Salt Creek Exploratory Dives 3/10/21
Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:13 am
Hi
Yesterday I went to Salt Creek and did some exploratory diving. It was a sunny day and conditions were super calm, maybe 3" waves. It was high tide with little current.
Overall the site is not looking good as compared to previous years. There are urchins all over the place and the site is quite dusty, except either very shallow or deeper than 45. The kelp is mostly gone or half eaten by urchins. Most of the rocks have an ugly brown algae growing on them and it's not pretty.
For the first dive I went east. First I tried to see if I could see the two rock greenlings I'd seen there recently (they often stay put in one place, sometimes for years). Nope, not home. I haven't seen the first one in quite a while now, and I presume they've both moved on or have been fished out.
Viz was much better in near the mussels and barnacles in the shallows so I proceeded to explore the shallows, swimming out past the nearby alternative stair case.
I found a new-to-me sea cave in that area! This one quite colorful with fluorescent green and pink anemones and orange sponges. There was a skylight in the cave which made for a very cool sight. The cave looks to go back a bit but I didn't want to risk going into it as I was solo diving. It was a very calm day yesterday, there's no way you could explore this area with any waves or at low tide. Photography was a definite challenge... it wasn't possible to show all the goodness of the cave in one frame but I got a few snaps to show a few scenes. I think this would be easier to do on video.
On my return, I went deep (45') to explore if there were any cool sights down there. I saw 3 orange peel nudibranchs which was kind of cool, and the usual fish eating anemones, but not much else.
For the second dive, I decided to explore the area to the west to look for more kelp or more life. Nope! There was not much kelp taller than about 4' here and most was munched. Given the lack of kelp and given the excellent wave/current conditions I decided that I should try to explore the point itself. I was hopeful there was good marine life out there as the point takes the brunt of the wave action during wavy days.
Nope, not great. The life out there wasn't any significantly different than right near the entrance. And boy it was a long swim. There is an expansive surf grass zone and I was able to find one rock greenling though! He was very dark, very skittish, and I got no photos of him. Shortly after I saw the rock greenling I got visited by two huge barking california sea lions (the ones with the domed heads). Perhaps the rock greenlings out there are timid due to the sea lion activity out there.
It is surprisingly flat out there at the point. I had to swim a pretty far out past the rocks to get to 8' of depth.
There is a good amount of boa kelp out there which I was happy to see. I only saw three strands of kelp longer than 4' tall in my near four hours of bottom time. Two macrocystis and one bull kelp. Hope it picks back up in the spring but it will be a tough fight with all that urchin. Funny, I went out to salt creek a couple times over the winter and there were often small commercial boats out at the site, I had always assumed they were collecting urchin. I saw no evidence of an urchin harvest.
I'm always at a loss.... Is fishing/harvesting allowed at salt creek? The sign by the entrance seems to indicate not but even the ranger there encouraged people to go fishing and there were also these commercial boats out there. I saw zero rockfish, and only one tiny ling.
The highlight of the day was definitely the cave, very cool!
WARNING: Be super careful if there's any waves at salt creek. The rocks are super slippery and its easy to fall and get turtled. It can be very hard to get up again with waves crashing on you. ALWAYS keep your reg in your mouth when entering/exiting salt creek and strongly consider a plan b dive site if there are waves (viz will be poor if there are waves).
Hope you enjoyed the report. Have a great weekend!
-Eric
Yesterday I went to Salt Creek and did some exploratory diving. It was a sunny day and conditions were super calm, maybe 3" waves. It was high tide with little current.
Overall the site is not looking good as compared to previous years. There are urchins all over the place and the site is quite dusty, except either very shallow or deeper than 45. The kelp is mostly gone or half eaten by urchins. Most of the rocks have an ugly brown algae growing on them and it's not pretty.
For the first dive I went east. First I tried to see if I could see the two rock greenlings I'd seen there recently (they often stay put in one place, sometimes for years). Nope, not home. I haven't seen the first one in quite a while now, and I presume they've both moved on or have been fished out.
Viz was much better in near the mussels and barnacles in the shallows so I proceeded to explore the shallows, swimming out past the nearby alternative stair case.
I found a new-to-me sea cave in that area! This one quite colorful with fluorescent green and pink anemones and orange sponges. There was a skylight in the cave which made for a very cool sight. The cave looks to go back a bit but I didn't want to risk going into it as I was solo diving. It was a very calm day yesterday, there's no way you could explore this area with any waves or at low tide. Photography was a definite challenge... it wasn't possible to show all the goodness of the cave in one frame but I got a few snaps to show a few scenes. I think this would be easier to do on video.
On my return, I went deep (45') to explore if there were any cool sights down there. I saw 3 orange peel nudibranchs which was kind of cool, and the usual fish eating anemones, but not much else.
For the second dive, I decided to explore the area to the west to look for more kelp or more life. Nope! There was not much kelp taller than about 4' here and most was munched. Given the lack of kelp and given the excellent wave/current conditions I decided that I should try to explore the point itself. I was hopeful there was good marine life out there as the point takes the brunt of the wave action during wavy days.
Nope, not great. The life out there wasn't any significantly different than right near the entrance. And boy it was a long swim. There is an expansive surf grass zone and I was able to find one rock greenling though! He was very dark, very skittish, and I got no photos of him. Shortly after I saw the rock greenling I got visited by two huge barking california sea lions (the ones with the domed heads). Perhaps the rock greenlings out there are timid due to the sea lion activity out there.
It is surprisingly flat out there at the point. I had to swim a pretty far out past the rocks to get to 8' of depth.
There is a good amount of boa kelp out there which I was happy to see. I only saw three strands of kelp longer than 4' tall in my near four hours of bottom time. Two macrocystis and one bull kelp. Hope it picks back up in the spring but it will be a tough fight with all that urchin. Funny, I went out to salt creek a couple times over the winter and there were often small commercial boats out at the site, I had always assumed they were collecting urchin. I saw no evidence of an urchin harvest.
I'm always at a loss.... Is fishing/harvesting allowed at salt creek? The sign by the entrance seems to indicate not but even the ranger there encouraged people to go fishing and there were also these commercial boats out there. I saw zero rockfish, and only one tiny ling.
The highlight of the day was definitely the cave, very cool!
- Cave of wonder 3
- Tongue Point -- looks kind of cool, but don't let the pic fool you, this little section was by far the best reef scene of the 4 hours of diving
- Surge zone
- The orange peels were on crap backgrounds
- Mussel beds in the shallows
- It said Hi to Derek
WARNING: Be super careful if there's any waves at salt creek. The rocks are super slippery and its easy to fall and get turtled. It can be very hard to get up again with waves crashing on you. ALWAYS keep your reg in your mouth when entering/exiting salt creek and strongly consider a plan b dive site if there are waves (viz will be poor if there are waves).
Hope you enjoyed the report. Have a great weekend!
-Eric
❤
