The problem was that we couldn't figure out where we could go. 12 foot tidal exchanges aren't friendly, and dive sites that are more than three hour's drive away aren't great for a one-day excursion. After considering, and rejecting, Keystone, Skyline, Sekiu Jetty, Lake Crescent and anything off our algae-encrusted boat, we finally decided to head for Flagpole with the scooters, and find out what kind of current you can run into there on a heavy flood. After that decision was made, it turned out my husband finished up his horse show early, and he wanted to come, and Bob Bailey wanted to join us, too. (More divers is generally more fun, but in this case, it meant the south end folks drove around through Bremerton, and we took the Edmonds ferry. So all the "getting to see my buddies" I got was the short chat while gearing up, and a few "wasn't that great" comments while loading the car. Oh, well.)
At any rate, it turned out to be a perfect day to head over to Hood Canal. It was sunny, and so warm that I could stand outside on the deck of the ferry, so long as I stayed out of the wind. The low tide when we left was amazing -- you could literally see patches of sand out at the end of the Edmonds Jetty! Peter took compare and contrast pictures of the low and the high:
The rest of the drive to the dive site was also really beautiful. The Olympic Peninsula is so amazingly green and scenic when the sun is out! We got to Mike's Beach resort and got the key, and found the driveway without issue, also the first attempt to go down it resulted in high-centering Peter's TRUCK. That driveway is not for the faint of heart, or low of ground clearance!
Bob and Kirk had gotten there earlier, and had already done a dive, and reported okay viz at depth but a pretty heavy murk layer, and LOTS of Lion's Mane jellies. We quickly dressed and geared up, and Kirk, bless his heart, took my scooter to the water, and Peter helped me get to the rocks. I love this site, but I don't like the gravel and sand slope from the parking to the cobbles. It's unstable and slippery and quite steep, and after smacking my face at Cove 2, it doesn't take much to make me really paranoid. Bless understanding and attentive buddies!
We had a plan, which apparently only I understood, to scooter out to the yellow buoy and then from there to the Flagpole buoy, thus avoiding the rocks in the shallows. So we got in the water and I started scootering, and the next thing I know, I'm out at the yellow buoy and EVERYBODY is fifty feet away from me, closer to shore. Hmm. If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs . . . it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation. I swear that was our plan; Peter says something different, which, if you know us, is the normal state of affairs. At any rate, since we were all going to the same place, we all ended up there, and after a quick exchange of okays, we dropped down the buoy line.
To my surprise, there was NO current at all, or if there was any, pointing the scooter straight down took care of it. Descending that way is fun but a little challenging -- I have to keep my left hand on my nose the whole time, and since my right hand is on the scooter, that doesn't leave anything for inflating my drysuit. So the descent is punctuated by quick, frantic pulses of the dry suit valve, because I have about two seconds before my ears will start screaming at me! Anyway, we got to the bottom of the buoy, and the viz was okay but not stellar, but as we went down the rock slope, it got better and better.
One of the things I love about this site is the cloud sponges. I don't quite know why they fascinate me so much, but a combination of their incredible age as an organism, their interesting chemistry (with a silicon-based skeleton, rather than calcium carbonate as is more common), their beauty, and their potential as a hiding place for other interesting critters makes them one of my very favorite PNW things. And they're deep water animals (in fact, they were the reason I got my tech cert in the first place), often found well below 100 feet. At Flagpole, they start showing up in small clumps at about 90.
There were LOTS of rockfish in this part of the dive, including several vermilions. I chased them a little, trying to get a picture of my own, with no success. Why won't fish hold still for portraits? It's interesting, having me AND Peter taking pictures. We have to work this out a bit. We've developed a really good pattern for diving together when HE's photographing; I put him on something interesting to shoot, and then I scout the immediate area looking for more subjects. When he's done, we move on together. When both of us are shooting, he finishes his pictures and moves on, but my situational awareness isn't as good as it is without the camera, so I miss the move-on, and look up and he's twenty feet away and disappearing into the haze. Something to sort out.
Anyway, we spent some time on the deeper part of the dive, admiring the sponges (not just cloud, but nipple sponges, and small vase sponges as well). As we moved up a bit, we got into a whole FIELD of sea cucumbers, and Peter got a great photo of one licking its fingers:
This part of the dive also had a lot of nudibranchs:
We saw a Giant White Dorid that was absolutely the biggest I have never seen -- I had to swim over and verify it had rhinopores to believe it was a nudibranch at all. I think it would have weighed a couple of POUNDS.
We found the dive's only wolfie, who was surprisingly shy. I wonder if they see fewer divers that the ones at some of our South Sound sites, and aren't as accustomed to them?
We then moved up into the real murky layer. Current had picked up a bit, and Peter motioned that we should get back on the scooters, which we had clipped off earlier, at the bottom of the buoy. I was thinking, "Oh, boy, it will be fun to stay together in THIS stuff!" as we got on the trigger, but in fact, we didn't go very far before Peter stopped and shortly let go of his scooter. I was looking at him with curiosity, to figure out what was going on, when I saw him unclipping the camera. I looked in front of him, and was thrilled to see a good-sized GPO, out for a walkabout. Closer inspection proved him to be a unique individual, because he was missing one or two of his front arms, and had a large, white scar where they had been. I wonder what eats the arms off octopuses?
As Peter was clicking and clicking away, I used the scooter to get out of his way, around on the other side of the animal. He was clearly a 'pus on a mission, heading somewhere with great determination, and in the process, giving us a fantastic chance to watch his locomotion. But it occurred to me to look where he was going, and to my surprise, his goal was . . . ANOTHER octopus! A few feet ahead of him, a slightly larger animal was also out and about.
We watched the two of them for some time, but that dratted gas problem reared its head, and we had to move shallower. There ensued our usual argument about navigation. For whatever reason, Peter and I can agree on a compass course NUMBER, but never on exactly which direction actually comprises that course. He's always about 20 degrees to the left of me, and we've proven at Edmonds, time and again, that he's WRONG, because we end up on the north side of the jetty. Today was no different, including the fact that he won't believe me, and we go where he wants to go. All it meant, in this case, was that we ended up in the very shallow water in front of the houses, instead of in front of the beach. And that was okay, because the very shallow water was incredibly beautiful.
We did our 20 foot stop in Hawaii. No, really -- the water was a stunning turquoise and amazingly clear. We could look down at the rocks, covered with white and orange metridiums, and in front of us was an enormous school of very, very tiny silver fish, number at least in the hundreds, if not thousands. A sparking silver river, punctuated by many, various water jellies, reflecting our lights with shimmering points of color. It was a breathtaking end to what had already been an extraordinary dive.
We surfaced, and realized we had a bit more scootering to do to get back to the beach, so we put our faces in the water and went for it. Within a minute or so, we had found a VERY large Lion's Mane Jelly that was absolutely perfect, and Peter dropped down the 15 feet or so to take some photographs of it:
I couldn't join him, because when I tried, I found my right ear had decided I had done enough diving for the day! All I could do was hang at 3 feet, and watch the action, and continue to admire the extraordinary visibility.
It was with great reluctance on both of our parts, I think, that we finally stood up and became terrestrial animals again. I know it was with great reluctance that I renegotiated the slope up to the car (thanks, Kirk, for the two-handed assist!). All too soon, we were undressed and packed and ready to head home in our respective directions.
It was a lot of driving and ferry time for a single dive, but honestly, it was worth it. Thank you to Kirk, for providing the impetus to get us off our backsides and out into some of the best diving Puget Sound has to offer!
