Northwest Dive Club

Hi
ScubaJess, DLH, RB and I went diving in the San Juans yesterday on the Banditos. We also met up with SeattlePaul1975. Great to meet him and several others not on the board!

The sites were broken point and Bell Island. Viz wasn't the greatest, but the sites were absolutely fantastic. Color and life overload! It was ScubaJess's first time there and she got to see lots of cool stuff, she'll have to report it from her perspective!

Here were some of the shots! my camera didn't join me for the second dive... :( -Eric

Hello YellowEye!

Thanks for capturing the stunning beauty of the San Juans!
I can't believe how colorful it is down there! There was so much life everywhere I looked!! Soooo many Nudabrinks of all shapes and sizes! Plenty of great fish! I even saw a red Irish Lord!
It was amazing! It reminded me of the gum wall in Seattle but alive and not germy at all!
I can't wait to go back again!

I just adore Jackie & the Banditos crew! They are just wonderful!
We had perfect weather for the dive! I was happy with the viz too!
I had one of my longest dives! I went 50 feet down and bottom time 50 minutes!
It was spectacular! I could feel the different currents but they weren't too bad! I think I'm getting
My boyantcy down!

It was really nice to meet some fellow NW Dive club members! Everyone so cool!
I hope you all have a great day!!
Scuba Jess

Haha!

I swear it was total nudibranch country out there. These sites had the most nudis in both quantity and number of species I've seen in a long time. Other cool sightings were mosshead warbonnets, monster lings, a big beautiful ochre star in the shallows, longfin sculpin galore, rock scallop, beautiful tunicates of many types, giant barnaces, awesome decorator crabs, a heart crab, gumboot chitons etc. Some other divers saw tiger rockfish.

And ScubaJess, you forgot to mention the cool dolphins and seabirds we saw on the boat ride back!

Hopefully DLH got some photos too!

I didn't see any nudi pictures I was hearing about... guess it was the second dive without the camera. Hopefully nothing bad kept it from diving
Thanks for the pictures , great color

Ooh man I forgot to mention soooo many amazing creatures!!!
Sea squirts are some of my new favorites! We saw a war bonnet hiding out in his own little cave behind a large shell! He was adorable!!! Also there were soooo many little hermit crabs and fascinating stripped blue top snails! We saw clown dorid, white dendronotid, dall's dendronotid, mating variable dendronotid a really pretty gold dirona, lots of tiny three-lined Nudibranchs, also hairy chiton, giant pacific chiton, tons of blood stars big and small! Huge sea urchins, sea cucumbers, shiny orange sea squirts, lots of transparent sea squirts which totally look like aliens!! Yellow social ascidians, fused orange social ascidians and sooo much more!!!!
I kept thinking that Dr Suess must have been a scuba diver and visited the San Juan's!

We saw so many neat birds from the ship! I was looking for whales but didn't see any.

I want to post a few above water shots from my phone. But I can't figure out how to upload pictures?

I figured out how to add photos! Here's a few!

deep diver wrote:I didn't see any nudi pictures I was hearing about... guess it was the second dive without the camera. Hopefully nothing bad kept it from diving
Thanks for the pictures , great color

Hi
I didn't get many nudi photos, because I was carrying wide angle. You can see a yellow dorid in my first photo though

The wide angle was not appropriate for either the viz or the nudis so for the second dive, I tried to switch over to macro, but I must not have switched it carefully enough because I sprung a small leak. Luckily everything looks to be okay.

In addition to what ScubaJess mentioned, we also saw opalescent nudibranchs (!), leopard dorids, red flabellina (?), and several other dorids.

Here was another attempt at a nudi on wide angle, you can see the viz wasn't too hot! Hopefully Dave got some macro nudis!

[quote="YellowEye[/quote]
The wide angle was not appropriate for either the viz or the nudis so for the second dive, I tried to switch over to macro, but I must not have switched it carefully enough because I sprung a small leak. Luckily everything looks to be okay.

quote]

I never switch my lens in the boat just for that reason. Glad things came out ok.

A few more photos from the San Juans adventures this weekend. Wide angle was dicey although vis was pretty decent. Lots of nudibranchs on both sites but no Octo's or Wolfeels to be found but Mega-LingCod everywhere.

Bonus Pic - I noticed one of the Nudibranchs has fleas, or at least a hitchhiker...

Very cool, Dave!

You had better luck with viz and wide angle that I did. I also didn't have any luck approaching the mega lings.

Very cool bonus shot!

Looks like you're ready for God's Pocket! Enjoy it!

Thanks for posting these great pictures and for sharing the day with us! Fun times. We are running west San Juans this week and had a humpback whale yesterday!! I did not get to a camera in time, but it was a show.
Jackie

Great pics Dave!

Great shots!

I'll be up there the day after tomorrow.... looking forward to diving the San Juans!

Fantastic pictures David!!
It was fun to dive with you guys!