Northwest Dive Club

Most of the time the Buffalo sculpin stays motionless, counting on its camouflage to escape diver's attention,
but time to time I find them bolting away.

So I swim around taking picture here and there, and I get flipped off by a crab !
Just because this obscene gesture has been around since the Ancient Greece,
I would expect more respect from critters in my home waters !
It must be the weather, it is getting to all of us

Ha ha ha the "finger" I tell ya those kelp crab look like they are always ready for some fist fighting as they are punchy little bastards, I am not surprise at all that you got the finger.

Love this one!

With most of the Bull kelp now gone from the shallows of Keystone Jetty, the Northern Kelp crabs start to gather on the jetty rocks and what ever is left of the once kelp forest to mate or just hang around to wave and try to intimidate passing divers with their chelipeds (claws). I have to give them credit, they are not scared of me and readily charge every time I approach with my camera for a closer look. So far, using my camera as shield, I survived unharmed their attacks

Sea star survey Keystone Jetty on December 1, and in Penn Cove on December 2. It was nice to find three healthy Sunflower stars at Keystone and plenty of healthy Ochre and Mottled stars at Penn Cove. With temperatures dropping, hopefully it will slow down the wasting syndrome.

Diving the same place again and again does somewhat limit the chances to encounter new critters. But there are some curious things happening even with the mundane, very common critters. For example the Wrinkled dogwinkle. It seems to be moving deeper every year now...
I wonder why ?
BTW What a name !

From Penn Cove. The world around us is changing.
Is it a cycle or a permanent change? Only time will tell ...

Keystone snapshots. Some of the anemones, when not feeding tend to make some interesting figures.
Also found another Lingcod being cleaned by a sculpin.

Skyline, Fidalgo Island. Half way through the dive, hundreds of Black sea cucumbers awaken from their "sleep" ( none of the sea cucumbers are feeding in the winter ) and started releasing streams of white gametes in the act of spontaneous spawning.

Skylline, Fidalgo Island. As the Black cucumber started to spawn en masse,
some the Six-rayed stars, which prey on them, begun to spawn as well...

Blue topsnail, a very common mollusk in Whidbey waters.

Langley harbor sea star survey. The struggle of survival continues. While most of the sea stars are healthy, wasting is still present in some and overall numbers are way down. No sign of once dominating Sunflower star. The two species now present here are the Ochre and Short-spined aka Giant Pink stars. Few Mottled stars and occasionally a Leather star.

Freezing topside, not so bed below Keystone Pilings. Lots of Tubesnouts !

Keystone Pilings, Leafy hornmouth and eggs.

Some of the stuff living under the floating docks at Lagoon Point.

Not so common nudibranch at Lagoon Point dock.

Few days last week were so cold, that even the Wolf eel at Driftwood Park turned blue.
And in addition to toilets, we now have chamber pots there too...

This should be enough food for the rest of the year

Green shore crab:

Lagoon Point,First Day of Winter dive .
Underwater snowflake
Tiny, only about 8mm long nudibranch.

Another Winter Weather Advisory for today and tomorrow.
After all, it is winter.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all !

Until few days ago, I did not know we have Nodding Heads in our waters. After I looked at some of the pictures from Lagoon Point, I noticed that the fuzzy stuff on some of the tunicates are not hydroids or bryozoans as I first thought. I got help from Dennis Gordon, expert on bryozoans in New Zealand who pointed me to the Nodding Heads. So now you know too what to look for

Deception Pass is the only place I find pink colored Shaggy Mouse nudibranch.
And no, the bridge was not lit up for Christmas Eve :(

Beautiful color on that shaggy!

Hi Jan,

While I am always impressed by your photography, I'm even more impressed by your ability to find sources of information about your subjects!

Here's something to add to your library about the Shaggy Mouse:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/fu ... 07/1543542
The gist of the paper is that this animal can modify its own mucous in order to prey on a variety of anemones - how cool is that?

Adaptably yours,
Alex