Viz was horrible. Calling it 5 feet would be generous. We went to the first set of pilings and dropped right into a submerged tree. I managed to help Tami untangle from it, and when we got to the bottom we were only at 8 feet. We took a heading and went and went and went, but missed all of the other pilings. Still, the place is full of life. It's definitely an invertebrate dive; we saw a total of one fish. But there were 5 different kinds of nudibranchs, a huge patch of sea pens, and several kinds of crabs and anemones and cucumbers and other stuff. Since we like to go slow and look for little stuff, it was an ideal dive for us except for the lousy viz. After a good half hour of not finding the pilings, we decided to turn around. I had concluded that we veered to the left, so I was trying to steer us more right in hopes of finding them, without success. My maneuver worked, though; we turned back and hadn't gone more than 20 seconds when we ran into a huge concrete one. It was literally covered with life, so much that you couldn't see the concrete. Anemones, barnacles, you name it, it was there. Unfortunately, so was the current. It suddenly reversed on us and started trying to pull us out. Getting back in was a battle, and trying to keep track of everybody in the crappy viz while fighting the current was NOT fun. We finally decided to surface and discovered we weren't that far from the exit point. We made our way to the rocks under the bridge and dragged ourselves around to where the car was parked, pooped but safe and well.
I definitely want to go back there with better viz. This place is loaded with life, and if you can time the current right it's an incredible dive.
A few pix:
- A nice little brittle star
- Lots of nice big sea pens
- I like the way the one little polyp on the left is standing so much taller than the others. I can just hear it singing "I gotta be me, I gotta be me!"
- And with all the sea pens, there was bound to be at least one of these.
- Kathy got a beautiful picture of this fellow.
- The purple veins/stripes/whatevers on this star are fascinating!
- The one little fish we found, but her coloring is gorgeous!
- Does this rock make my butt look fat?
- The amazing colors are just one reason this is such an outstanding site.
