Return to Coral Reef and more Anacapa delights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.