Night Diving at Nine in the morning

[covediver]

One nice thing about diving in the Last Frontier is that we can make night dives at nine in the morning. With the approach to Winter Solstice, we are down to about 5 1/2 hours of daylight. As is the tradition with many of my dive buddies, we try to make a dive around the shortest day of the year. I went through the 8:40 a.m. tunnel to Whittier after climbing into my drysuit at the restrooms while waiting for the tunnel to open. There were lots of divers that day, surprising for this late in December when people are busy getting ready for the holidays or leaving the state to visit others for the holidays. I arrived at the dive site at Smitty's cove just before 9:00 am to find my buddies Jerry and Lisa geared up and ready to go. I quickly donned all my gear and we headed down the ramp into the water. It was still dark as the sun had not risen. Air temp was about 36, water temp was about 39. Diving mid morning is a much more civilized time to make a night dive....Vis was about 40 feet. We did two dives; getting down to about 80 feet on both. The dives were fishy, lots of wolf eels, ling cod, kelp greenling, decorator crabs, and a moon jelly. Great dives.

[Nolan]

Sounds like a great few dives! Our days are short enough as it is here in Minnesota... I can only imagine what it must be like in Alaska. Out of curiosity, why isn't there ice? Is there a current where you dove? Everything is pretty well frozen over in my neck of the woods.
-Nolan

[ScubaBB]

Cold, but very interesting.

[deeper thoughts]

thnx for posting

[covediver]

Sounds like a great few dives! Our days are short enough as it is here in Minnesota... I can only imagine what it must be like in Alaska. Out of curiosity, why isn't there ice? Is there a current where you dove? Everything is pretty well frozen over in my neck of the woods.
-Nolan

Salt water does freeze, it just takes the right conditions. Whittier is on fjiord that comes in off of Prince William Sound. It has a relatively mild climate (for Alaska) with temperatures often creeping into the high 20s to low 30s or warmer and a very dynamic salt water environment (tidal swings in dozens of feet, high winds) that tends to keep the area we dive in free from shorefast ice formation, although I have seen a thin veneer of slush on the water's surface while diving in a particularly heavy snow storm. On our lakes in Alaska, some people do ice diving, particularly up in Fairbanks (which really gets cold) where Test the Waters runs an ice diving course.

You might possibly be surprised at the number of people from Minnesota and Wisconsin that have found homes in Alaska. Must be the similarity of the climates and the love of the outdoors that gives us the common bonds. With direct, year-round flights to MSP from Anchorage, getting anywhere east of the Rockies usually involves going to Minnesota. For changing planes, it is one of my favorite destinations. The airport seems to work well.

[Nolan]

Alaska is on my camping bucket list... Sounds like I need to add it to my diving bucket list as well!

[smellzlikefish]

That sounds really cold from down here!

[covediver]

That sounds really cold from down here!

It sounds cold up here too. Luckily, if it gets too cold, I can be in Honolulu in 6 hours thanks to direct flights on Alaska Airlines. Might be down that way before too long

[Tristan.ak]

great post, you must have been diving Smitty's Cove. If you head out to Surprise Cove or Shotgun it gets real clear. Surprise is deep and has some nice kelp formations. When I was there salmon were swimming around the edges and sea lions were at chase. I want to head down this spring break to get a few dives in and some fishing.