Yesterday was the club dive at Redondo Beach. That's close to 24 hours ago, so my memories are already a bit fuzzy. More on the delay, later. It was a lovely day for a dive, and when I arrived at the parking lot, there were already a dozen or so people milling about the parking lot. I greeted several old friends and met a couple of new ones. I brought my creatures Bruce and Veli with me, and they spent some quality time mooching food and barking loudly for no apparent reason. Dave Washburn agreed to buddy with me, and we hit the water. I made one request of him, that he find me a grunt sculpin. I've never gotten one on camera, and have only seen them once or twice. We swam to the end of the pier, and dropped to find that the vis today was nothing to write on the internet about. Having a bunch of divers in the water didn't help it, but even when Dave and I got to the bottle field and away from the lines we still couldn't see very far. We were, however, able to see far enough to see a stubby squid out and about, cruising along, and not far beyond him, a small red octopus also sitting out in the open. The squid especially was very exciting to me, as I've only seen one once before, while diving Three Tree with BASSMAN. Among the bottles was a new kind of fish for me, which I seem to recall Dave saying was a Yellow-Bellied Cur, but I'm pretty sure I'm misremembering that....
There were a bunch of coonstripe shrimp bouncing all over the bottom. They are funny to watch, and play with their little minds by sweeping a light across them, boing, boing, boing, as each sees the light.
We also saw a striped nudibranch, which I thought odd, since there are no sea pens and it made me wonder what they eat when their preferred diet isn't available. After a little while at the bottle field, we headed up, and Dave tried to steer us over to an old pipe, where he thought there might be a grunt sculpin for me to look at. We never found the pipe, but after a skittish snake prickleback darted away from our cameras, I noticed that one of the disturbed chunks of silt he'd stirred up seemed to be self-propelled. Sure enough, looky at the second bonus critter!
On the surface, I had some burger and talk time with my buddies. Derrick had some trouble with losing his fins, but luckily they were recovered. Ross also lost a fin, which did not get recovered, although several people gave the search a try. Spudgunman brought his wife and new baby to see everyone, but they didn't dive. Several others also came to visit without diving today. I was torn; I'd love to stay and visit all day, too, but then I wouldn't get to get wet. Such a dilemma. I put off the decision and got back in the water with Dave again. This time we found the pipe right away, and Dave waved me over to see a grunty. Yay!
I took a few pictures, then just settled in to watch the little grunt sculpin. It bounced around a bit, then started coming toward me. I wasn't sure whether it was checking me out, or going somewhere or what, but I was sure surprised when I noticed movement at the bottom of the pipe. Close inspection revealed a microscopicly small grunt sculpin. Err, wow. This big one came and hung out around the little bitty one, but didn't threaten it in any way, which really made me wonder, uhm, do these things parent their young or something??
Leaving the pipeline, although I could probably have stayed and watched the two grunts for a Long Time, we ended up over at the beetle. There was a leopard dorid, a few of them, in fact, although for the most part they were crammed in the crannies. A piece of kelp had some sort of inchworm crawling along it, I hope Dave got a picture and name for it. The decorator crabs are out and about, and it was funny to see pieces of the sunken car just suddenly creep away from where they were. We came across a nice egg yolk jelly on our way up to the eelgrass. I hoped for a lumpsucker, but alas, could not find one. I did find this nudibranch though! It's pretty, but I'm not sure what kind it is.
For my third dive, I propositioned Ross (renoun) and he countered with the offer to show me Cove 2. Why, yes, I've been wanting to go there. So, we headed up to Seattle. I'm very glad I had a guide, since Seattle streets and traffic scare the crap out of me, and I'm not sure I would have made it without Ross. We found a parking spot, he showed me the general site layout and gave me a briefing on the dive. The view of Seattle was pretty, Space Needle to the ahead-left, with the mountain just peeking around a bluff off to the right. We got in, and followed a line down for a while. There was a gunnel sitting out waiting to be admired, and one of the smallest Red Irish Lords I've seen was tucked in a crevice. On a piece of debris was a leopard dorid, who was willing to give me a good angle.
Under a slab? piece of boat? was a mommy octopus sitting on her eggs. I couldn't get the angle for a shot, but sitting there gazing at her, I realized exactly how big she is. Big. Like, huge. Like, really, really big. I mentally transposed her size under the slab to what her size would be above the slab, then imagined myself in the same space. She'd be the length of me stretched across the slab. And she wasn't stretched, she was just sitting there mostly curled up. Amazing.
Y'all have some nice tubeworms in Cove2. I saw them as we turned southeast toward the (Ross told me what they are but I've forgotten) pilings?
On the way to the aforementioned pilings, Ross found me my first diamond something something.
Not far away from the diamond slug, I saw a striped nudibranch tucked into the silt. Beyond, I found one out in the open. That's the third striped nudi today, and all of them have been far away from the sea pen fields where I'd expect to find them. I kept wondering what in the world are they eating around here.
Coming to the pilings, which looked an awful lot like a jumbled mess of fallen telephone poles, Ross waved at me to see what he'd found. Seeing movement, I quickly spun in two different directions, only to see silt clouds and disappearing tails. I hunted down the culprits, and found one who couldn't resist peeking from a window further down the log.
Leaving the pilings, and moving toward the HoneyBear, I saw this fish sitting out in the open. I have no idea what it is. Honestly, I'm not sure whether it's alive, since it didn't twitch as we drew near. And by not twitch, I mean I couldn't see it breathe.
There was a standing piling which we followed up. I thought that was really different and rather neat, since it's like following a line, but there's things to see, so it was like following the bottom, too. Our whole dive, there were iridescent nudibranchs everywhere. This pole was no different, but we found other kinds of nudis, also. This shot of three tiny (I think they are Monterey dorids) little guys was fun. I could see that there were nudis, but they were so small and tightly packed that I didn't even know it was three until I processed the film.
Right at the top of the pillar was this nudibranch. I'm not sure of this kind of slug either. I think I need to finish typing this report, and then go to Amazon and get me a nudibranch book. Suggestions, anyone?
After a great dive, Ross and I loaded up my car, and I turned the ignition to find that not much happened. I kind of gulped and looked at Ross, and Ross looked at me, and I turned the key again. After giving it some gas, I got the motor to catch, but the check engine light was still on, and the car accelerated poorly. I was pretty freaked out, envisioning being stuck in a far city with a broken car, and going nuts about mechanic fees and how am I going to get to work on Monday. Ross directed me up surface streets to his friend's house. The friend had a diagnostic computer thingy, and Ross figured out what the problem was, then he spent two hours (until Midnight!) fixing my car and getting it to run perfect again. What an amazing guy! First he pulls wolf eels out of my hood, then he pulls new engines out of his hat! I headed home and staggered in the door around two. The dogs are still sleeping it off this morning, but I sure had a great day. Lots of ups and downs, and the guy who randomly approached and asked to take my picture in my scuba gear made me chuckle. I've had more random picture ops since I started scuba...
I had such fun to see everyone again! Thanks Dave for finding me a grunty, and thanks Ross for showing me a new dive site, with new critters, and THANK YOU for fixing my car! :luv:
The student was ready.
it's nice to have low expectations, sometimes - lcf
I said keep going, not start whining -airsix
