What an ugly dive.
We wanted to get out on Wed night - as weekend diving-only just isn't enough for us.
Vets was a mess on Sunday. Huge swells and just a mess. We had hoped it was going to calm down by now.
Not so much.
We arrived to an essentially windless night. This is rare at Vets - as at about 3:00-ish each afternoon the wind kicks up. Its just a matter of severity. And yesterday the wind was near zero when we arrived.
Surf was nil - a complete Seattle entry. Swell looked mellow, so it was just a question of what would be going on down there.
The first give away was the beach was littered with a line of kelp about 2 feet wide and about a foot high. You need to understand - Vets is a mud hole. There IS no kelp. When there is kelp on the beach, it was brought here from someplace else. I staged the scoot and the camera on the sand to go dunk my mask and take a closer look. In the knee-high water I was surrounded by a swamp of broken Kelp salad.
Hmmm... OK - so we'll be kicking out and not scootering out. No biggie.
I grab my stuff and start to walk out and I step on a stipe, the same stipe grabs my left ankle and I drop to my knees in chest high water carrying in my camera and scooter. THANKFULLY there weren't real waves or I'd have a big problem.
I manage to tear through the stuff, dragging an office chair-sized mass out with me. OY.
I shake it off, Claudette joins me, we get it together and drop. Its ugly down there. Water full of suspended sand and salad. Can't see more than about 2 or 3 feet in front of our scooters.
We grab a 280 heading and zoom down the canyon, stopping several times to pull nasty stringy salad nonsense from the scooter props. When we get to about 110, we stop and look at each other... its ugly.
We came across, for about the 20th time, this soda can rack. Who knows why its there, but its there. In a huge ocean, on plains of open sand we come up on this thing all the time! Too funny. It has this fist-sized octo hanging out on one corner. I go to get some shots, but there is so much crapola in the water its very dark and fuzzy. I change several settings, and finally give up. Considering all things, the shot isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
After a few moments with the rack and octo, we kick along South at about 109 FSW or so. We're seeing a few scattered squid, lots of rotting squid eggs and not much else.
At minute 22 at about 100 feet, I call her over and write a very un-flattering note about the dive in my Wetnotes. We agree to thumb it and we put the scoots East and head back to the shore.
We get to about 88 feet and stumble onto a very large Dorina Picta Nudi. Just like the one I flew recently at Vets (pics from flying Picta here.) This guy is huge, but the conditions are so bad and the lighting so tricky - with so much schmutz in the water, things weren't coming out well.
About this time some half-dead zombie squid come squirting over to our lights and start making bad viz for the shot even worse. One of these half-deaders decided to bury her egg literally on top of the Picta - but first she huffed and puffed and blew Picta aside, then buried the egg case.
I laughed so hard I almost spit the reg. A whole ocean, and mom has to go all prenatal right here right now. Unreal.
So we continued to move east up canyon... after all, this is a thumbed dive and there is cake and hot choco waiting at Catalina Coffee.
There is a HUGE (like Car-sized) string of kelp at the lip of the canyon (about 50 FSW) - clearly blown in by whatever force of nature blew in all the salad. It was like a mini-reef on the mud slope. Schooling fishies (and one very cute kelp fish) and lots of life sort of sidling up the mass.
So, of course we paused to shoot the Kelpfish.
We continued South at about 50 feet and starting finding lots of small Nudis. It was Trilineata night. Chica found one flapping on a stick, I found a teeny baby on the corner of on errant kelp leaf, there were a couple more on the sand.
So of course, we had to shoot the Trilinnys.
We continued moving south, as I was confident there would be no kelp at the middle steps (we entered on the North steps.) On out southward migration we also saw lots of small octos. In shells, holding on to kelp, behind pieces of trashola.
So of course, we had to shoot them.
The place was stupid with Pipe Bayfish. We saw many, many Lobsters. Claudette can tell you about Vets lobsters later - but trust me, these are not normal lobster.
Tic tic tic tic tic....
I look at my gas and at my timer. We're at 40 feet and about 58 minutes into the dive that we thumbed at minute 22.
Hey - things got better.
But not really. We were having fun in the terrible conditions. We were seeing the usual suspects in the usual places, I was diving with the apex buddy so we just kind of lost the urgency to bail - so we rolled with it.
We hit about 1000 pounds at minute 60 and decided it was time to get out and go get some sweetness.
Coming up right in front of the south steps, we perform a walk-out exit kelp free. We look back and there are about 8 divers all coming out around us. Lights everywhere, people coming out of the surf, divers on the sand. The place was packed last night.
Break down, load the truck and off for Cake and choco and a review of the pictures.
NO CAKE!!!
But the Choco was hot, and the pics were OK. I didn't take too many. They're posted below.
CHICA - only with you would I thumb a dive that was stinking up the place at minute 22, and dive another 40 minutes before I think about getting out of the water. You make even the sucky dives fun!
---
Ken
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Octo on the Soda Can Rack. On a better night some time soon I'll back off and get a shot of the entire rack. I've been shooting Nudi's and Octos on this thing for about a year now.
The fatty Trilinny swinging in the breeze
This is the baby Kelp fish that was amongst the stipes on that huge loose kelp pod we ran into
The teeny Trilinny. This thing was maybe 1/4" long. That Bryzoan colony next to it is about two-thirds the size of a tic-tac
Muh Muh Muh My Dirona (picta) - here's the first shot of the big guy. This guy was tough to shoot with all the yuck in the water.
Here's a tall version of the same guy. He was on the move... you should see the whole sequence. He was all over the place.
Of course, it gets harder to get a good shot when the Squid are puffing the sand and trying to clear out the Nudi to place their egg case in the same place the Nudi wants to be! Of course all of the fish fry start to move in the longer you sit in one place with the light on. It was rough.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We wanted to get out on Wed night - as weekend diving-only just isn't enough for us.
Vets was a mess on Sunday. Huge swells and just a mess. We had hoped it was going to calm down by now.
Not so much.
We arrived to an essentially windless night. This is rare at Vets - as at about 3:00-ish each afternoon the wind kicks up. Its just a matter of severity. And yesterday the wind was near zero when we arrived.
Surf was nil - a complete Seattle entry. Swell looked mellow, so it was just a question of what would be going on down there.
The first give away was the beach was littered with a line of kelp about 2 feet wide and about a foot high. You need to understand - Vets is a mud hole. There IS no kelp. When there is kelp on the beach, it was brought here from someplace else. I staged the scoot and the camera on the sand to go dunk my mask and take a closer look. In the knee-high water I was surrounded by a swamp of broken Kelp salad.
Hmmm... OK - so we'll be kicking out and not scootering out. No biggie.
I grab my stuff and start to walk out and I step on a stipe, the same stipe grabs my left ankle and I drop to my knees in chest high water carrying in my camera and scooter. THANKFULLY there weren't real waves or I'd have a big problem.
I manage to tear through the stuff, dragging an office chair-sized mass out with me. OY.
I shake it off, Claudette joins me, we get it together and drop. Its ugly down there. Water full of suspended sand and salad. Can't see more than about 2 or 3 feet in front of our scooters.
We grab a 280 heading and zoom down the canyon, stopping several times to pull nasty stringy salad nonsense from the scooter props. When we get to about 110, we stop and look at each other... its ugly.
We came across, for about the 20th time, this soda can rack. Who knows why its there, but its there. In a huge ocean, on plains of open sand we come up on this thing all the time! Too funny. It has this fist-sized octo hanging out on one corner. I go to get some shots, but there is so much crapola in the water its very dark and fuzzy. I change several settings, and finally give up. Considering all things, the shot isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
After a few moments with the rack and octo, we kick along South at about 109 FSW or so. We're seeing a few scattered squid, lots of rotting squid eggs and not much else.
At minute 22 at about 100 feet, I call her over and write a very un-flattering note about the dive in my Wetnotes. We agree to thumb it and we put the scoots East and head back to the shore.
We get to about 88 feet and stumble onto a very large Dorina Picta Nudi. Just like the one I flew recently at Vets (pics from flying Picta here.) This guy is huge, but the conditions are so bad and the lighting so tricky - with so much schmutz in the water, things weren't coming out well.
About this time some half-dead zombie squid come squirting over to our lights and start making bad viz for the shot even worse. One of these half-deaders decided to bury her egg literally on top of the Picta - but first she huffed and puffed and blew Picta aside, then buried the egg case.
I laughed so hard I almost spit the reg. A whole ocean, and mom has to go all prenatal right here right now. Unreal.
So we continued to move east up canyon... after all, this is a thumbed dive and there is cake and hot choco waiting at Catalina Coffee.
There is a HUGE (like Car-sized) string of kelp at the lip of the canyon (about 50 FSW) - clearly blown in by whatever force of nature blew in all the salad. It was like a mini-reef on the mud slope. Schooling fishies (and one very cute kelp fish) and lots of life sort of sidling up the mass.
So, of course we paused to shoot the Kelpfish.
We continued South at about 50 feet and starting finding lots of small Nudis. It was Trilineata night. Chica found one flapping on a stick, I found a teeny baby on the corner of on errant kelp leaf, there were a couple more on the sand.
So of course, we had to shoot the Trilinnys.
We continued moving south, as I was confident there would be no kelp at the middle steps (we entered on the North steps.) On out southward migration we also saw lots of small octos. In shells, holding on to kelp, behind pieces of trashola.
So of course, we had to shoot them.
The place was stupid with Pipe Bayfish. We saw many, many Lobsters. Claudette can tell you about Vets lobsters later - but trust me, these are not normal lobster.
Tic tic tic tic tic....
I look at my gas and at my timer. We're at 40 feet and about 58 minutes into the dive that we thumbed at minute 22.
Hey - things got better.
But not really. We were having fun in the terrible conditions. We were seeing the usual suspects in the usual places, I was diving with the apex buddy so we just kind of lost the urgency to bail - so we rolled with it.
We hit about 1000 pounds at minute 60 and decided it was time to get out and go get some sweetness.
Coming up right in front of the south steps, we perform a walk-out exit kelp free. We look back and there are about 8 divers all coming out around us. Lights everywhere, people coming out of the surf, divers on the sand. The place was packed last night.
Break down, load the truck and off for Cake and choco and a review of the pictures.
NO CAKE!!!
But the Choco was hot, and the pics were OK. I didn't take too many. They're posted below.
CHICA - only with you would I thumb a dive that was stinking up the place at minute 22, and dive another 40 minutes before I think about getting out of the water. You make even the sucky dives fun!
---
Ken
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Octo on the Soda Can Rack. On a better night some time soon I'll back off and get a shot of the entire rack. I've been shooting Nudi's and Octos on this thing for about a year now.
The fatty Trilinny swinging in the breeze
This is the baby Kelp fish that was amongst the stipes on that huge loose kelp pod we ran into
The teeny Trilinny. This thing was maybe 1/4" long. That Bryzoan colony next to it is about two-thirds the size of a tic-tac
Muh Muh Muh My Dirona (picta) - here's the first shot of the big guy. This guy was tough to shoot with all the yuck in the water.
Here's a tall version of the same guy. He was on the move... you should see the whole sequence. He was all over the place.
Of course, it gets harder to get a good shot when the Squid are puffing the sand and trying to clear out the Nudi to place their egg case in the same place the Nudi wants to be! Of course all of the fish fry start to move in the longer you sit in one place with the light on. It was rough.
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