FEB 05 Dive Reports

[Frank O]

Date: 2/28/05
Dive Location: Vets' Park, Redondo Beach
Time: 8:15 p.m.
Dive time: 40 min
Max depth: 92 ft
Vis: 1-2 ft, ~5 ft in spots
Temp at depth: 59 F

What they said ... Jon and I rolled in to Vets' at around 7:30 p.m., in the parking lot saw ChrisM and Mo2vation donning gear, MaxBottomtime and Ross O doffing. In the neighborhood of seven squid boats loitering very close offshore. Swam out, dropped in 35 ft, continued out to 92 ft. Even with Jon's HID light and lime-green early Faber tank, I had to stick close -- vis was pretty gnarly. For the rest you can cut and paste Scott's report in here -- dead squid, live squid, little thornbacks, crabs on the way back up at the end. Seal bombs came in erratic clusters -- the first was fairly close and was a jolt, later during our way up the slope there were a couple of bursts of several detonations but further away. During our safety stop Jon came face-to-face with an odd wriggling, free-swimming worm. On the way out on the sand ran into Scott, Sean and Paul.

Not the greatest of shots, but just to prove we're not making this up:

http://www.inkbox.net/redondo/squid-mate.jpg

 

[scottfiji]

Date: 2/28/05
Dive Location: Vets' Park, Redondo Beach
During our safety stop Jon came face-to-face with an odd wriggling, free-swimming worm. On the way out on the sand ran into Scott, Sean and Paul.

Worm! cool... shape? size? length? color? picture? lets see if we can figure out what this free-swimmer is..was it on the ground or in the water column?

Scott

 

[Frank O]

Worm! cool... shape? size? length? color? picture? lets see if we can figure out what this free-swimmer is..was it on the ground or in the water column?

Lessee ... maybe a couple or three inches long, tan-red, midwater at ~15 ft when we were in about ~20 ft of water. Almost thought initially it was an earthworm, but they don't do well in seawater. Wriggling too much to be one of those ropey salp-type things. An again not-great pic:

http://www.inkbox.net/redondo/worm.jpg

 

[Mo2vation]

Lessee ... maybe a couple or three inches long, tan-red, midwater at ~15 ft when we were in about ~20 ft of water. Almost thought initially it was an earthworm, but they don't do well in seawater. Wriggling too much to be one of those ropey salp-type things. An again not-great pic:

http://www.inkbox.net/redondo/worm.jpg

Considering it was "where the hell is my hand" diving last night.

Good to see / meet you all.

---
Ken

 

[Frank O]

Considering it was "where the hell is my hand" diving last night.

Good to see / meet you all.

Likewise. Don't let it turn you off to Redondo ... it gets much better than that, and you see a lot of stuff you don't see other places at night.

 

[Mo2vation]

Likewise. Don't let it turn you off to Redondo ... it gets much better than that, and you see a lot of stuff you don't see other places at night.

I vastly prefer shore diving at night over day. The consistent marginal viz that is SoCal costal shore diving isn't nearly as frustrating to me at night, and the barren wasteland that we see during day diving comes comparatively alive at night.

I'd go again, anytime. I love diving at night. Beats the snot out of weekend rototilling, for sure.

---
Ken

 

[ChrisM]

Sounds we like didn't miss anything in that last 20 feet of depth to 100 at any rate. Glad to have saved the air

 

[scottfiji]

Lessee ... maybe a couple or three inches long, tan-red, midwater at ~15 ft when we were in about ~20 ft of water. Almost thought initially it was an earthworm, but they don't do well in seawater. Wriggling too much to be one of those ropey salp-type things. An again not-great pic:

http://www.inkbox.net/redondo/worm.jpg

I thought the pic was pretty decent.

It looks like a sandworm or clamworm, phylum Annelida, class Polychaeta, genus Nereis

Supposedly some of them can bite!

 

[Frank O]

It looks like a sandworm or clamworm, phylum Annelida, class Polychaeta, genus Nereis

Supposedly some of them can bite!

Sounds very plausible. After I posted the pic I looked through some pages on polychaetes and figured it was something in there ...

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Sounds very plausible. After I posted the pic I looked through some pages on polychaetes and figured it was something in there ...

I used to see those alongside my boat in the marina at night. I would hang a 1 million candle power spotlight over the side and within minutes there would be dozens of them, corkscrewing up to the light.

Phil...wondering if it's legal to throw seal bombs onto the squid boats.