Oceanside, Garibaldi, Tillamook Bay Snorkeling
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:21 am
So after taking a trip yesterday to Astoria to deliver a lobster tank I refurbished I got to go collecting and snorkeling all day
Best part was that the couple that bought the tank from me were AWESOME! The guy is a Coast Guard Rescue Diver, and his wife is a biologist that works for NOAA.
After showing us a pretty cool spot near the mouth of the Columbia River (that me and my buddy were to chicken to snorkel in) they followed me and my friend all the way down the coast to Tillamook to go collecting with us. I showed them a couple of my choice collecting locations so they could stock their tank when its up and running, and we helped them catch several species of gunnels and pricklebacks for her research. She studies stomach contents of birds, and sees lots of dead gunnels, problem is they are usually just bones which makes them harder to ID. So we caught her some lives ones that she can photograph, catalogue, and then photograph the skelenton once they melt the flesh off ( I know pretty morbid, but its for science )
Byron (the rescue diver) has a go-pro on his dive helmet and was able to get video of a yet unidentified fish that was hanging out in a burrow under a rock. I suspect it to be a wolf eel, but he said it was more fish like. He's gonna get the video of it hosted on photobucket soon.
Super cool guy, he took home a couple urchins to eat and some mussels, and it was a race to see who could get their dive knife out first when we both spotted a good size scallop at the same time. ( He wanted to eat it, I just wanted it for my tank) I ended up being quicker, so the scallop lives on in my tank
Best part was that the couple that bought the tank from me were AWESOME! The guy is a Coast Guard Rescue Diver, and his wife is a biologist that works for NOAA.
After showing us a pretty cool spot near the mouth of the Columbia River (that me and my buddy were to chicken to snorkel in) they followed me and my friend all the way down the coast to Tillamook to go collecting with us. I showed them a couple of my choice collecting locations so they could stock their tank when its up and running, and we helped them catch several species of gunnels and pricklebacks for her research. She studies stomach contents of birds, and sees lots of dead gunnels, problem is they are usually just bones which makes them harder to ID. So we caught her some lives ones that she can photograph, catalogue, and then photograph the skelenton once they melt the flesh off ( I know pretty morbid, but its for science )
Byron (the rescue diver) has a go-pro on his dive helmet and was able to get video of a yet unidentified fish that was hanging out in a burrow under a rock. I suspect it to be a wolf eel, but he said it was more fish like. He's gonna get the video of it hosted on photobucket soon.
Super cool guy, he took home a couple urchins to eat and some mussels, and it was a race to see who could get their dive knife out first when we both spotted a good size scallop at the same time. ( He wanted to eat it, I just wanted it for my tank) I ended up being quicker, so the scallop lives on in my tank