Northwest Dive Club

Keystone scene - worms

Why I worry....
Just from yesterday's dive:
I still have to yell at people that they are fishing on the wrong side of the jetty.
And the sea urchin are marching on ....

Wow. That's a TON of urchins!

Many years ago, I read that sea urchin increases wiped out kelp beds. Do you notice any decrease in kelp?
-Curt

oldsalt wrote:Many years ago, I read that sea urchin increases wiped out kelp beds. Do you notice any decrease in kelp?
-Curt

I cannot tell yet, the Bull kelp is just starting to regrow in the shallows, but since there isn't much else to eat for these horde, I am worried indeed. The increase in number of sea urchins in some places at Keystone is hard to ignore now, it is beyond "did you notice?"

Yikes. Does the urchins look to be multiplying since just a month ago?

YellowEye wrote:Yikes. Does the urchins look to be multiplying since just a month ago?

It looks like that or maybe they are moving from some other nearby spot .

And we have now many of the zillion yellow Dogwinkle eggs hatching. Unlike may other snails,
they are not coming out of the capsules as veliger (A veliger is the planktonic larva of many kinds of sea snails),
but as tiny snails

It must time for Lingcod cleaning, I saw two on same dive laying patiently while Scalyhead sculpin was moving around the rather dangerous area. Inside their mouth... Interestingly, the same Lingcod was being serviced at the same spot in two consecutive days, Saturday and Sunday. These are stills taken from the video.

Tunicates - one is native:

and one is an invasive :

Langley seems to be the one bright spot at the moment for the return of sea stars.
Elsewhere on the island, it is rather anemic.

Oh, I hope that phenomenon spreads to the lower Sound. I desperately miss the sea stars . . . the winter sites, with no sea lettuce and no stars, are so colorless.

It was a busy day at the Deception Pass. Meet fellow diver friends, being underwater at the 3.14.15 9:26 moment.
Great way to celebrate Pi Day

Very rainy Sunday at Keystone, could not tell the difference under the old wharf.
I stayed dry, seals did not leak
This guy had awesome lights, so I followed him a little to bask in their glow...

In spite of all the rain we received on Saturday and mainly on Sunday, the visibility at Deception Pass was in last four days the best we had all winter. Monday and Tuesday the sun lightened up the underwater seascape and I could switch from closeups to wide angle. So these are combination of photos from three days of diving.

Starfish comeback continues at Langley

This Spring weather produces some dramatic skies. Beneath the waves - the life goes on ...

Jan, of all the spectacular things you post, I think I like the over-and-under shots of the dive sites the most.

Also, I should tell you, I took a new diver down at Cove 2 the other day, and we found a big mass of market squid eggs, and I immediately thought of your photographs and what I learned about the egg cases.

LCF wrote:Jan, of all the spectacular things you post, I think I like the over-and-under shots of the dive sites the most.

Thank you Lynne, it is getting harder and harder to come up with new stuff, but I still love diving and the place I live.
I am glad you are not tired of all this
I still keep eyes open for new critters and their behavior, but the old eyes are struggling with that task .

We all appreciate these posts so much Jan. Thank you!

Tangfish wrote:We all appreciate these posts so much Jan. Thank you!

Couldn't agree more...

OMG, Jan, how could we get tired of your posts? There is an absolutely invaluable wealth of knowledge about the animals we dive with . . . information we would have to work extremely hard to find, if we even knew where to look, or that the information was there to find in the first place. What is especially valuable is that you photograph, and write about the humble stuff -- the dog winkles, and the tunicates, and the slime worms. The things we swim over and disregard, because we don't recognize what they are, or we don't know enough about them to make them interesting.

If there is one single thread in all of scuba cyberspace that I would recommend to one of our graduating open water students, it is this one.

What Lynne said Our dive club was on Whidbey this weekend, and every time I dove I thought about the stuff I learned from this thread. Last night we did a night dive at the tire reef- saw lots of neat critters, including a silver spotted sculpin- the first thing that came to mind was that I wished you were there to get a good pic...

Friday dive at Deception Pass. Two young guys in wetsuits freediving /spearfishing for greenling.
Don't know how many they managed to harvest, they were still at it when I got out of water after my 70 minute dive!
I did find more then back rear ends of polychaete worms, but I post them so when you come across them, you know what you are looking at because I didn't.