Curt and I did Tuesday's dive today (Friday) and chased dungeness crabs underneath an old abandoned pier. The viz was zip from the surface to 10' and then openned up to 40~50'. The pier is 400+ yards long and 65 yards wide. Depths range from 50' along the sides and at the end but only 20 in the middle.
This layout made for a sawtooth dive profile that showed 15 ups and downs when graphed out. Not the best... but hey... we were chasin' crabs.
It was so cool under this old pier swimming back and forth, up and down, in and around the life encrusted pilings. The crab were scurrying everywhere and schools of fish darted back and forth... it was quite a show.
The best part of the dive was at the end of the pier... the last two rows of pilings were covered with white anemones and made it seem like an ancient Greek Temple with sunlight streaming down through holes in the pier above.
On one piling there was a patch of deep purple feather duster tube worms that stood out beautifully against the white anenomes. The Temple was filled with schools of pipe fish and perch.
I hated to leave... but Curt was diving an AL80 and we still had quite a swim back UW to the shore.
Total dive time was 48 min.
I checked my spg and depth gauge every five minutes but I don't recall actually keeping a running depth profile in my head... with all the ups and downs that would have been next to impossible.
However at the end of the dive I guessed my average depth to be 33'.... the Stinger guessed the average to be 32'. It seems that after having practice doing this for so long it has become more or less automatic. Kinda like the little niggle I get to check my depth gauge and spg... and sure enough it is on the five.
Now this might not be important to most folks but being able to call my average depth after chasing crabs for 48 minutes was icing on the cake.
I just wish the Stinger were dead on accurate.
This layout made for a sawtooth dive profile that showed 15 ups and downs when graphed out. Not the best... but hey... we were chasin' crabs.
It was so cool under this old pier swimming back and forth, up and down, in and around the life encrusted pilings. The crab were scurrying everywhere and schools of fish darted back and forth... it was quite a show.
The best part of the dive was at the end of the pier... the last two rows of pilings were covered with white anemones and made it seem like an ancient Greek Temple with sunlight streaming down through holes in the pier above.
On one piling there was a patch of deep purple feather duster tube worms that stood out beautifully against the white anenomes. The Temple was filled with schools of pipe fish and perch.
I hated to leave... but Curt was diving an AL80 and we still had quite a swim back UW to the shore.
Total dive time was 48 min.
I checked my spg and depth gauge every five minutes but I don't recall actually keeping a running depth profile in my head... with all the ups and downs that would have been next to impossible.
However at the end of the dive I guessed my average depth to be 33'.... the Stinger guessed the average to be 32'. It seems that after having practice doing this for so long it has become more or less automatic. Kinda like the little niggle I get to check my depth gauge and spg... and sure enough it is on the five.
Now this might not be important to most folks but being able to call my average depth after chasing crabs for 48 minutes was icing on the cake.
I just wish the Stinger were dead on accurate.