WOW Diving the oil rigs on the Magician

[bperc]

My friend Larry and I got to dive the oil rigs out of San Pedro yesterday aboard the Magician. This was our first time diving the oil rigs. The weather was great. It was sunny all day. The first dive was at the Eureka oil rig. The next two were at Ellen and Elly, a dual rig. We had a great day of diving. The water column was filled with jellies, salps and tunicates. There are thousands of scallops and mussels, lots of cabezon and sheephead too. The cabezon were very friendly and curious. I had several swim right up to me and even touch me with their bodies. I only found 4 nudibranchs. I saw one group of about 4 mola molas swim by when we were at Eureka. We also saw several sea lions at each rig. The visibility varied at each site. The worst was about 25 feet and the best was probably 50 feet.
Here are some of the photos from our trip. I think I got most of the names right, but I don't know what a few of them are.
Diving the oil rigs

 

[TSandM]

Wow -- what a great set of pictures! Some really nice use of negative space in some of them.

My favorites are the cabezon looking up at the sheepshead, the three brittle stars falling through the water, and the three jellies in a line.

I love the brittle star picture because one of my memories of diving the rigs was my friend Claudette, whose back ended up covered in brittle stars that had fallen off the structure above her. It was just plain silly-looking!

 

[fnfalman]

How big were the mola mola? Were they babies or fairly large?

 

[keithbt]

Was it an active oil rig ?

 

[merxlin]

Very nice pics. Thanks for sharing them.

 

[bperc]

@TSandM- Thanks for the compliment. The cabezon were hams. I think they like having their picture taken. There were some other divers swimming above me and I think they knocked the brittlestars off. The jellies were everywhere.

@Fnfalman- The mola mola where pretty big. I would guess they were 3-4 feet tall.

@keithbt- Yes, all three oil rigs are active.

 

[fnfalman]

Sweet!!! Still smaller than full grown, but that's awesome. All I've ever seen were the baby mola mola around maybe 1.5-ft.

 

[deeper thoughts]

nice.

 

[Mcote]

bperc,
I see in Flickr that you use a Canon G11. Are you also using the Canon WP-DC34 housing or something else?

Marc

 

[bperc]

Yes, I use the Canon housing. It works well and it's a quarter of the cost of the others.