Dan
Contributor
Diving in Channel Islands has been in my bucket list. When my dive buddy moved to Los Angeles area, I proposed to do a weekend dive trip there. He went diving there with Calboat Diving - Spectre last year and was happy with the experience, so we booked the same trip for Friday (Sep 8) and Saturday (Sep 9) in 2017 (last week) with them. @drrich2 has posted a very detail info about diving in Anacapa, Channel Islands, here: My Notes for Researching My California Dive Trip. So, I would just share our diving experience there and what we saw.
I was told that this would be a cold-water diving (below 70F is cold for this wimpy warm-water diver) and the local wear 7mm wetsuit. I don't have 7mm wetsuit, so, I brought my 5mm full wetsuit with 2mm shorty to layer over it to get a "sort of 7mm" wetsuit and a 2mm hood. This set up has kept me warm when I was in Galapagos down to 61F. When I was in the boat I saw some divers wore ranging from 7mm wetsuit, semi dry to drysuit. The water temperature in Anacapa turned out to be "pretty warm", by the local standard, then at about 66F. So it was bearable for me. I did get a bit chilly at the end of the second dive of the day.
We dove in and near the kelp forest, not too far from the island to avoid being dragged out into the fast current. So, the surging water around the kelp forest made the visibility pretty low, 10 to 20 foot visibility and moving particulates made picture / video taking challenging.
This is my first diving experience in SoCal area, so there were quite cool things for me to see, like this giant nudibranch, called Sea Hare.
This guy was grazing on kelp.
Apparently it was mating season too. We saw tons of Sea Hare eggs.
The surging water also made an interesting sight. Some of the huge kelps that grew on a rock becoming more buoyant and lifting the rocks up and down with the surge.
2 southern California fishes that I was glad to finally see them are Garibaldi & California Sheephead.
2 other cool experience diving with Spectre were dipping in 100F Jacuzzi on the boat after the last dive and the yummy tri-tip steak lunch. I'll come back again diving with them just for that.
I was told that this would be a cold-water diving (below 70F is cold for this wimpy warm-water diver) and the local wear 7mm wetsuit. I don't have 7mm wetsuit, so, I brought my 5mm full wetsuit with 2mm shorty to layer over it to get a "sort of 7mm" wetsuit and a 2mm hood. This set up has kept me warm when I was in Galapagos down to 61F. When I was in the boat I saw some divers wore ranging from 7mm wetsuit, semi dry to drysuit. The water temperature in Anacapa turned out to be "pretty warm", by the local standard, then at about 66F. So it was bearable for me. I did get a bit chilly at the end of the second dive of the day.
We dove in and near the kelp forest, not too far from the island to avoid being dragged out into the fast current. So, the surging water around the kelp forest made the visibility pretty low, 10 to 20 foot visibility and moving particulates made picture / video taking challenging.
This is my first diving experience in SoCal area, so there were quite cool things for me to see, like this giant nudibranch, called Sea Hare.
This guy was grazing on kelp.
Apparently it was mating season too. We saw tons of Sea Hare eggs.
The surging water also made an interesting sight. Some of the huge kelps that grew on a rock becoming more buoyant and lifting the rocks up and down with the surge.
2 southern California fishes that I was glad to finally see them are Garibaldi & California Sheephead.
2 other cool experience diving with Spectre were dipping in 100F Jacuzzi on the boat after the last dive and the yummy tri-tip steak lunch. I'll come back again diving with them just for that.
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