The forecast has been frightening for socal this week due, I'm assuming, to the storms we had last weekend/whatever the ocean's washing in. Well, my buddy and I decided to meet up at 6AM today to see how it looked and hope to dive anyway. It didn't really look bad at all with maybe 2' breaking at the surf zone and it was low tide. So we decided to go for it!
Having accidentally not changed out the 5mm from diving in Florida 2 weeks ago in my dive bag for the 7mm, I got to dive in a 5mm today - brrrr! Luckily, it was a toasty 60ºF, with somehow a bone-chilling 59ºF at a slight thermocline at ~60fsw. Why does one degree make such a difference? Viz was the usual - you'll see in my pics. The ones I'm not posting were super extra terrible because viz turned all particulate-y after about 5mins into the dive, for a couple minutes, but then cleared up again. We dropped just north of the point because of how the waves were coming in (we got moved north a little) so we traveled South on our dive along the wall, and just headed back in when I hit the halfway point on my tanks. I was glad to turn back. So the dive was 48mins, ave depth 38fsw and max 66fsw. (I didn't want to go deeper because brrr!)
Sorry the pictures are blurry again - 1/3 me, 1/3 viz and surge, 1/3 maybe I need to empty my wallet on strobes or something, because clearly I'm not spending enough on scuba yet/again.
Octo-
No idea.. these were all over the place today
And right after I took that pic, my buddy wanted me to follow him to look at something, and it turned out to be a nice big angel shark!
As were these, but I couldn't get any good pics of them. Small red fish with blue heads and some blue I think stripes on them?
And a couple of these
Buddy found the eel he calls "Tim" in his usual hidey-hole
And right above, a sheepshead crab
At the very end at the top of the point, I see this big yellow spot..
It was a beefy 2X the size of my thumb! There were more smaller ones a little further down but those pics turned out awful-er.
(edit: it's a lemon dorid!)
Is this a sarcastic fringehead?
Thankfully, I hit 1500psi on my 3kpsi tanks, so we turned. Buddy found a nice glass bottle to add to other stuff he found earlier (sheet of something, maybe plastic paneling or something?)
Buddy found a baby octo on a rock apparently, and while I couldn't tell what he was looking at because of the viz and surge, right next to it I saw this crab run by
Coming back in, the view at maybe something like 20'
at 15' big bed of sand dollars
And finally, at the showers, buddy found a nice snail
.. and I've pulled out the 7mm for the boat dives tomorrow.
Having accidentally not changed out the 5mm from diving in Florida 2 weeks ago in my dive bag for the 7mm, I got to dive in a 5mm today - brrrr! Luckily, it was a toasty 60ºF, with somehow a bone-chilling 59ºF at a slight thermocline at ~60fsw. Why does one degree make such a difference? Viz was the usual - you'll see in my pics. The ones I'm not posting were super extra terrible because viz turned all particulate-y after about 5mins into the dive, for a couple minutes, but then cleared up again. We dropped just north of the point because of how the waves were coming in (we got moved north a little) so we traveled South on our dive along the wall, and just headed back in when I hit the halfway point on my tanks. I was glad to turn back. So the dive was 48mins, ave depth 38fsw and max 66fsw. (I didn't want to go deeper because brrr!)
Sorry the pictures are blurry again - 1/3 me, 1/3 viz and surge, 1/3 maybe I need to empty my wallet on strobes or something, because clearly I'm not spending enough on scuba yet/again.
Octo-
No idea.. these were all over the place today
And right after I took that pic, my buddy wanted me to follow him to look at something, and it turned out to be a nice big angel shark!
As were these, but I couldn't get any good pics of them. Small red fish with blue heads and some blue I think stripes on them?
And a couple of these
Buddy found the eel he calls "Tim" in his usual hidey-hole
And right above, a sheepshead crab
At the very end at the top of the point, I see this big yellow spot..
It was a beefy 2X the size of my thumb! There were more smaller ones a little further down but those pics turned out awful-er.
(edit: it's a lemon dorid!)
Is this a sarcastic fringehead?
Thankfully, I hit 1500psi on my 3kpsi tanks, so we turned. Buddy found a nice glass bottle to add to other stuff he found earlier (sheet of something, maybe plastic paneling or something?)
Buddy found a baby octo on a rock apparently, and while I couldn't tell what he was looking at because of the viz and surge, right next to it I saw this crab run by
Coming back in, the view at maybe something like 20'
at 15' big bed of sand dollars
And finally, at the showers, buddy found a nice snail
.. and I've pulled out the 7mm for the boat dives tomorrow.
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