Northwest Dive Club

Due to unforseen circumstances my dive boat trip on Monday at Neah Bay was suddenly canceled, so several of us loaded our gear and headed a few miles back east to the Seiku Jetty. A much nicer dive than I expected, a huge kelp forest hosted a number of creatures I don't usually see in lower Puget Sound.

I saw this small skittish fish and tried to get a photo of him before he disappeared into the kelp.... didn't get a very good one but judging by what I got it looks like a manacled sculpin Synchirus gilli. A first for me, if in fact that's what it is.



I also found a number of my favorite nudibranchs, the Opalescent Nudibranch Hermissenda crassicornis



and some very colorful anemones


Dan

dphershman wrote:
I also found a number of my favorite nudibranchs, the Opalescent Nudibranch Hermissenda crassicornis

That is a great pic, thanks for sharing, I haven't seen one in the water yet, but hoping to do so.

Yep that's a manacled alright. They are a lot more common out that way.

Nice capture of Manacled. It is always fun to add another "FIRST" to the list.

McGlencoe wrote:

dphershman wrote:
I also found a number of my favorite nudibranchs, the Opalescent Nudibranch Hermissenda crassicornis



That is a great pic, thanks for sharing, I haven't seen one in the water yet, but hoping to do so.

thanks, summer time is typically the best time of the year to find Opalescents, they frequently can be found munching on critters living on the surface of large leaves of seaweed. In Puget Sound their colors can be rather drab, but when you get closer to the coast they tend to be more attractive. If you ever have the chance to dive in South CA (south of Monterey) their appearance changes dramatically, they get rather large and their color patterns change.

Opalescent from the Catalina Islands of CA


from Resurrection Bay near Seward AK


From Edmonds Underwater Park

Jan K wrote:Nice capture of Manacled. It is always fun to add another "FIRST" to the list.

Thanks Jan

I think I need to spend more time exploring the kelp forests

Dan

Nice photos, Gotta love those so cal opalescents. Kelp though sometimes a pain for us photogs is one of the richest environments in the ocean. Look close and you will see lots of juvenile critters like tiny lumpsuckers and sailfin sculpins not to mention tiny nudibranchs like D, venustus.

At certain times of the year, you can find Manacled Sculpin at Cove 2, the only place other than Seiku that I've ever seen one.

Do you recall what time of the year that is?
Fritz

fmerkel wrote:Do you recall what time of the year that is?
Fritz

I saw one last November at Keystone

Fritz, I'll check my log book and get back to you.

I have seen them at point Hudson too. Mine was in Jan.

Dan, sorry your dive trip got canceled. Things were back up and running on Tuesday, so we were able to go out and view more Manacled in the kelp fronds at multiple dive sites along the Straits. Sekiu Jetty is a great dive, and a good place to find Silverspotted Sculpins and Tubenose Poachers, especially if you go at night.
Manacleds are really hard to get a good shot of, so yours is ESPECIALLY cool, since it was not only your first, but a crisp shot too!
- Janna

It's that great new camera he's got . . .

I haven't forgotten but it wasn't within the last year and that's all I've checked so far. Will try to get into my archives and find out when it was.

Dan, Looking through my photos, I found Manacled Sculpin at Cove 2 in August of 2010 on 2 different occasions and in November of 2011. I don't dive Cove 2 that often so don't know if this is usual. I was just there last week and didn't see any although I did look.

WylerBear wrote:Dan, Looking through my photos, I found Manacled Sculpin at Cove 2 in August of 2010 on 2 different occasions and in November of 2011. I don't dive Cove 2 that often so don't know if this is usual. I was just there last week and didn't see any although I did look.

I have been diving at cove 2 hundreds of times at all hours of the day and night and all year long yet don't remember seeing one before. What I have learned however over they years is that you don't see what you don't know, so perhaps I just never knew what I was looking at.

Dan

nwscubamom wrote:Dan, sorry your dive trip got canceled. Things were back up and running on Tuesday, so we were able to go out and view more Manacled in the kelp fronds at multiple dive sites along the Straits. Sekiu Jetty is a great dive, and a good place to find Silverspotted Sculpins and Tubenose Poachers, especially if you go at night.
Manacleds are really hard to get a good shot of, so yours is ESPECIALLY cool, since it was not only your first, but a crisp shot too!
- Janna

Thanks for the nice words about my pics of the sculpin. I wasn't sure what it was when I saw I just knew that it was something I hadn't seen before.
The cancellation was a major bummer for sure. Glad that you were able to do your reef dives, I loved your pics. Honestly, I only seem to get out to neah bay every two or three years and my last two trips out there were aborted so its been awhile. Neah bay is (IMHO) the Mecca of northwest diving, I wish there was a local dive operation there that could be relied upon, I'd be there as many times as I could drive myself out there.

Dan