Marineland Platform SMB

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MaxBottomtime

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Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
Messages
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Location
Torrance, CA
# of dives
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I've placed plastic milk cartons as marker buoys on the Marineland Platform a couple of times and they were removed within a few days. After a squid boat dragged the platform last year, fouling it with a ton of net and killing a ton of animals, I knew I had to mark it again. This time I used a real buoy. I hope it will serve two purposes. I'd like to inform fishermen of the danger of setting a net there, and make it an accessible dive for Marineland beach divers again.
The platform is in seventy-five feet a few hundred yerad off the end of the 120 Reef. It's about the same distance as swimming from the cove to the Point.
The platform is a former floating dock similar to the fuel docks in harbors.

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Merry and the new buoy
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A couple of visitors approved of the new buoy
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As for our dive, we arrived to find a plankton layer on the surface. We expected to see brown water down to at least forty feet, but instead it was only three feet thick. We had a nice twenty-five feet of vis all the way to the bottom. Among the critters who call the platform home are crabs, small fish, anemones, barnacles and nudibranchs.
My efforts from today;

Flabellina trilineata

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Corynactis californica
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Decorator crab
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Monterey dorid
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Merry's video from last year
 
Very cool! I remember in my free diving day's seeing your yellow lines anchored at the cobblestone beach. Charlie and I always wanted to find out where it went.

Looks like I need to dust off the float'n flag. The swim will be good practice for a long point entry / Buchanon dive. :D

Do you know what the bottom topography is like between the 120 reef and the platform? I'd like to try and navigate back to the reef while still submerged.
 
A decorator crab with strawberry anemones? Very cool.
 
Sandy plains. I made the swim a few times while laying line out to the platform. There are a lot of juvenile mantis shrimp sticking their heads out along the way. It's not that bad of a swim. I've dropped on the platform, stayed for several minutes and swam all the way back to the beach underwater on a single tank. One time Merry and I tried it, but someone had removed the float. I tried to guess where the platform was. We dropped in over ninty feet and didn't find it. On the way back in, I didn't trust my compass and just swam perpindicular to the ripples in the sand. I forgot that the prevailing current offshore there was from the west. We surfaced near Abalone Cove! It was a long swim/hike back to Marineland. :shakehead:
According to Google Earth the distance from the platform to the entry point at the cove is .27 miles at 317 degrees. It is .32 miles from the cove to Ted's Pinnacle, so this will be an easy kick for you.
 
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I have still yet to see a Mantis Shrimp. They are definitely up there on my list of to-photograph critters.

Woah! Surfacing at Abalone. That's got to be fun:rofl3: Good to know to not trust the sand contours. On a lot of dives I choose to use them to navigate back to shore, rather then focus on my compass and miss some cool critter roaming the sandy plains. That be awfully confusing if I was all the way out there and my compass start conflicting with what I'm used to seeing while heading back to shore.

Thx for the tips.
 
Phil...again...many thanks...I'll keep my fingers crossed that this float stays there. Can't wait to dive this again, one of my favorite dives...Thanks.
 

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