Weatherwatch

[lamont]

Weatherwatch is an old deep air training site just north of the alki fishing reef, with an entrance off carroll street:

http://www.scriptkiddie.org/bath/index. ... 15894&z=17

I had wondered for a long time what was south of weatherwatch. It looks like there's an artifact there of ARCinfo combining NOAA deep bathymetry with LIDAR, and I think I proved that it is an artifact and that 30' pinnacle in 60' of water does not exist in reality (the red dot surrounded by yellow). However the bigger finger you can see in the red, yellow, green and blue really does exist. And there's a little wall there. Top of the wall starts around 60' and it is a sandstone wall with a lot of holes in it punched by all the bivalves growing everywhere. Huge fields of them. There were also shrimp, crescent gunnels and probably a bunch of other fish taking up residence there. Quite a few featherduster worms growing on it as well.

After hanging out and taking a bit of video, we tried to find the fishing reef, and after about 25 minutes trigger time of heading into a pretty raging current we gave up and turned the dive.

I can say about this dive that it is quite current sensitive if you don't have the scooters. At one point the current seemed to be going over that finger and plunging down, so we were running a diagonal back into shore while getting blown out and down and not making very fast time at all coming back (even though theoretically we were going with the current). It would have been a whole different experience swimming it.

We found the wall about 3 minutes on the scoots, so probably 12 minutes by swimming south.

Didn't really check to see what was deeper. The wall seemed to peter out around 70-80, but it might pick up below there again...

The rest of the dive was all sand. Weatherwatch is mostly just crazy steep sand that makes you think we're one good earthquake away from losing every house you can see around the divesite. Don't know what keeps the sand there. Flattened out further south, but didn't find any interesting structure, just the odd sea pen being devoured...

[ljjames]

Ya, if we'd not stopped and dawdled (thanks Laura), I think we'd have made the fishing reef no problem


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kaJYCX8Jc

[lamont]

Ya, if we'd not stopped and dawdled (thanks Laura), I think we'd have made the fishing reef no problem

I thought we turned at like 35, which made for probably a good 25 mins of trigger time with no reef... That's a lot of scootering to try to get to that reef... Much faster run home with that current though...

[ljjames]

True, but we'd spent a fair bit of time with you patiently watching me mess with video equipment, and then obediently zoom back and forth for the camera... *grin*

I think we were close....

[sheahanmcculla]

Wow thanks for the info. I like to here of people trying new areas. I dove there last weakend, but did not go past where the beach ends. Nice video, but I have to be honest.....I turn my audio to mute, sorry I need a little more upbeat music. But keep the videos coming, there fantastic!

[TCWestby]

Good video, would this be doable without a scooter? I'd like to check it out.

[lamont]

time it for slack right and it would be doable without the scooters. probably a 10-15 minute swim along the 60 foot contour.

[lamont]

you probably want to do this on a high tide -- it makes the entrance easier, and the currents around the high tide should wind up sloshing you down to the wall and then sloshing you back. we were diving it on a current peak (-2 kts @ admiralty inlet) after the high tide and it would have been very hard to make it to the wall swimming under those conditions.

i tried swimming a 60 foot contour north probably 2 years ago and found nothing other than steep sand... haven't tried scootering north, but it looks like the steep sand probably turns into less steep sand after awhile... north doesn't look very interesting....

[ljjames]

You're painfully young, aren't you JUST KIDDING... It sounds like weather chimes.... to go with weatherwatch... Duh!

Wow thanks for the info. I like to here of people trying new areas. I dove there last weakend, but did not go past where the beach ends. Nice video, but I have to be honest.....I turn my audio to mute, sorry I need a little more upbeat music. But keep the videos coming, there fantastic!