained for that.

Here's a shot of Anne and Michelle in the background as we got ready for the first dive.

On the way out to the boundary I wondered why Michelle was swimming with her face in the water and then realized that she could see the bottom! Vis was the best I'd ever seen it in the cove. You could just see the entire bottom and it was utterly beautiful, aflame with red and orange bat stars and red and white telia anemones. Blue rockfish swam lazily around as we descended, and as we reached the bottom a very large Ling cod skittered under a ledge. Immediately after the Ling retreated we stumbled onto a big, black-grey Cabezon. He or she didn't run away.

We skirted the rocks on the right side of the cove on a 210 heading for about 8 minutes and then switched to 180 and headed out of the cove into deeper water. There were billions of krill in the water and this hampered vis a little bit. Still, the sunlight lit up the rocks and made the colors of the coraline algae, grasses, palm kelp, and inverts come alive. We began to see lots of corynactus the further out we got.

Finally, we ran into a huge rock dike running roughly perpendicular to the shore. It had large overhangs and went up in two pinnacles with a notch in between. I looked up at the top of the wall, about 10 feet above me and saw a crop of very large Metridiums. The were striking all backlit against the sun. Michelle took pictures as I swam through the notch to the sunny side of the dike. The wall on the other side was brightly lit and covered with Metridiums. They were huge and took up almost the entire wall. The bright sunlight on them, even at 45 feet, made them positively shimmer while the rocks they clung to were full of saturated color from corynactus and other invertibrates. It was magnificent.

We hung around the wall just marveling at the beauty, but then hit turn pressure and headed back. I neglected to switch to 330 degrees on the way in, and so 15 minutes on a due north heading bounced us off the east point of the cove. Dumb. We poked up like little water prairie dogs and then ducked back down for the promenade back up through the cove to the beach.

Second dive:

Surface Interval: 1:35
max depth: 50 fsw
time: 44 minutes
temp at surface 50
temp at depth 46
Gas: O2 29%
Vis: 25 feet

This dive was to be an out and back to the big rocks and (hopefully) the swimthroughs on the left side of the cove. We took a 150 heading from the boundary, dropping once again in the clear water, scanning the entire bottom of the cove on the way down.

I was happy to have somehow fixed my leaking alternate second stage connection and very much enjoyed automatically inflating my BC. I gave it a few bursts as I descended and heard the satisfying little hisses. No more blowing air and water into my BC for bouyancy adjustments.

We cruised out in the 46 degree water moving down the contour past large boulders with curious small circular pockmarks all over them. I'd seen these before and wondered what made those marks. Soon we were on the flat, slabby rock bottom heading into about 45 deet or water. I guess we weren't close enough to the shore to hit the swimthroughs, but it didn't matter. Suddenly in front of us was a massive pinnacle jutting up from the bottom. We swam around it finding lots of ledges and irregular rock faces covered with corynactus and anemones. Around the south side of the pinnacle we again saw a crop of huge Metridiums glowing white in the sun.

I'd never seen metridiums at Gerstle before, and this was a special treat.

Half way back into the cove I looked up and saw Michelle to my right and Anne to the left and all around us, swimming slowly among us, was a large group of blue rock fish. It was as though they had identified with us, and we were just more blue rock fish as far as they were concerned.

This time we hit the middle of the cove and swam all the way back to the beach.

After the dive we just sat in the sunlight warming ourselves and taking in the splendor of the North Coast. Some families were out in boats and kayaks, and we watched them play around in the still-glassy water of the cove.

As i climbed back to the parking lot to bring down my van I saw Michelle taking a picture of the cove from the bluff. I walked over to where she was standing and realized I could see almost the entire bottom of the cove as though it were just covered with clear glass, at least out about the first hundred yards or so. The purple coraline algae was beautiful and you could see every little sand patch in among the gold and purple rocks.

Once in the parking lot to retrieve our vehicles, we could see the wind rising over the water and the fog coming onshore. it was suddenly chilly, but the memories of a perfect day of diving at Gerstle Cove remained warm and inviting.

Cozumel 5th day: Cedral Wall, Chankanaab

2008-03-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

"This will be the last time I'm doing this," I thought, as I spun the combination lock dial and swung open my locker near the lower rinse tanks at Scubaclub Cozumel. It was Tuesday, my last day of diving, and the good weather had returned.

I liked the lower rinse tanks because there is a nice shower right there, and after your morning dives you can get everything off and cleaned up including yourself, at least enough to go have lunch. Food, of course is very important for divers, especially those engaged in activities as arduous as drift diving. It is a fact that on a typical drift dive you will burn as many calories as PSI of compressed air you breathe from your tank. Since on a normal dive you'll consume around 2500 PSI, that's as many calories as you have depleted and must restore. Really.

Cedral Wall was a ripping drift dive and as soon as we dropped onto the abruptly sloping contour of rubble reef and sand patches I knew I was going to have to have a big lunch.

Instead of the massive block and buttress structures of the more southern reefs, Cedral Wall featured small rocks and ledges with outcroppings of coral that formed a habitat for a huge population of fish. For the second day in a row the reef was fairly bustling with a variety of Angels, Parrots, Grunts, Spotted Drums, Wrasse, Filefish, and Butterflies. There were many juveniles wriggling around the bases of coral and sponges, never venturing far from their holes.

The sloping shoulder of this wall angles down at about 60 degrees for around 60 yards from the crest, and then plummets straight down. I wandered over toward the drop off but Nestor motioned me to come back to where the group was near the reef about half way up the shoulder. A good soldier, I obeyed and abandoned my quest to look straight down into the vacant blue depths one last time.

The first part of this dive was very fast, and the reef was like on a conveyor belt rolling along beneath us so fast that if you wanted to take a picture you had to see the shot coming, ready yourself, and then shoot as it was closest to you. You didn't get two chances.

Later in the dive the current slackened just in time for us to gather around a young sea turtle who was feeding on a sponge. Unperturbed by the sudden company, he continued snapping off morsels and I took pictures. Here he is.

Soon after out of the corner of my eye I noticed a huge fish moving directly toward me from the left. It was the biggest Grouper I'd ever seen, and he veered off at the last minute and took up a position in the middle of the circle we'd somehow formed above the reef. The grouper swam up to Nestor and halted about two feet away. Nestor made some hand motion that the Grouper ignored, and then it abruptly swam away out into deeper water.

Here's the video.

When we ascended after our safety stop I was with Nestor and one other diver. I stayed with Nestor because he had shot a marker bag to the surface and that was how the boat was going to find us. Nevertheless, as we rose to within 10 feet of the surface I spotted a group of about 8 divers on the surface and swam toward them, thinking they were in our group. Not. Instead, when I hit the surface I realized that I didn't know any of them, and I also noticed that one of the diver's had lost his tank, which had apparently fallen off his BC due to a too-loose tank band. His bottle was bobbing just behind him tethered to him only by the low pressure inflator hose. Scary. I got out of there fast. Looking around I'd found our boat about 50 yards to the south picking up the last divers from our group, so I beat it in that direction and gave a little blast from my whistle so they wouldn't drive off without seeing me.

On the boat Nestor asked me, "where'd you go, buddy?" I laughed and said I was just happy to get on the right boat.

Next, we stopped near the bouy marking the resting place of the Felipe, and I asked if we were going to dive the wreck again. "No," came the reply, we were there to do an opposite direction, north to south, drift dive on Chankanaab Reef.

Just offshore of the Chankanaab Park, this reef is a macro photographer's dream. Formed of low slabs of rock and coral, there were countless small attactions, mostly beautiful sponges, antler coral, and fish. One fish, not so small, that swam pst us was a fairly large barracuda. Here he is. I tried not to look too shiny in the dappled sunlight, but he ignored me, so far as I could tell.

We cruised along the west side of the low reef, that jutted up only about 15 feet from the sand bottom. There were numerous overhangs creating refuge for large schools of grunts. As we cruised along the edge of the reef I found myself secretly enjoying my 36% nitrox blend. Sweet air.

On the way back toward town you could see the big cruise ships gathered around every available deep draft dock, and some where waiting offshore. Easter Week must be a busy time in Cozumel.

There are a lot of very good places for divers to stay in Cozumel, and Scubaclub is one of them. Another that I'd like to try someday is Caribe Blu. Here it is from the water. A nice cozy place.

The one day I walked into town while the ships were in port the scene reminded me of the raucous pirate shenanigans that must have characterized Caribbean ports 300 years ago.

Horse-drawn carriages coursed up and down the main road along the water, and taxi cabs blasted out of side streets faster than seemed prudent given the fact that the roads were awash with tourists, some of them decidedly unsteady. Forget it Jake, it's Mexico.

As a final and unexpected treat, as I was returning my weights to the dive shop counter, I looked right and saw Ray Simon, from Scuba Center in Camp Pendleton, CA, whose group I had joined on a Channel Islands trip last June. What's more, many of the divers on this trip with him were people I'd dived with last summer.

What are the odds of running into people on a remote island off the Yucatan Peninsula that you dove with off the California coast? Apparently, not vanishingly remote. So we had a lot of fun together that day, and I saw them off on their day of morning dives after I'd gotten all packed up to leave Wednesday morning.

As the boats receded to the south, I turned and headed back up to my room to bring the last of my things down for the cab ride to the airport, stealing one last look at the hammocks at the water's edge.

Cozumel Fourth Day: Wildlife Jamboree

2008-03-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

I should have known something was up with the weather Sunday night; I kept waking up to the sound of my wetsuit, which I'd left hanging outside, flapping against the sliding glass door.

Monday morning early the flags were all stiff and pointing south, and if you stood anywhere near the pier or the hammocks at Scubaclub you were going to get wet. Waves were crashing into the rock and concrete, and it was fun watching the little water jets shooting up through the small cylindrical holes in the pier half a second after a wave hit.

However, as I stood there watching, the sea noticeably calmed and over a period of half an hour, as the sun rose, the wind slacked and the white caps disappeared.

My growing confidence that we were going to be able to dive was boosted at the sight of one of the DMs wheeling a cart of tanks down to the pier. I turned and went to my locker to get out my gear.

The diminished wind was still rather brisk beneath a low ceiling of ragged clouds, and on the Reef Star I actually felt a little cold with my wetsuit peeled down to my waist. I laughed at myself a little, thinking how I try to be brave on winter surface intervals in Monterey, where the surface air temp is 52 degrees and the wind chill factor on blustery days is, well, colder than Monday was in Cozumel.

As I retreated into the protected area on the boat I looked astern and there was a very low, broad, dark, and nasty looking squall descending on San Miguel. I asked Martin if it was headed our way and he smiled and said that we'd got out of the harbor at the right time and that the rain would miss us.

The sea was bumpy where we stopped for a dive at Palancar Caves, and there was current. Nestor made sure we were all ready to go at the same time and counted us briskly off the stern like airborne troops being deployed over a drop zone.

Once in the 79 degree water I dealt with the chop by using my snorkle at the surface before we descended, and then, much to the entertainment of the boat crew, forgot that I didn't have my reg in my mouth when I began my descent. This little embarrassment behind me, I caught up with the group as we dropped gently in the current over the massive reef structures.

Once again, descending upon the great monolithic pinnacles and buttresses extending to the north made me feel small. Then, dropping over the precipice to see the spires and walls disappearing into the vertical depths below was as exciting as ever. We floated down to a sand berm connecting two big blocks of reef and immediately Nestor vanished into a hole in the rock. We followed him into the narrow passage in single file, and the seven of us threading one-by-one through the winding arches and tunnels set the theme of the entire dive. Here's a video.

Sometimes we would come to a juncture of multiple caverns, and we would have to wait for divers in other groups to go through into the next hole. Nestor would wait and we would hover in the large, roofless chamber behind him until he signalled us to follow him. The passageways would wind down and then up in spiral paths from which we would exit, as on earlier dives, onto a bright, white sand berm. It was fun to turn and watch the other divers coming out through the hole. Some of them would rotate onto their backs to take in as much as possible as they emerged.

Very early in this dive Nestor stopped at a hole in the wall and gestured for us to look. There was a good sized lobster sitting half way out of his hole, and he didn't retreat when we approached. I was able to get a few decent pictures of him, but I had told myself not to lag behind the group, which I'd noticed myself doing earlier in the week, so I didn't stay long.

As it turned out, this was the big day for wildlife and the lobster was just the first of many close encounters with marine life including octopus, eels, lots of angel fish and parrots.

We continued our tour of the underwater maze, swimming through a series of unique tunnels, cracks, and fissures in the massive reef, and we gradually worked our way up into shallower water near the inshore sand flats.

As we moved back up past the top of the reef the sunlight had come back out and set fire to the yellows, reds, purples, and greens across the reefscape.

Heading back to the north against the remains of the norte was an exciting, bumpy ride, and to sit out on the stern of the boat was to ensure that you would be engulfed by spray coming off the bow. Unsurprisingly, everyone abandoned their perches on the bow and midships to huddle up in the cabin. The windchill was probably around 65 degrees, and that may seem only slightly chilly, but it was just plain chilly.

In any case, things were brightening up; the squall that had hit San Miguel earlier was gone, replaced by lighter, less menacing clouds, and where we stopped, at Punta Tunich for our second dive, the sky was sunny.

During the prior two days of diving I'd grown a little frustrated that I hadn't got as many pictures of the great fish, the angels and parrot fish, that these reefs are famous for. I'd seen a few angels, but they had been a little wild and ran away, even though I was doing my best to keep my bubbles soft and unthreatening.

What I realized upon descending onto the sloping reef and wall at Punta Tunich was that the reason I hadn't seen too many fish up to now elsewhere was that they were all here. Borne along in the moderate current across the reef I could see all three angels, and parrots everywhere, along with juveniles including lovely juvenile spotted drums.

Nestor stopped us to show us an octopus holed up, and a Green Moray sitting halfway out of its hole, actually posing for me it seemed. Unfortunately, due to photographer error, I didn't get the shot. There were Stoplight and Rainbow Parrotfish, and a few Grey Angels and French Angels that swam right up to me, though the Queens continued to keep their distance. Under rock ledges were schools of hundreds of grunts, and the sponges and coral were alive with color.

The reef surface was studded with small, lovely arrangements of rock, coral, sponges and fish that were perfect works of natural art, simple, in complete balance, lacking nothing. I tried to photograph these but the pictures just don't give the same feel of artistic perfection beyond the inspiration of even the most gifted human artist.

Drifting along with these thoughts I was suddenly distracted by Nestor waving and pointing. A sea turtle had launched itself off the reef and was soaring up into open water.

At our safety stop I continued my habit of remaining at around 10-15 feet even though my computer had released me to go up. I still had some air and enjoyed just drifting along looking over the reef as I rotated myself slowly through 360 degrees. It was truly like you could see forever, at least to me, used as I am to Northern California visibility which on an average pretty good day is 40 feet. During these interludes I also amused myself watching Nestor reel in his line and gradually coax everyone to the surface.

I was happy with my catch of fish photographs from this day, and would have been completely satisfied if this was all I ended up with for the trip. So imagine my delight to get more shots I was really happy with on the next day, my last in Cozumel, at Cedral Wall and Chankanaab Reef. That story is next.

Cozumel Third Day: Columbia Bricks

2008-03-25T19:48:00.001-07:00

At 6:30am Sunday I was astonished to see the ocean even calmer than the day before. It was almost completely still; you could just hear the faint sound of water lapping at the pier, which amounted to the greatest commotion Mother Nature was in the mood to stir upon the face of the Caribbean Sea.

What I didn't know at the time was that in 24 hours a fairly angry Norte would be blowing into Cozumel, and the still sea surface would be transformed to a chaotic jumble of whitecaps and chop.

As we rode south past the Fiesta Americana Hotel on the Reef Star I couldn't believe the saturated sapphire and azure tones of the sea beneath its glassy surface. Sunlight glinted sharply off the bow wave and sparkled in the foam we left in our wake. It was a perfect day to go diving.

We stopped (you don't anchor for drift dives) just north of Punta Sur at Columbia Reef. This is one reef further south than Palancar Gardens where we dove Saturday. Once again our DM, Nestor, led us down onto unthinkably massive rock and coral towers and monoliths jutting vertically out of the sand but also perched at the edge of the drop off, so that the effect of descending into that world was as though parachuting into a large city with tall, irregular buildings built upon the edge of a cliff.

As we swam deeper down the face of the huge towers we dodged among overhangs and into valleys whose sand floor caught the bright sun at 90 feet and made it clear and bright as day.

Visibility was probably 100 feet or so.

As we had the day before, we swam through labrynthine passageways and tunnels all somehow connected in an impossible maze that Nestor no doubt has completely memorized. My compass was no help; you could only go through the holes and arches that honeycombed the reef, and where you exited relative to entry was a complete mystery.

The scale of this place is unimaginable. It's like walking into New York City when you've never seen anything bigger than Lodi.

Again, at the end of the winding swimthroughs we would be spit out onto bright white sand berms peaking just to the west before plummeting vertically to the depths. From there we could see more huge outcroppings which would be the beginning of our next maze.

At one point I decided to turn onto my back and look up the entire length of these monoliths to the sea surface, and they were so massive and tall that they almost disappeared into the haze and only the bright sun streaming across their ramparts marked their outline.

The current picked up, and I was watching out to sea when I realized that I'd missed the exit for the next series of tunnels. You really can't swim against the current on a drift dive at 70 feet and expect to have any air left after 5 minutes. So I shrugged and contented myself with following the little bubble streams filtering up from the roof of the structure the rest were passing through. I ended up happy about this because I was able to get some nice sunny photos. As i swam over the edge of the reef I looked down onto the sand and watched the other divers squirting out of the rock 20 feet below me. I rejoined them, but it was really time to begin ascending so we all headed east toward the sandy flats and put the monster reef behind us.

Magically, the boat appeared precisely when and where we surfaced, though it must have been a mile from where they put us in.

After almost an hour boat ride back to the north we slowed just off the Villablanca Hotel. We would do a drift dive along the sand and patch reef shoulder of the Villablanca Wall. Once again the current was fairly ripping and I assumed my customary seated position while the ocean carried me along the reef. One of the divers turned on her back and amused herself by kicking against the current on her back. She was getting nowhere, but that was the whole point. I have a video of this which will eventually appear here.

Highlights of this dive, once I tired of hovering motioinless, were the two tiny seahorses we saw, the Yellow Stingray and another shadowy turtle off in the blue beyond.

In the afternoon we got back on the Reef Star for a special dive on the wreck of the Felipe Xicotencatl, a sunken minesweeper in about 80 feet of water west of the Fiesta Americana Hotel.

Dropping down onto this ship created an eeire feeling; it looked like a ghost ship. When I got there there were already people inside, and their bubbles streamed in tiny rivulets up out of the rusty hull and superstructure of the ship.

I was the only one on the boat who refused to penetrate the wreck. I'm sure it was safe, and everyone came out just fine, but

I was more than content to putter around the outside, now and then passing a hole in the side through which i could see the other divers like aquarium attractions inside the wrecked ship.

Actually, the outer hull and superstructure of the Felipe was alive with sponges and marine life that I set to photographing, and before I knew it the others were streaming happily out of the side of the boat. We waved at each other and I joined them. Here's a shot of Nestor just after they came out. The others were low on air and began their ascents but I still had some air left so Nestor showed me around and pointed out the tiniest brittle stars I've ever seen.

Here's a video of the approach to the Felipe.

Strangely, at this point on the coastline of Cozumel the current goes north to south which is opposite of what we'd been getting out on the reefs. This same opposite current took us north to south on Chankanaab Reef two days later. Chankanaab is a macro photographer's dream, but more about that in Tuesday's Cedral Wall/Chankanaab report.

On our return to the dock the sun was low in the sky. It had been a whole day of diving, interspersed with eating and lounging in the sun. If I'd looked to the north I might have seen the dark clouds forming that would engulf us the next day, however, when I went to sleep I just assumed that Monday would be a perfect day like every day is in Cozumel.

Well, Monday did end up pretty good despite the blustery Norte. in fact, we escaped San Miguel just a half hour before an intense downpour hit the town which we viewed safely from the stern of the Reef Star on our way south to Palancar Caves. That report is next.

Cozumel Second Day: Palancar Gardens

2008-03-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

If you walk out of San Miguel to the south, past Hotel Cozumel toward the lighthouse, you pass a stretch of rocky shoreline that makes you think for an instant that you're in Hawaii. Sharp, craggy black limestone rocks (look like volcanic but aren't) form an uneven barrier to the waves that, on days like today, Monday, March 24, are driven ashore by the strong north west wind.

As I awoke today, Monday, I imagined that the sea would be bright and calm as it had been Saturday and Sunday. But the sea has different moods and not all of them, or probably even most of them, are friendly. This morning there was a hard wind blowing onshore and the seas were rough with 4-foot wind chop. I thought, "I'd dive in this, but it would be annoying to spend too much time on the surface."

Saturday, my first day of boat diving, had dawned with scattered white clouds mirrored on the sea as on polished glass. I was excited as I looked on the assignment board for the boat I was scheduled on. My name was on the list for "Reef Star." I scanned the picture of "Reef Star", "Oh, good," I thought, there was probably a head. I would prefer to avoid peeing in my wet suit, which has a wool lining, and some of the faster boats just don't have heads. Also, there was shade, which I also value. The number of names was about 14, not a bad size group.

By 8:15 divers were lining up at the dock awaiting their boats. As we got underway, heading south, Nestor came up to me and confided with a wink and a smile., "We are going to Palancar Gardens." I took this as meaning good things.

I began to fathom what he was talking about when, after we'd descended onto a patch reef surrounded by sand at about 60 feet, he motioned the five divers in his group, I among them, to follow him through a large notch in some massive coral and rock pinnacles just ahead to the west.

As we swam through the opening a whole blue world unfolded before me. We swooped over the edge of the wall and glided down through a fluted space between gigantic rock buttresses, covered with sponges, hydrocoral, gorgonians and busy with multi-colored fish like the Queen Angels shown above. I could see a sandy ledge below me at about 80 feet, beyond which was the abyss. Faint outlines of divers down that wall were just visible a hundred feet away and another 30 feet below us. They were deep.

Here's the video of our descent.

Massive rock and coral columns and dikes extended out toward the brink of the wall, and there were multiple hole and fissures forming a kind of labyrinth of passageways, corridors, and tunnels connecting the structures and providing fun places to swim.

We turned a corner and suddenly, beneath an overhang, a baby turtle saw us and bolted. Here he is in mid-flight.

We meandered through sunlit expanses above the wall among the buttresses and pinnacles, and followed passageways beneath them that spilled us out into some other sandy patch berm connecting the huge outcroppings.

Every few seconds Nestor would turn and look for us. Here he is with his yellow and blue fins.

Always, to the right there was an infinitely rich ecosystem of marine life, invertibrates, coral, sponges, and fish growing from this or that protuberance or overhanging bit of reef; always to the left was the deep blue. You could look straight down a hundred feet of that wall and it was lifeless blue, like a doll's eye, uninterrupted dim azure fading darker the farther down you looked. Hovering there in 90 feet of water looking down probably another thousand, with those massive buttresses everywhere, it makes you feel small.

Eventually we gradually ascended up over the top of the reef and onto the sandy flats with patch reef that constitutes most of the inshore areas of Cozumel. As divers ascended in buddy teams as they became low on air you could see groups hanging at different depths all the way back down a hundred or more feet behind us.

At the very end, just as we were swimming out of sight of the blue world a giant Sea Turtle appeared just barely in view off in the pelagic distance.

For some on the boat, Cozumel Vets, this was just another impeccable reef dive; for me it was a visit to a large world that I will never forget. Next stop was Las Palmas reef, a drift dive patch reef at the top of the wall just south of town.

This established a pattern: first dive on the southern reefs, not much current, but incredible structures and marine life, second dive a drift dive in ripping current back toward San Miguel.

Las Palmas has a broad, sloping shoulder of patch reef with little rock outcroppings and many fragile stag antler coral and gorgonians. Nestor had cautioned us that the reef here was very fragile and not to disturb the bottom. Hovering above the reef about 10 feet I assumed a cross legged, upright posture and rode the current like the Disneyland train, watching the underwater tableaux go by beneath me. Literally, all I had to do was sit there and breathe. This, I thought, is what drift diving is all about.

Suddenly, out of the blue i could see the outline of a very large Spotted Eagle Ray. Its majestic wings beating the current up the slope toward the top of the long berm. Then, breathtaking to see, it circled back and soared down the slope its wings motionless, as though it was riding a thermal. I was of course speechless, because I was under 60 feet of water, but dumbfounded is basically the same wherever you are. Here is the video.

Later Saturday as I walked into town to spend money and see the big cruise ships I kept looking at the sea and it still maintained that azure, clear quality, as though you could jump in and see all the way under water to Playa Del Carmen on the Mexican mainland. I imagined the sloping shoulder of the island as it gently then abruptly plummeted into the deep and thought, "wow, three more days here." Next Columbia Bricks.

Cozumel: First day, a warm up dive

2008-03-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

Late Sunday Afternoon, after I'd rinsed and put away my gear I walked down the sunlit concrete pathway to the water's edge by the pier. If you look seaward you may see bubbles coming up off the artificial reef out in front of Scubaclub Cozumel. What this indicates most likely is that guests have probably checked out tanks from the dive concession, strapped them on, and walked into the water or strided off the pier.
That is exactly what I did Friday after my arrival, clouded a little by lost luggage containing my dive lights and some other sort of important but not totally essential gear. I checked in, ignoring the fatigue from having taken the red eye to Houston Thursday night and then connecting to Cozumel Friday morning. As I checked out a tank and put my gear together, realizing that I was only feet away from crystal clear, vibrantly azure, warm water the horrors of the red eye (horrors indeed) faded from memory.

I walked the short distance to the small grotto with stairs down, perfect for dialing in weights, I passed the little thatched hut with six or so hammocks all in a row. I didn't know it at the time but Sunday afternoon I'd be in one of those hammocks pretending to model for a Corona commercial. The little grotto has a small archway that you swim through to get to the ocean. Once through it opens up into a jumble of volcanic rock walls and small buttresses surrounded by mostly sand, sand made by Parrotfish.

This opening was my first experience of Cozumel diving, and it was lovely. The clear water enabled me to see all the way across the property to the pilings of the pier extending to 20 feet depth or so. Further out there is a very interesting artificial reef made from cute little fish houses and structures that were probably condemned trash when on land. But underwater they became palaces for fish, and the fish are moving in.

Every little recess or overhang or indentation was populated by a Blue Tang that became agitated when you or another fish drew too close. I witnessed a few fishy skirmishes out on that reef.

Nearby an instructor was teaching a Scuba student a class and I swam around them to the far side of the reef.

Looking oceanward I saw an amazing fish. It looked like the Mola Mola we have in Monterey, but it was pure white. This was an Ocean Triggerfish (see pic above). Beyond it there was a shimmering wall of fish, French and bluestripe Grunts. They reminded me of another wall of fish I'd seen on kauai with Lynn.

Playing around Friday on the little concrete reef out in front of the hotel was a perfect warm up for the massive walls and gardens of the Southern Reefs that I visited in the next few days.

As I scrolled these memories of my first day, from my Sunday hammock perch, watching other divers going in and coming out, I thought, I'm basically on a liveaboad dive boat except that I sleep on land. Saturday was my first day on the southern reefs, at Palancar Gardens. That story is next.

Return to Coral Reef and more Anacapa delights

2008-03-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm always up before 6am on these Channel Islands boat trips. I like to get up to the galley and have some coffee before there is a big crowd. It's very peaceful, just like underwater, except with coffee.

Sunday morning, March 9 was the first day of Daylight Savings time and it was still dark when I arose, presumably the daylight was being saved for later. Soon enough there was a glow in the east. Here's what it looked like from the dive boat Truth, anchored on the south side of Santa Cruz Island at Blue Banks.

It was a two-day trip, and Saturday's dives had been good but not spectacular. Mostly, we'd dived on the south side of Santa Cruz, at places like Heart Attack Rock, Albert's Wall, and Blue Banks. Santa Cruz has a lot of sites that are rockslide rubble that has fallen from cliffs and formed a series of stepped walls gradually falling to a sand bottom at around 50 feet. These are great habitats for fish and invertibrates, and they usually have some fun caves and spires to swim around in and through. Saturday had been very sunny and the rocks had been alive with color, especially on our first dive at West of Pedro, where we also found a very large cave, but couldn't see in because I'd forgotten to bring my light.

Visibility, however, was less than usual on the Channel Islands, varying from 15 to 40 feet depending on where we were diving. There was some surge and current but little swell.

The boat was less than half-full and divers had a lot of room to stretch out and get comfortable. Above is a shot of the dive deck late Friday night before departure. By Saturday most of these stations had been filled; here's what it looked like in the morning before the first dive.

Saturday had been busy. We'd all had three or four dives by the time evening fell, and we arrived at Blue Banks, the location of our overnight mooring and the night dive.

I'd planned on doing the night dive and had looked forward to it, but as I stood on deck in the twilight looking at the surge on the rather exposed point we were anchored by and the rising wind and chop, I decided to thumb the dive and have a beer. About half a dozen divers, led by Bob DeFeo, the instructor on board, went in, and it was fun watching their lights glowing in dim pools of ghostly luminescence filtering up from the depths.

I was on my second beer as they came up and boarded in the wind. Here's Bob getting checked back on the boat by Captain Bob.

Sunday morning, as I stood brewing coffee and looking out at the sea, I hoped we'd head for Anacapa which was just across a small channel from us and offered some of the most spectacular dive sites I've ever seen.

After the magnificent sunrise Donnie pulled anchor and headed back to the east. I could see Anacapa dead ahead of us and went up to the wheel house to ask if we might be going there. Sure enough, we were. "Maybe Coral Reef?" I asked hopefully. Donnie turned in his chair and said, "yeah, that's where we're headed." I was elated. Coral Reef was one of my two favorite spots last trip, and I was excited that we were headed back to Anacapa.

As it turned out we had to go dive the north side of the island due to ripping current on the south side, and we had a very nice dive at Deep Goldfish Bowl.

It was a sand bottom at almost 90' with little rock gardens all over the place overgrown with gorgonians and invertibrates. We'd heard in the briefing that there was a wall to the north down to over 100' and we originally planned on going down this wall and hanging out at the bottom for five to seven minutes. As it turned out we never found the wall but had a hugely entertaining encounter with a young harbor seal who darted in front of Anne and me and did spiraling figure eights in front of us for 15 seconds or so.

Back on the boat I was feeling better about the trip. The seal encounter had gotten me excited in a way that Santa Cruz hadn't the day before. As Truth powered back around the western tip of the island we could see that the sea was calmer and more inviting. Meanwhile divers rested in the galley eating snacks and logging their dives.

We anchored just west of Cat Rock near shore at a place called Channels. It was a nice kelp garden with sand patches perfect for the OW class dive Bob had to teach. It was the last dive for the class, and the students had to remove and replace their gear on the surface, do a navigation exercise using their compass underwater, and perform an ascent sharing air with their buddy.

My job was to help Bob by accompanying students on their navigation run and by going up with the first pair of air-sharing buddies and staying with them on the surface. There was still some annoying current, and the skills were not easy, but the students all performed and within 20 minutes of entering the water there were 5 newly certified divers on the planet. We all celebrated with peanut butter and bagels, and the boat moved a couple hundred yards seaward. The new spot was called Underwater Island.

I was excited because my role as helper was finished and I could just dive. I'd been itching to get in the water with my new camera rig, which for a day and a half had sat in the galley unused.

If I was going to take my camera in the water for only one dive on this trip, Underwater Island was the perfect choice. It is a long, relatively narrow outcropping of rock rising out of a sand bottom at about 60' and cresting to about 25'. The entire east side of the structure is a huge, vertical wall with many crevasses and holes for fish to hide in. The wall was covered with strawberry anemones and sponges. Spanish Shawl nudibranchs were everywhere as were sea cucumbers, limpets, sea hares and urchins. Garibaldi swam out of holes to look us over and Anne and I found a big Ling Cod who unfortunately bolted before I could get a picture.

Here are some shots from this dive.

One of the most interesting things we saw at Underwater Island was man-made. It was a memorial stone that had been placed at the base of the east wall. Someone name T. Meloche is memorialized at 60' off the south side of Anacapa. Here's the stone. As we continued past beautiful, fragile pink and purple gorgonians we found the south end of the rock and turned back north traversing the west side of the rock. This side of Underwater Island was much different than the east side. It was a rounded series of hillocks with brittle stars everywhere.

Later, finally arriving at Coral Reef, we saw billions more brittle stars waving their tiny tentacles in the current. The entire west ridge of the outer Coral Reef is a blanket of brittle stars, so dense they look like a kind of thick grass. Only when you get up close do you see their millions of tiny tentacles waving in the current seeking nutrients.

Coral Reef was just as beautiful as before, even in diminished visibility that obscured the view of the broad swales that lead like great canyons to the south into very deep water. We hovered over the precipice at the south end, where big rock columns jut up from over 100' to about 35' at the top. We had to stay above 50' on this dive because our bodies had absorbed a lot of nitrogen earlier in the day, but it was breathlessly fun to hover out over the edge or down the wall, always fascinated with the textured explosion of life competing for every square millimeter of rock surface.

Coral Reef is like an underwater theme park with different rides and attractions depending on which direction you go. I'd asked one of the crew if you could swim all the way around the structure and he said he doubted it given its massive size and breadth. You could come back and dive this spot every day for a month and still not see everything.

Finally it was time to head back to the mainland. Everyone got busy breaking down their gear and gathering up their belongings. Here's one last image, a shot of Anne at the bow anchor line as we descended onto Underwater Island. Goodbye Anacapa, we'll be back.

A Funky Day at the Breakwater

2008-02-09T17:47:00.000-08:00

The swell forecast changed for the worse overnight, and when I arrived at the Breakwater at about 8:45am I'd already heard from Sarah that Lovers Point and Coral Street weren't diveable. I had already figured as much, since I could see the whitewater out on the point from Highway 1 in Marina. There was a good sized swell running into the east wind on Del Monte Beach, and it was pretty, with the spray feathering off the tops of the waves. I thought, "I should have brought my surfboard."

I found Sarah and Michelle at the Breakwater, and we walked out to the steps to survey conditions. There was a good bit of chop and some intermittent 2-3 foot waves helping the tide come in. Waves were breaking on the wall and creating an annoying cross wave as the surf swept up onto the sand. On the grass classes were kitting up, and I saw Ron and Todd, a couple of my instructors who were beginning the last day of an OW class. Michelle knew them too, so we went over and said hello. Todd asked me if I wanted to help with his group, and since it was looking like Sarah, Michelle, and Brad, who had joined us, might thumb the day, I told Todd I might be able to pitch in.

Sure enough, everyone but me decided to go to the aquarium. So I rushed over to my van and got my gear on as fast as I could, since the class was already heading down the steps. Todd told me to catch up with them in the water, and I finally did find them halfway out to the bend.

My job was to stay with two of the students while Todd went below and did drills with the other two. Visibility was so bad that people had to descend holding onto each other.

After everyone had done their drills it was time for the tour part of the dive. A "tour" of the breakwater in surgy, 1 foot visibility is basically miserable. You just scudd along the bottom looking at your compass. But the students were gamers, and they followed Todd around the sand, holding onto each other, while I brought up the rear making sure nobody got disconnected.

Finally it was time for the students to do their last task, which was to navigate their reciprocal course back to the beach. I took two of them while Todd watched the other two. My group, two girls, were undeviating from the 240 degree course I'd dialed in on my compass, so I just followed them across the sand ripples. When it was time to exit it looked like there was just enough surf to make things interesting.

Todd asked me to go in first, ditch my fins, and come back out into the surf zone so I could be there to help the ones he sent in if necessary. The students did a great job getting through the waves to the beach and I had very little to do except help them up if they tipped over. In the picture you can see a few students crawling out near the rocks by the wall.

I ended up calling it a day at that point, feeling happy that I'd got to get wet after all and even help out a little. It was a way to feel better about driving all that way only to find that Mother Nature wasn't showing her most dive-friendly side.

Memories of Summer

2008-01-26T13:40:00.000-08:00

Today is the sixth day in a row of pouring rain and high surf in Northern California. My dive gear is forlornly bone dry and hanging or stuffed where it belongs until I load up the van again, maybe next week, maybe not.

So in the meantime, I'm going through photos of last year and came across this one, snapped of us by Seth, our Bubbles Below Dive Master, between dives at Hale o Honu (House o' Turtles) on the south west coast of Kauai.

We were sitting on the back of "Dive Rocket" with a sugar mill in the background, enjoying the warm sun and talking about what had been our first dive together as a family.

We had descended into 78 degree water with visibility around 70 feet. It was stunning to be able to see the bottom and the broad lava rock slab ledges progressively sloping off to the south into deeper water. We levelled of at about 60 feet at the lip of one of the ledges and swam along the edge looking for eels and lionfish in the cracks and holes. We found both. In addition, we saw lots of Trigger Rish, Racoon Butterflys, Blue Strip Buutterflys, and everywhere, turtles.

There were old males and juveniles, and some mating pairs. At one point a young turtle swam right into the center of our group, and we obligingly formed up a circle with the turtle in the center, then everyone just hung there. It was a moment out of time, perfect, peaceful and complete.

Later, we were given a rare treat when, out of the blue there swam toward us a Spotted Eagle Ray. It circled us as we were suspended off the ledge about 15 feet and then dove onto the wall with its mouth scraping along looking for scallops. It wiggled along like that four about 10 feet and then abruptly turned seaward and winged its way directly below me toward deep water.

Later that week, in August 2007, we dove at Sheraton Caverns, a spectacular site off Poipu with large cylindrical wells connected by a labyrinth of lava tubes, and a few other very nice boat dives off the south shore. Sheraton Caverns would be an easy kayak dive from Koloa Landing, though primarily people do it as a boat dive.

These dives were all unforgettable, but going over my logs and looking at the pictures, my favorite memory of that trip was our first dive together and how we spent an eternity suspended in a circle around a young sea turtle.

Mono Lobo Wall and chilly winds

2008-01-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

The first very cool thing about getting to Mono Lobo Wall on a boat is watching the depth finder go from about 130' to 280' in the blink of an eye and then off the charts with a display contour that goes just perfectly vertical down. The display showed "?" which was apt since nobody knows what's down there 1000 feet below the surface as you head out over the Carmel finger of the Monterey undersea canyon. This happens as close to shore as the boat can go while you head south past the wash rock on the north point of Monastery Beach. After a few minutes of "?", during which time I idly thought about how far it is to the bottom, the depth finder showed a dramatic vertical upward graph as it found the bottom again - another vertical wall that leveled off at about 100'.

We motored slowly in to the wall area, just around the point from Monastery South and dropped anchor in about 80'. I didn't have my camera because I wanted fewer distractions and was more interested in poking my light into the many holes and cracks we were sure to find.

We dropped off the side of Monterey Express and descended in about 70' heading more or less in toward the rocky labyrinth of spires, columns, fissures, walls and buttresses that comprise the jumbled rock terrain. It was sort of like buzzing around an undersea version of Sleeping beauty's Castle, so varied and dramatic was the underwater architecture.

All the rock faces were simply exploding with life and color, fed by the nutrient rich upwellings from the nearby trench: huge blankets of Strawberry Anemones, gorgonians, yellow, purple, blue sponges were everywhere, and holes featured crabs and amazing yellow and green striped fish. The kelp had been cleared out by recent storms but there still was enough to give the whole underwater realm a mystical quality.

We circled around spires and floated through deep fissures with vertical walls on either side, we dove into canyons and wandered through kelp stalks as large Copper Rock Fish eyed us with suspicion but didn't run away.

Soon we were back on the boat and could see immediately that conditions had worsened, with a chilly wind that had begun kicking up chop while we were down, and making the whole idea of a surface interval in a cold wetsuit a survival exercise. I stashed my gear under the bench we'd found inside the cabin area out of the wind (it's good to get to the boat early), and got into my long dive coat, donning it right over my wetsuit. It actually made a difference and I didn't start shivering, though I was close. It was cold. the air temperature was about 54 and the water temperature we'd just come out of was 52 degrees so there was little relief once out of the water, worse, there was wind too.

I didn't really care about the cold. Mono Lobo Wall was to me a penultimate example of great Carmel diving with great massive structures and an explosion of life everywhere. This is what people say makes Northern California diving world class. I was thinking about this on the way back to Monterey, as we bounced along agains the 8' swell and increasing wind, and decided it was more than worth the slight chill.

Finally back around the corner into the bay we stopped at Cabrillo Point for our final dive. This was a bit of a disappointment: mostly sand bottom with some rock outcroppings but they were full of life, and more Copper Rock Fish. We hung out criss-crossing the anchor line and explored everything we could find, surfacing with about 1000psi left because we were just repeating our tour of the small rocky area we'd found.

Still, it was a good dive and nothing could have made me want to miss the earlier dive at Mono Lobo, so the day was a complete success.

As we got close to the harbor the sun came out and warmed us a bit. Here's a shot of both me and Anne as we entered the harbor on the way back. Chilly? Nah.

Metridium Fields for ever

2008-01-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

Anne and I had watched the sunrise from somewhere on Hwy 101 southbound on our way to Monterey for a meetup with other Scubaboard.com
and Northcoastdivers.org people. It looked like it was going to shape up into a great day, and as we headed past Marina and could see the water I got very stoked: glassy, hardly any swell, and bright sunshine.

We pulled into the lot at the Breakwater and got the last spot on the lower lot, somehow, even though it was 9 am and all the parking spots should have been claimed by then. It was a harbinger of good fortune.

The grass was vivid green in the morning sun, and the water looked great. Last time I'd been to the breakwater had been a red tide day, so it was nice to see better conditions. Sarah and Mark had already begun spreading out tarps on the grass so we joined them and soon Michelle and Brad showed up along with some others that I'd only known from online. Kevin and Denise from Northcoastdivers.org dropped by on their way to Lobos, and it was a fun, relaxing morning.

Soon everyone was geared up and Ron was giving the briefing about how to find the Metridiums. I'd never been out there, though as a North Coast diver I'm used to long surface swims. As it turned out the swim to the end of the pipe was about the same as the swim out to the mouth of Ft Ross East Cove. No big deal, and with the flat seas and lack of wind, the swim out with about 15 others was easy and fun.

The pipe runs on about a 40 degree heading, so after lining up with Reeside to the west, the white rock to the north, the end of the breakwater to the south (roughly) we dropped and found the pipe almost immediately. Following the pipe for another 30 meters or so we found the end and continued that same heading for another 30 meters or so and soon we could see the shale beds and metridiums looming in the distance.

Vis was about 15-20 feet, compromised a bit by the billions of fry in the water. Anne and I cruised around the Met Fields and found numerous clumps of rock to the north with big crops of anemones, all unfolded in their glory.

Turn pressure was 1800PSI and our plan was to head back on a 210 degree heading aimed at the stairs by the bathroom. I'd thought we'd see nothing but sand on the way back but was wrong. There were loads of tube anemones, and frequent clumps of rock with bat stars, corynactus, palm kelp and fish. We found some junk on the bottom: an old dive light with parts missing and a restaurant napkin, which we swept up and brought ashore. Also in our path was a pair of huge concrete blocks with a big rusty chain off of one of them.

We swam from one rock formation to the next finding shallower water until we ran across the big pipe again, which we followed for another few meterse into about 10 feet of water where we surfaced for a leisurely swim/walk to the beach. The tide was super low and we walked out past many rocks that would normally be underwater.

Back on the grass people fired up barbeques and laid their wetsuits out in the sun to dry.

Around 2pm we geared up again for a dive out the wall and back. The tide was even lower and you could walk out to about the number 5 on the breakwater wall. We swam out to the bend and dropped in a group. There was some confusion with so many divers and Anne and I decided to get out in the clear so we kicked a bit along the wall and found some relatively clear water. Vis was about 15 or so, pretty good for breakwater.

I love the tube anemones and they were all over the bottom. There were halfmoons in the rocks and lots of stars. I was looking for nudis but didn't see any, and neither did I see any seals or sea lions.

Pretty soon we were heading back along the wall, encountering other divers on the way and gradually finding brighter sunlight in the shallower water. The breakwater isn't a spectacular dive, but I always enjoy it because it's easy and zero stress, while there is always something to see in the rocks and on the sand.

Here are more photos from the day:
Breakwater_Jan_19

Drudgery of Drills

2008-01-17T21:05:00.000-08:00

Today Anne and I tested out some new gear in a short pool dive. Anne was getting familiar with her new BC while I had decided to clip things off differently and wanted to test my new camera rig. Here's a shot of her at the bottom of the pool.

In view of the fact that we're going to be each other's buddy for up to half a dozen dives this weekend we also decided to do some S-drills. These are not easy or fun with short hoses, as my DIR friends are fond of telling me. But we did them, all with my camera and strobe clipped off to their assigned D-Ring. I felt better at least.

The thing about getting out of the water late on a winter afternoon is that you want to try to get your gear off and cleaned up before it gets too cold and your hands freeze off just from pulling things out of the rinse tank.

The other good thing about doing drills and checking things out in the pool after a few weeks away from the water is that you do get a little rusty and it's worth sharpening up especially if you have new gear or new ways of doing things.

Now all that's left to do is get my tanks filled tomorrow, pack up my gear and then actually get up at 4:45 Saturday morning. I wish there was a drill that made that easier.

A New Year of Diving

2008-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

It's the middle of January and I haven't been diving all year. At least I'll be able to say that until sometime this Saturday morning, when my buddy Anne and I will hit the water in Monterey for a visit to the Metridium Fields with friends from scubaboard.com and northcoastdivers.org. We're heading south really early so we can get there in time to park somewhere east of Pacific Grove.

I am excited because this will be my first weekend diving with my new camera setup. Nothing fancy, but serviceable Canon SD870, Canon housing, and a pretty nice Inon D2000 strobe. I'm tired of coming back from a great diving trip with only stories about how beautiful it all is. Now I'll have photos.

My last trip was at the very end of last year, on Vision, to the Channel Islands. Here's a shot taken by Michelle Boucher of me and my buddy Pete at a spot named Cuevas Valdez.

This spot, on the North Side of Santa Cruz, featured large caves and huge spires of textured rock sloping sharply off the island down to a sandy bottom at about 60 feet. Pete had just freed a Horn Shark from where it had got stuck between two rocks, and we were headed back to the boat when we saw Michelle with her camera.

It was our last of three days of bouncing between Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, and we'd had great weather and good sea conditions. The diving was, at times, just spectacular. Visibility varied with location, but we'd had a few dives with 60 foot viz that were breathtaking.

Our first dive of the last day was one of the best. Fern Grotto, north side of Santa Cruz, we dropped onto a ridge that was the underwater extension of the west point of the grotto. We could see all the way down the terraced contour to about 110' or so as the ridge sloped off into deep water. We descended right down the spine of it, marvelling at the diversity of marine life crowding the rocks and fissures. I saw a large yellow striped fish in a hole that was too big to be a juvenile Treefish. We soared down the slope to about 95' and levelled off, then looped back in an ascending spiral to explore the west side of the ridge. As we came around the peak there unfolded in front of us a wide, deep sand channel with another huge dike about 50 meters away. Looking just to the left around the west side we saw that the ridge dropped off in a sheer cliff down to about 120'. We glided out over the wall, which extended up to about 30' depth above us, and we hovered just off the face looking into small cracks for nudis.

Sadly we didn't have air to go further exploring so headed back to the boat vowing to get over to that far westerly wall another time.

Aboard the boat were some who'd come for the lobster. Here's a bug that got caught out of his hole during the night dive on Anacapa after the second day.

The next day on Anacapa we drifted a bit west from our overnight anchorage at Cat Rock and did our first dive at Coral Reef. This location was stunning: a set of pinnacles whose peaks were at about 40' but which dropped off to the west and south into dramatic, wide canyons and ledges to a 120' bottom of gently sloping sand and rock. We could see all the way down the canyons and the massive structures, walls, and valleys were an unbelievable spectacle. We elected to traverse north along the west side of the outer pinnacle. The bottom looked at first like a smooth rounded series of hillocks sloping off to ledges over which we could see successive terraces all the way to the bottom. On closer inspection the brown covering of the hillsides turned out to be literally billions of brittle stars waving their small tentacles. It was like the very ground was completely alive.

We circled around to where there was some kelp growing out of rock and ascended a bit to traverse back toward the boat across the endless bed of brittle stars.

On the other side of the anchor line the terrain changed completely. We were looking directly down the broad canyon that opened out into deep water to the south. At the apex of this canyon we glided into a realm of textured, jumbled rock that more resembled Monterey, with the customary explosion of invertibrate life, including sponges, gorgonians, kelp, strawberry anemones, telia anemones, scallops, and nudibranchs.

We wandered around and through the rock pillars until our air got low and then headed back to the boat, ascending with the help of some giant kelp stalks. I later learned that there are three pinnacles here, running roughly parallel to the island, with sand channels in between. Once again, we'd only seen a tiny portion of this majestic underwater realm. Must return.

On the way back to Santa Barbara the sea was calm and the water glassy. You'd hardly think it was winter. Dolphins jumped in and out of the wake and the low afternoon sun was warm on us as we hung out on the stern of Vision looking at the islands receding over the horizon.

Here's a picture of Pete at the back of the boat trying to get in position to photograph the dolphins.