Northwest Dive Club

Just did a dive out at Titlow yesterday with my usual buddies Andy and Mark. During periods of extended cold dry weather the viz improves enough to haul out the dome port with the fisheye lens, especially at places where there's great structure such as the old Titlow ferry dock pilings.

Over the years I've grown accustomed to hordes of giant sun stars cruising through the base of the pilings. Yesterday there were none. In fact, there were no seastars of any kind to be found, either on or near the pilings.



There were probably about 6 or so small (2-4 inch) sun stars scattered around the shallower areas on the swim to and from the pilings, perhaps they'll survive this and re-populate the area. We'll have to wait and see.

We did find quite a few nudibranchs, Frosteds were the most plentiful and there were also a number of Leopards. Just north of the main pilings we found a small patch of Flabellina triopha and a single Clown nudibranch.

Here's Mark photographing the Clown Nudibranch Triopha catalinae.





After diving around here for awhile you do get to see a fluctuation in numbers and quantities of different species, but I for one have never seen anything like this. Hopefully this absence of sea stars is only temporary and they'll rebound.

Dan

What time did you splash at Titlow?
Did you make it out to the "shelves"?
Kirsten

Great photos, Dan! Thanks for the sea star update--very sad. :( I wonder if we will see a comeback of sea stars in Puget Sound in our diving lifetime....makes you wonder, huh?

Scubak

We splashed at 11:00 and swam out to the shelves. A bit of current at first, but then it calmed down. There were a couple of octos in the shelves but otherwise they were the same as the pilings.

Beautiful photos...

thank you for the sad update :(

Beautiful shots...

Nice shots as usual. Sad to hear this. That place used to alive with them. One of the biggest concentration in the south sound! I do hope that they make a comeback. There are some sites that haven't been hit so hard so there is hope. Just wish they could figure out a cause.

Another strange one is the small numbers of clown nudies. They used to be as common as the alabaster's now I only see a few here and there

Dusty2 wrote:Another strange one is the small numbers of clown nudies. They used to be as common as the alabaster's now I only see a few here and there

yes, they used to be all over the place at titlow, especially in higher current areas like Titlow. I think I only saw a half dozen all this past year.

Also gone are Janolus fuscus and Limacia cockerelli, at least in the south sound.

Dan