A Crab-Tastic Day Aboard the No Pressure: Marineland Platform 5.14.12

After two months of being dry, Charlie and I were enticed to break our drought aboard the No Pressure with Phil Garner and Merry Passage. We planned to dive Whale Rock just off of Pt. Vicente but the visibility was marginal and a ripping current was present. No matter, Phil's exceptional captaining ability quickly led us to the Marineland Platform. The Platform is a former floating dock which now resides a couple hundred yards off of Marineland's 120 reef in eighty feet of depth. Month's earlier Phil and Merry placed an orange buoy to mark the site for shore divers and unsuspecting commercial fisherman. Unfortunately the Platform has been dragged a couple times by commercial fisherman not knowing of the underwater structure lying below. This has caused the marine life to scatter and disperse from the Platform. Fortunately it seems that the life there is now recovering. Hopefully the marker buoy will do its job and aid in the recovery of this little underwater oasis. Dropping down the line we had great visibility, maybe thirty vertical feet. At about 50ft or so that changed and visibility quickly closed out to a green 10ft with moderate suspended particles. Much of the life on the barge requires super macro capability to photograph and my lowly G10 was really showing its limitations. Aegires and Polycera nudibranchs, the size of an average pinky finger nail tip, were far to small to capture. Luckily there were a few larger suspects such as Yellow, Sheep and Decorator Crabs, as well as a few Rockfish. I encountered one Vermilion Rockfish but he was very skittish and only let me capture his backside.

Yellow Crabs were the most abundant Decapod on the Platform:


This Rockfish was laying on its side in the silty bottom beneath the Platform. At first I thought he was dead or dying but he perked up when I approached:

Many Cruciforms bursting with invertebrate life can be found throughout the Platform:

The nudibranchs on the Platform were extremely small. Here are my modest efforts:

Nice cropping on the Polycera tricolor. And you said you couldn't get it.
You'll have to try for a Cuthona albocrusta on the barge next.

MaxBottomtime:

Nice cropping on the Polycera tricolor. And you said you couldn't get it.

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I should have said it was impossible for me to capture it well. It took me cropping the native 14.7mp RAW file to a 1.2mp jpeg in order to capture it A subsee diopter is definitely in my near future.

Thanks for posting Frank. always enjoy the photos.
We, (The Reverend and flock of DiveVets, all 5 of us), were out at 120 and saw you guys out there at the buoy.
Glad you are back in the water.

blue steal:

Thanks for posting Frank. always enjoy the photos.
We, (The Reverend and flock of DiveVets, all 5 of us), were out at 120 and saw you guys out there at the buoy.
Glad you are back in the water.

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How was this vis? I'm planning on doing a solo dive there either tomorrow or Thursday and don't want to be out there alone if this vis was bad.

Nice job even if they are not all full res. Vis changes often.... take a buddy.

RonFrank:

Vis changes often.... take a buddy.

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The swell model is trending the same direction for the week and is dropping in height / duration. So.... with that logic, vis should be better then this past weekend. I'm very conservative in my diving, I only solo at sites which I'm fully familiar with and only during the most ideal conditions. Marineland is my most dived site "both solo and with a buddy". I've gotten to the point where I don't need to reference my compass on most dives, I just read the reef and it tells me where to go. If I show up and from the cliff the vis looks bad, I will definitely call the dive...But prepping the camera, packing the gear and driving out to the site can be a lot of wasted time if the conditions aren't ideal. Hence the question of if the vis was good

I talked to a few divers on Sat and the vis was around 15'.
We dove it Sun morning, entry at the cove as the point was a bit tricky with a south swell sneaking in.
Entry and exit easy at cove, vis very low in the cove ,5' as you moved toward the point it improved to maybe 15'.
Being overcast, I think vis was down a bit. With the sun out, it, (VIS), hopefully will improve.
Temp 57, very little current.
Have fun out there.

Thanks Blue Steal! 15ft towards the point is good enough for me. I'm used to the cove being pretty milky so no problem there. I'll just swim out towards the garden before dropping down. That is if the swell won't let me enter at the point

I like the point for entry myself and just do the kelp crawl to the outside of the kelp beds and drop down to the garden, then make my way down to the cove for exit.
With camera equipment timing is critical, but there was quite a good pause between sets so it should be ok.
Unlike you, I need my compass as I approach the cove because the VIS really drops down there.