Video: Nettle madness

[Gombessa]

Seems like a lot of folks were around for the nettle circus on Saturday (10/2). I gotta say, all of our stories sound amazingly similar.

Erik and I hit the water around 10:30am, planning to surface swim to the met fields, poke around for a bit, and then meander to the wall.

We hit the pipe shortly after descending in 5-10ft viz, saw a few other divers heading back to the beach, and within minutes we were suddenly swarmed by a solid mass of sea nettles. We stayed low to the ground and kept pushing, eventually making it out to the metridiums, but they were all closed up and hiding as well. After maybe 10 minutes confirming that all other marine life was also hiding from the swarm, we headed south to the wall, pretty much pushing away nettles for 15 minutes before it cleared up. It was one of those "Man, I can't even turn my head to look sideways for fear of catching one in the face" days. Luckily, damage was minor, and by the time we hit the wall, there were more dead nettles than live ones. Must be the sea lions keeping 'em away.

So we puttered about the wall for a while until the viz got even worse, and turned around to meander back to the beach. When we ascended, we were actually surrounded by maybe 10 other divers a few feet from us, but underwater we had no idea there was anybody around us.

As we got out, we ran into Kathy and Fofo, who were heading in to start their own dive. We warned them away from the met field area

[youtubehq]2lig7U2MW6Q[/youtubehq]

 

[Peter_C]

Well I was supposed to be out diving with Erik this weekend, but changed plans since I had to work in solar sales at the Harvest Fair. Sounds like the leads I got were way more worth it than diving anyhow.

That is a crazy amount of nettles. Sounds like the North Coast is going to have better conditions until the nettles disappear again.

 

[fobturbo]

Wow, I'm really glad I stayed dry this weekend. Thanks for the video Ken.

 

[mikeguerrero]

Ken,

Just an exellent video, I was really impressed with your selection of song. Makes for the entire clip; starting to see the Nettles as a villian thanks to your narration.

I smile when I read your captions; just love it that the poor innocent crab got stung to his underwater death by the treacherous Nettle.

Dude you are awesome with your clips...

Can't wait to see what you do next...

MG

 

[kathydee]

Kenn, thanks for the nettle tips & for the video. We had a very relaxing kick along the wall with just a few nettles. Later in the day, around 40ft, the vis opened up to about 15ft and plenty of really cute octopi showed up when the second dive merged into night.

Headed back out on Sunday for a first kick out to the barge (which was fun). Nettles were quite mild and vis opened up to 20-25ft. Not sure what was up with Octopi - broad daylight we probably saw 7.

Back around 30ft, the nettles became thicker -- but that added an interesting task load to a practice ascent/smb shoot.

Time ascent, wind spool, hold stops & swat nettles... lots of fun!

 

[TSandM]

Great video -- LOVE the ominous soundtrack! And such a cute sacked out bunny at the end . . .

You guys down there are hardy souls. That many jellyfish, and I would have high-tailed it for home.

 

[Ben_ca]

omgomgomg :shocked2:

 

[supersand]

Good dive even though conditions weren't stellar. Thanks for creating and sharing the video.

At first I was, "cool a few jelly fish" but then they shortly became locust plague thick, after that I was wishing I had a magnum PI mustache to keep the tentacles off my face.

Erik

 

[Ben_ca]

So who's going to volunteer to coral up some Mola's and train them to eat on command?

 

[Gombessa]

So who's going to volunteer to coral up some Mola's and train them to eat on command?

If we can do that, I'll change the caption in the video from

omgomgomg :shocked2:

to "omnomnomnom"