Gold Star dive at Casino Point

[Reeveseye]

My wife and I were there yesterday, and we had a great time! We normally avoid the dive park on weekends in the summer due to the crowds, but since it was an event for the benefit of some important charities, we decided to go anyway. As it turned out, we had a great time!

For those of you who don't know, the Gold Star dive is a "treasure hunt" of sorts, where divers search for gold badge-shaped stars scattered throughout the dive park. We were very impressed by how smoothly things ran. LASD (Los Angeles Sheriff's Department) seems to have this event down to a science. It was well-organized and ran quickly, with the help of the American Divers organization, who also donated a lot of good prizes for the raffle. I was especially impressed by the people they had posted on the stairs, who helped you out of the water and took your fins off for you. Nice touch. And the chocolate stars they gave you in exchange for the ones found on the bottom were just the sugar rush I needed after a couple of dives! Best of all, we won a nice Pelican 4300 dive light in the raffle afterwards. And it's always good to run across our resident Catalina SB'er, Dr. Bill. Hurry up and finish your "Dive Dry" species ID videos, doc - I'm dying to see them!

Pretty good diving, too. Vis was a little down due to a lot of particulates in the water, but it was still pretty good in the shallows. We went over on the 6:15 boat and got an early dive in. We headed to the Sue-Jac, and hit a thermocline that took us from 64 degree water to 57. My wife found some critters we'd never seen before, which is always a highlight of our dives. We found our gold stars within the first five minutes of the second dive, and spent the rest of the time along Big Casino Reef, which is out of bounds on the treasure hunt, so we were out of everyone else's way. We did a third dive after that, and spent it in the 15' - 20' shallows west of the stairs (until the constant surge made my wife feel "barfy", according to what she wrote on my slate). Best of all, she found two abalone in different parts of the park. It'd be nice to hope they might come back some day in decent numbers. I got a lot of good photos, which I'll post in my gallery in the next few days.

All in all, it was a very good day to dive. We'll try to be there every year from now on.

 

[Frank O]

Speaking of the Gold Star dive, I did a dive at Casino Point Saturday morning before the event got underway. One of the organizers asked us not to disturb any gold stars we might run across, which we of course obliged with.

Toward the outer western corner of the park, I ran across something kind of a bright lime-green/yellow color. This is a poor picture due to the fact that my strobe didn't fire, but it gives you a rough idea of what it looked like:

It seems to be zip-tied to a padlock, which in turn was fastened to some pipes and a braided metal cable.

The gold stars didn't look like that, did they? I'm thinking it was probably a tag for some other purpose ... maybe something that's been on a wrecked piece of hardware for some time (I doubt that kind of plastic decomposes anytime quickly -- but would marine life grow on it?).

 

[MissyP]

It seems to be zip-tied to a padlock, which in turn was fastened to some pipes and a braided metal cable.

The gold stars didn't look like that, did they? I'm thinking it was probably a tag for some other purpose ... maybe something that's been on a wrecked piece of hardware for some time (I doubt that kind of plastic decomposes anytime quickly -- but would marine life grow on it?).

There are little canister type things all over the dive park- they're for some type of scientific research according to the tags on them...
The gold stars were a sort of hardened plaster shaped like a sheriff's badge.. unfortunately, my "prize" which matched to my star was a hat.. Not a cute hat, but a ball cap.. Yeah, like I'd ever wear that... lol.... Chocolate stars were tasty though

 

[Power Scuba]

I was there with a group, but we didn't know about the Gold Star event. There were a ton of people there, but underwater we saw nary a one as we started out on the Sujack... and saw a large Black Sea Bass! It was the first one I've ever seen at the Park and it's nice to see that their numbers are spreading out to other points on the island. Beautiful.

Also good to see scubaboard moderator, Christian, there with the SB vinyl banner. Way to represent, Christian!

Cheers,

Bill

My wife and I were there yesterday, and we had a great time! We normally avoid the dive park on weekends in the summer due to the crowds, but since it was an event for the benefit of some important charities, we decided to go anyway. As it turned out, we had a great time!

For those of you who don't know, the Gold Star dive is a "treasure hunt" of sorts, where divers search for gold badge-shaped stars scattered throughout the dive park. We were very impressed by how smoothly things ran. LASD (Los Angeles Sheriff's Department) seems to have this event down to a science. It was well-organized and ran quickly, with the help of the American Divers organization, who also donated a lot of good prizes for the raffle. I was especially impressed by the people they had posted on the stairs, who helped you out of the water and took your fins off for you. Nice touch. And the chocolate stars they gave you in exchange for the ones found on the bottom were just the sugar rush I needed after a couple of dives! Best of all, we won a nice Pelican 4300 dive light in the raffle afterwards. And it's always good to run across our resident Catalina SB'er, Dr. Bill. Hurry up and finish your "Dive Dry" species ID videos, doc - I'm dying to see them!

Pretty good diving, too. Vis was a little down due to a lot of particulates in the water, but it was still pretty good in the shallows. We went over on the 6:15 boat and got an early dive in. We headed to the Sue-Jac, and hit a thermocline that took us from 64 degree water to 57. My wife found some critters we'd never seen before, which is always a highlight of our dives. We found our gold stars within the first five minutes of the second dive, and spent the rest of the time along Big Casino Reef, which is out of bounds on the treasure hunt, so we were out of everyone else's way. We did a third dive after that, and spent it in the 15' - 20' shallows west of the stairs (until the constant surge made my wife feel "barfy", according to what she wrote on my slate). Best of all, she found two abalone in different parts of the park. It'd be nice to hope they might come back some day in decent numbers. I got a lot of good photos, which I'll post in my gallery in the next few days.

All in all, it was a very good day to dive. We'll try to be there every year from now on.

 

[headhunter]

Also good to see scubaboard moderator, Christian, there with the SB vinyl banner. Way to represent, Christian!

Cheers,

Bill

Hey Bill,

It was nice to see you again too.

By the way, everytime Dr. Bill and I were hanging out by the stairs, I looked over to see if you were there to introduce you two. You must have been down everytime we were up and visa versa.

Christian

 

[headhunter]

John,

It would have been nice to have met you. It looks like I've just missed you a couple of times now.

I saw you at the Scuba Show talking to Ken and as I wrapped up a conversation with someone and went to introduce myself you were gone.

Too bad you didn't wander on by and introduce yourself to the group at Casino Point when we had the ScubaBoard banner up.

I look forward to meeting you sometime.

Christian

 

[Reeveseye]

I'd enjoy meeting you as well. Had I seen a Scubaboard banner, I would have come over and said hi. Of course, it was such a zoo out there that you could have been ten feet from us and we wouldn't have spotted you. Where were you located? My wife and I arrived early and got one of the benches along the side of the casino, behind the sign-up booths for the event.

Video Diver - You seem to have joined the ranks of everyone else in the world who manages to see black sea bass. In the meantime, they continue to elude my wife and I. They probably follow us around while we're underwater, staying exactly behind us in our blind spot and laughing evil little fishy laughs as we search for them in vain. On the bright side, though, I got some really good pictures of other fish on those dives, which I hope to post soon when time permits.

Frank O - the tags are there for research purposes. I think I have a close-up picture of what one of them says; I'll post it if I can find it. I think they monitor temperature and current changes.

And finally, Missy's right about those chocolate stars. Mighty tasty! I've got about half of the center remaining on mine, but it won't last much longer. The star's arms didn't make it past Saturday evening. A friend of mine told me that my own department makes those badge-shaped chocolate stars as well. I hope he's wrong - the last thing I need in my life is more chocolate.

 

[headhunter]

I'd enjoy meeting you as well. Had I seen a Scubaboard banner, I would have come over and said hi. Of course, it was such a zoo out there that you could have been ten feet from us and we wouldn't have spotted you. Where were you located? My wife and I arrived early and got one of the benches along the side of the casino, behind the sign-up booths for the event.

Tech Admin had the ScubaBoard banner and he came out of Dana Point, so he didn't arrive until about 9 am. The banner was up after that though.

I was there at 6:30 am and was positioned directly to the right of the stairs if you would looking out to the dive park.

I'm sure I'll meet you soon at one of our gatherings!

Christian

 

[Reeveseye]

I finally got around to posting my photos from Saturday's dive (now that my DSL connection is finally working again). They're the first eight pictures you'll see if you click on the link to my gallery below. One of them bears special discussion, however, since I suspect many of you who were there saw the same thing...

SCORPIONFISH!!!

They were everywhere! Singly, in clusters, all over the rocks, everywhere! They're not too hard to find under normal circumstances, but this was ridiculous. My wife and I spotted approximately 9,783,475,832 of them before we lost count (although that figure is just a rough estimate). Even Dr. Bill was amazed by the sheer numbers he saw in the park. Did anyone else notice this as well?