Would you dive the Farallones?

[Divin'Papaw]

What the heck! SPAM is now posting on ScubaBoard?!

 

[RoyN]

Yep its spam alright, just checked all the post he made and its the same garbage again.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Yep its spam alright, just checked all the post he made and its the same garbage again.

I reported the post to the mod-squad.

 

[Ben_ca]

Chuck's Report on his last Farallones dive from BA_diving

Monterey offshore forecast:
> TODAY
> N WINDS 10 KT...BECOMING W IN THE AFTERNOON. WIND WAVES
> 2 FT. W SWELL 4 TO 6 FT AT 13 SECONDS. PATCHY DENSE FOG IN THE
> MORNING.

That's pretty good, maybe I can find something better.

SF offshore forecast:
> TODAY
> E WINDS 5 KT. WIND WAVES 1 FT. W SWELL 4 TO 6 FT AT 12
> SECONDS. PATCHY DENSE FOG IN THE MORNING.

Farallones run! Met up with Kawika, Clinton Bauder, and Mark Lloyd in the
Half Moon Bay ramp at 6:30, after getting lost in
"can't see the end of your hood" fog off Crystal Springs.
That was fortunately the only fog of the day. About
two-thirds of the way to the Farallones it started blow
stronger -- the SF buoy was reporting 14 gusting to 17.
We got there and things really weren't worthing diving,
so we hung out in the lee of SE Farallon for about and
hour half watching whales and listening to the sea lions.
It finally laid down some, and we got in one dive on
a site that I think is one we call Fair to Middling.
Kawika and Mark came up, with Kawika complaining about
the lack of a Wolf Eel seen here before. Clinton was
setting up his wide-angle rig so I waited until he was
done, signaled him "eel!" and dove in for macro face
pictures. He was pretty cooperative -- I got eyeball
to nose macro face pictures, and Clinton got pictures
of me taking pictures. Vis was a really clean 50',
49'F, plenty of current and surge.

> .SUNDAY...NW WINDS 10 KT. WIND WAVES 0 TO 2 FT. W SWELL 5 FT AT
> 12 SECONDS. PATCHY FOG THIS MORNING.

Off to Monterey with Adm. Linda.


--
Chuck Tribolet
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/triblet/

Silicon Valley: STILL the best day job in the world.

And Pictures courtesy of Clinton Bauder

Reading Chuck's post got me thinking about what it takes to dive there.... It would be nice to dive a relatively untouched site but the mental game would be a B**ch

 

[opisthobranch]

chuck-
did/do you encounter a lot of entanglement hazard there?. i know there is a lot of fishing out there, and i presume ALOT of line lost on the rocks. also- do you have any pics?!! i see mention of a report, where is it?
thanks!

I've been out there with Chuck four times now. Can't recall seeing much in the way of line. We did see a lure on the bottom. Certainly not nearly as bad as the breakwater from a line standpoint.

My pictures from Saturday are here:

http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album102

And here is a movie I shot a couple of years ago:

http://www.metridium.com/movies/farallones.html

Kawika has pictures here:

http://www.coldwaterimages.com/middle_farallon.html

There's nice diving out there. It's a long boat ride and a long way from help so you need to be careful. For me I don't worry as much about the sharks so long as you're there at the right time of year. White sharks are a fact of life in the ocean from the North Coast to Baja. In around 900 dives in California I've never seen one but I'm fairly certain they've seen me.

Clinton

 

[opisthobranch]

One more gallery. This one is mostly still frames from video I shot in 2004.

http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album22

Clinton

 

[RoyN]

Is there a charter ship that takes divers to the island or this is "on their own" transportation?

 

[opisthobranch]

Is there a charter ship that takes divers to the island or this is "on their own" transportation?

I'm not aware of any charter boats that go out there regularly. It's seriously weather dependent so scheduling a charter is a big pain since there is a very high risk of cancellation. Great White Adventures does very spendy cage diving shark trips in the fall I think.

Clinton

 

[Peter_C]

I voted no, but have been out to the Farrallons many times fishing. We dive the North Coast quite often, which is part of the red triangle, but the islands are the heart of it.

Might be a different story with one of those electronic shark repellers.

 

[Chuck Tribolet]

The answers to the question probably shouldn't have been yes/no, but rather
yes/I'm not ready yet/no. And kudos to those who know they aren't ready yet.
There are two or three on my invite list that have been offline (mostly fatherhood
reasons), I know they aren't up to snuff any more, but I also know they know that,
and know them well enough to know that they know it, and will tell me when they
are back to ready again.

I've never seen any loose fishing gear. I don't remember ever seeing a boat fishing
out there. I see lots more fishing gear on Ballbuster. The folks on the whaler list keep
trying organize a fishing trip, but AFIK, I've been there more than any.

It's very advanced diving, one dive out there Sat. completely whacked me in the
current.