Friday, November 20, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Big Big Critters
Its been a while! Over two months since we've been in the water. Curtis was in London and I didn't want to go without my best dive buddy.
We had two great dives on Sunday. One beyond the kelp at Breakwater and one trip down the pipe to the Metridium Fields. Curtis was manning the camera, and we got a lot of movies of the critters we saw. We found the biggest crab we've ever seen - a sheep crab. You can see him in the movie below. We also found some gigantic sunflower stars and some itty bitty baby sunflower stars.
We had two great dives on Sunday. One beyond the kelp at Breakwater and one trip down the pipe to the Metridium Fields. Curtis was manning the camera, and we got a lot of movies of the critters we saw. We found the biggest crab we've ever seen - a sheep crab. You can see him in the movie below. We also found some gigantic sunflower stars and some itty bitty baby sunflower stars.
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| From Scuba Day and Night |
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| From Scuba Day and Night |
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Longest Dives Ever
We did three dives yesterday, each over an hour long. We finished our underwater navigator course and did a night dive for fun. It was so awesomely calm out this weekend! No waves. No surf. No surge. When we finished our night dive, the water was like glass - so calm and peaceful.
Notably on yesterday's dives, we saw a HUGE number of animals. Including 2 electric rays - buried in the sand, we could just make out their outline. And a lot of octopi on our night dive. They are so cool - they started out spread on the bottom blending in with the sand. When you shine a light on them, they turn orange, and then start moving - looking for a place to hide. They find a hole they can fit in and start squeezing their arms in... then their head... and finally the very last tentacle. Bloop! Gone. We saw three that were about 8-12 inches across, and several more that were only about 4 inches across. Cute little guys. :)
Since we were doing a class and were practicing using our compass, we didn't bring the camera. A shame given how calm the water was and how many animals we saw! Could have had some really nice pictures.
Here's our rough list of many of the cool animals we saw yesterday:
Notably on yesterday's dives, we saw a HUGE number of animals. Including 2 electric rays - buried in the sand, we could just make out their outline. And a lot of octopi on our night dive. They are so cool - they started out spread on the bottom blending in with the sand. When you shine a light on them, they turn orange, and then start moving - looking for a place to hide. They find a hole they can fit in and start squeezing their arms in... then their head... and finally the very last tentacle. Bloop! Gone. We saw three that were about 8-12 inches across, and several more that were only about 4 inches across. Cute little guys. :)
Since we were doing a class and were practicing using our compass, we didn't bring the camera. A shame given how calm the water was and how many animals we saw! Could have had some really nice pictures.
Here's our rough list of many of the cool animals we saw yesterday:
- Nudibranchs: lots of Hermissendas, *one tiny orange one, *one white one with black markings
- Jellyfish: Two different kinds. They were everywhere. It was just like the jellyfish fields on spongebob squarepants. Some were as small as a pea. The largest were about 4-6 inches long. So thick we couldn't avoid running into them.
- Crabs: Lots of little red kelp crabs holding onto the green blades of seaweed. Hundreds and hundreds of hermit crabs all congregated together at the same spot. Big crabs and little crabs of all assorted varieties.
- Shrimp: Little clear stripy shrimp just an inch long. Skeleton shrimp!! Out of the blue there was one holding onto my glove. Another was drifting by and I put my glove next to him so he could grab on. They gave us a little dancing show. :) Some kind of big long shrimp on the night dive that we'd never seen before.
- Starfish: Well - they are never in short supply. But on one of our dives we came upon an enormous sunflower star. He was cruisng along pretty fast and in front of him all the sand dabs and small crabs were coming out of the 'woodwork' and fleeing for their lives. It was just like watching a cheesy horror movie - seeing this big hairy starfish slowly terrorizing the poor fish in the village. We also learned about brittle stars. They bury themselves in the sand and just leave one leg sticking up to grab food. Once we realized what they were, we saw them everywhere - waving that leg in the water.
- Urchins!: We hadn't seen any live urchins before, but we saw several small ones. We also saw a sand dollar scooting himself along through the sand.
- Fish: Not too many large fish on these dives overall, but we saw lots of rockfish by the rock wall at breakwater. Few other large fish here and there. The bottom at Del Monte was covered with little inch long sand dabs. If you hovered in one place you'd see them lift up off the bottom, swim to a new spot, then settle down and blend back in with the bottom. We saw some larger ones (4-5 inches) on our night dive plus one that was totally different from the others.
- Rays: We found two electric rays buried in the sand. We fanned the sand and dusted them off, but they stayed put - just ruffled the edges of their wings at us.
- Snails: Lots and lots and lots of cone snails and quite a few moon snails and a few whelks. Plus the normal olives and top snails.
- Octopi: Several large, several small. Plus a few stubby squids. We startled them and they inked and swam away.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Murky surgey day... but with pictures!
We joined in a fun dive today - the visibility wasn't great, but we had our camera with us and finally got to take some pictures. Unfortunately - we were getting sloshed around so much, it was hard to really hold still to focus. More of a fly-by-snap fest. :) In the end, only a couple of the photos came out clear enough to share. Hopefully we'll have better photo ops in dives to come.
One fun thing about this dive - the seals were out and about having fun with us. At one point, down at 40 ft. we saw a big fat seal just laying on the bottom between some rocks, looking at us. He decided we were boring and darted away. I didn't write about our previous dive, but we had another seal encounter. As we swam along, we felt something tugging at our fins. A seal! He bit my fins and Curtis' before quickly darting away. :)
We also saw one poor seal back at the dock - inching his way up the boat ramp. He got to the top and lolled his head back, looking out with big watery eyes at all the tourists who wanted to take his picture. Eventually the marine animal patrol came to help the poor guy who was undernourished... evidently this wasn't the first time that particular seal had made his way up the boat ramp.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Deep sea diving
We did 4 deep dives this weekend. The goal is to learn to do deep diving in controlled conditions and make sure you know how you react to nitrogen narcosis - a sort of "I'm drunk!" feeling many people get when they go below 100ft.
Lucky for us - the water was perfect for diving this weekend. No waves, no swell, and 30-80' visibility. Incredible!
Saturday we anchored at Ballbuster. This site has a nice description of how Ballbuster got its name, and some good pictures from that spot: http://www.coldwaterimages.com/ballbuster.html
We went down to 130ft and swam along the bottom for about 10 minutes. There were a bunch of metridiums (the large white anemones you can see in the pictures in the above link). We also saw quite a few fish and very large crabs. I'm always excited to see crabs, and once again Curtis was doing a good job of finding them for me. :)
When it was time to go up, we carefully and slowly ascended, doing a one minute stop at 40 feet in addition to our 3 minute safety stop at 15 feet. No problem!
There was just one hitch - as I was climbing the ladder back into the boat, my weight belt slipped off, and I watched in that 80' visibility as it sank, sank, right out of sight. Sigh. We put out a drop line and made a plan to dive the same spot for the second dive and see if we could retrieve the weightbelt. Luckily there was enough extra weight on board that I could still do the second dive, by just using the weight pockets in my BCD.
Luckily, on the second dive the weight belt was found. Just when we thought they was no way, and it was almost time to start ascending. Meanwhile, Curtis noticed that one of the other diver's tanks had come loose from his BCD and was just floating along behind him. Grrrr. Curtis tried to help, but it turns out its really hard to fix something like that in the water - better just to ascend carefully and make sure the tank and diver stay together. In all the action, we lost track of the fact that there was a descent amount of current and we weren't holding the anchor line. We started drifting as we ascended and three of us ended a fair distance from the boat. A long swim against the current to end the dive is a good way to use up that remaining energy. Sooooo tired afterwords. But it was a good dive to do a retrospective on - what went wrong and what could we have done better.
Came home and slept for 9 hours. Because guess what? Sunday we had to do the same thing again!
Sunday we were at the Great Pinnacle in Point Lobos State Reserve. Now that we had mastered the basics of deep diving, the plan was to go down to 120' for just a couple minutes, and then come up to about 60' where we could do a fun dive around the pinnacle without having such a short bottom time. (The deeper you go, the faster your air runs out, among other things).
The great pinnacle was amazing. There were 'Southern Sea Palms' growing all along the upper part of the pinnacle, huge carpets of red and orange cub coral, they looked like a candy holiday. Large lemon nudibranchs, so numerous I named it the 'Nudibranch petting zoo'. We saw a couple super lazy ling code, just stretched out and laying on the bottom. You could look right into their faces and they'd just look right back, never flinching a fin. We saw a huge greenling - they are really pretty with their brilliant reds and blues. We also saw some small greenlings camouflaged amongst the cup coral. Then there were the Sheepheads. Three of them. Only one came close - he'd lazily swim up, sort of tilt on his side to get a better look at us, then slowly swim away again.
No mishaps on either of Sunday's dives, so it was a very good day. Ending in rain, falling heavier and heavier. Definitely time to pack up and head for some good hot lunch!
Lucky for us - the water was perfect for diving this weekend. No waves, no swell, and 30-80' visibility. Incredible!
Saturday we anchored at Ballbuster. This site has a nice description of how Ballbuster got its name, and some good pictures from that spot: http://www.coldwaterimages.com/ballbuster.html
We went down to 130ft and swam along the bottom for about 10 minutes. There were a bunch of metridiums (the large white anemones you can see in the pictures in the above link). We also saw quite a few fish and very large crabs. I'm always excited to see crabs, and once again Curtis was doing a good job of finding them for me. :)
When it was time to go up, we carefully and slowly ascended, doing a one minute stop at 40 feet in addition to our 3 minute safety stop at 15 feet. No problem!
There was just one hitch - as I was climbing the ladder back into the boat, my weight belt slipped off, and I watched in that 80' visibility as it sank, sank, right out of sight. Sigh. We put out a drop line and made a plan to dive the same spot for the second dive and see if we could retrieve the weightbelt. Luckily there was enough extra weight on board that I could still do the second dive, by just using the weight pockets in my BCD.
Luckily, on the second dive the weight belt was found. Just when we thought they was no way, and it was almost time to start ascending. Meanwhile, Curtis noticed that one of the other diver's tanks had come loose from his BCD and was just floating along behind him. Grrrr. Curtis tried to help, but it turns out its really hard to fix something like that in the water - better just to ascend carefully and make sure the tank and diver stay together. In all the action, we lost track of the fact that there was a descent amount of current and we weren't holding the anchor line. We started drifting as we ascended and three of us ended a fair distance from the boat. A long swim against the current to end the dive is a good way to use up that remaining energy. Sooooo tired afterwords. But it was a good dive to do a retrospective on - what went wrong and what could we have done better.
Came home and slept for 9 hours. Because guess what? Sunday we had to do the same thing again!
Sunday we were at the Great Pinnacle in Point Lobos State Reserve. Now that we had mastered the basics of deep diving, the plan was to go down to 120' for just a couple minutes, and then come up to about 60' where we could do a fun dive around the pinnacle without having such a short bottom time. (The deeper you go, the faster your air runs out, among other things).
The great pinnacle was amazing. There were 'Southern Sea Palms' growing all along the upper part of the pinnacle, huge carpets of red and orange cub coral, they looked like a candy holiday. Large lemon nudibranchs, so numerous I named it the 'Nudibranch petting zoo'. We saw a couple super lazy ling code, just stretched out and laying on the bottom. You could look right into their faces and they'd just look right back, never flinching a fin. We saw a huge greenling - they are really pretty with their brilliant reds and blues. We also saw some small greenlings camouflaged amongst the cup coral. Then there were the Sheepheads. Three of them. Only one came close - he'd lazily swim up, sort of tilt on his side to get a better look at us, then slowly swim away again.
No mishaps on either of Sunday's dives, so it was a very good day. Ending in rain, falling heavier and heavier. Definitely time to pack up and head for some good hot lunch!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Fun Dives on a Rainy Day
We were supposed to head to Point Lobos for a fun dive, but the wind was howling in the trees and when we pulled up to the gate at the park they said they had a lot of trees down and the park was closed. But - despite the stormy weather, Monterey Bay actually looked fairly calm, so we went back to Breakwater and launched the boat from there.
We motored over to an area in front of the aquarium for a dive amongst the kelp. Just after we reached the bottom, a seal scooted by checking us out! There were lots of rock fish too - right under the boat, hanging out amongst the kelp and looking at us - I don't think we phased them one bit. We saw lots of different types of rock fish on our two dives. My favorite is when there's a big crack in the rocks - the fish like to hang out in the crack - but they have to hover vertically to fit. Crazy fishes.
The second dive was at Eric's Pinnacle - sitting in about 65' of water and reaching to within 15' of the surface. Its covered with cup coral, star fish, sponges, anemones, crabs, crabs, crabs... Curtis had the big flashlight and did a great job of pointing out all the camouflaged crabs. We saw a sunflower star upside down trying to right itself - 50 legs flailing. Two crabs in the throes of battle. Nudibranch hangouts. Some beautiful feathery fronds from a filter feeder combing the water for food. A greenling! And more rock fish hanging out vertically in the cracks.
As we rode back to shore, the rain was coming down hard and stinging our faces, but we were nice and dry in our dry suits. For such an unpleasant looking day on the surface, we sure had a good day of diving!
We motored over to an area in front of the aquarium for a dive amongst the kelp. Just after we reached the bottom, a seal scooted by checking us out! There were lots of rock fish too - right under the boat, hanging out amongst the kelp and looking at us - I don't think we phased them one bit. We saw lots of different types of rock fish on our two dives. My favorite is when there's a big crack in the rocks - the fish like to hang out in the crack - but they have to hover vertically to fit. Crazy fishes.
The second dive was at Eric's Pinnacle - sitting in about 65' of water and reaching to within 15' of the surface. Its covered with cup coral, star fish, sponges, anemones, crabs, crabs, crabs... Curtis had the big flashlight and did a great job of pointing out all the camouflaged crabs. We saw a sunflower star upside down trying to right itself - 50 legs flailing. Two crabs in the throes of battle. Nudibranch hangouts. Some beautiful feathery fronds from a filter feeder combing the water for food. A greenling! And more rock fish hanging out vertically in the cracks.
As we rode back to shore, the rain was coming down hard and stinging our faces, but we were nice and dry in our dry suits. For such an unpleasant looking day on the surface, we sure had a good day of diving!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Rescue Diver - First attempt
Today we went to Del Monte beach for the ocean part of our Rescue Diver class. It was our first time at that dive site - and actually - since we stayed pretty shallow there wasn't much to see as far as sea life ... just sand dollars and a big snail with a pretty shell. There's supposed to be a big shale reef further off the beach though.
I got to practice being the victim a lot - Curtis had to haul me out on his back. I was supposed to try returning the favor, but man - I'm just not strong enough. I was able to help with a two person carry and then drag him up the beach. :)
In the water we were supposed to practice removing equipment while giving rescue breaths and towing the unresponsive diver back to shore. It's really hard to do and as the waves and current were starting to pick up and we were starting to get tired ... I actually gave up and decided to try again another time. Curtis kept working at it but he needs more practice too - we were struggling with keeping the timing of the rescue breaths while making progress with removing gear. We did well at bringing an unresponsive diver up from the bottom though. That's something!
Still - although we haven't completed our rescue diver certification yet, we have learned a lot about how to help ourselves as well as help others in trouble. Hopefully that training will help us keep from getting in trouble in the first place!
I got to practice being the victim a lot - Curtis had to haul me out on his back. I was supposed to try returning the favor, but man - I'm just not strong enough. I was able to help with a two person carry and then drag him up the beach. :)
In the water we were supposed to practice removing equipment while giving rescue breaths and towing the unresponsive diver back to shore. It's really hard to do and as the waves and current were starting to pick up and we were starting to get tired ... I actually gave up and decided to try again another time. Curtis kept working at it but he needs more practice too - we were struggling with keeping the timing of the rescue breaths while making progress with removing gear. We did well at bringing an unresponsive diver up from the bottom though. That's something!
Still - although we haven't completed our rescue diver certification yet, we have learned a lot about how to help ourselves as well as help others in trouble. Hopefully that training will help us keep from getting in trouble in the first place!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
New dry suits
Here's Curtis in his new Pinnacle trilaminate dry suit!
So far we like the suits a lot. We were diving in a Mares neoprene dry suit before. In comparison, we're a little baggier, but its easier to control buoyancy. And we need a lot less weight. Between the steel tank, trilam drysuit, and weezle undergarment (instead of polartech), and taking the peak performance buoyancy class, I was able to drop from 38 lbs of lead to 18 lbs. Sweet!
So far we like the suits a lot. We were diving in a Mares neoprene dry suit before. In comparison, we're a little baggier, but its easier to control buoyancy. And we need a lot less weight. Between the steel tank, trilam drysuit, and weezle undergarment (instead of polartech), and taking the peak performance buoyancy class, I was able to drop from 38 lbs of lead to 18 lbs. Sweet!
Peak Performance Buoyancy
Curtis and I finished our Peak Performance Buoyancy class this weekend. That was a lot of fun! We first practiced in the pool - swimming through hula hoops and practicing hovering in place without sinking or floating up - just staying in exactly one spot. Then we had to do it again while passing a 5 pound weight back and forth. Take the weight and try not to sink. Let go of the weight and try not to float up. Yesterday we headed to the ocean to give it a try there!
It was a beautiful day at Breakwater, with 35 foot visibility - which is crazy far for that spot. It was a good thing to. I'm not sure how easy it would be to find the hula hoops in 5 ft visibility. :) Somehow I never did get the hang of swimming through the hoops in the ocean. I always got caught on them and ended up dragging them along with me. Sigh. But I was able to hover and feel a lot more confident now about how much weight I'm carrying and how fast I make my ascents and descents.
Curtis on the other hand is quite the pro! He would swim through those hoops as gracefully as a seal. Here's his dive profile from the second dive yesterday. Beautiful!
So what did we see while we were practicing floating as calmly as a fish? A few cool things like... a new type of nudibranch - PURPLE! and quite large! Can't wait till we have another fun dive and can try taking pictures again now that we are better at hovering. And ... we made it to the Metridium Fields! Lots of giant white anemones swaying gracefully in the current. I saw a pretty big crab booking it into hiding after he saw us coming.
It was a beautiful day at Breakwater, with 35 foot visibility - which is crazy far for that spot. It was a good thing to. I'm not sure how easy it would be to find the hula hoops in 5 ft visibility. :) Somehow I never did get the hang of swimming through the hoops in the ocean. I always got caught on them and ended up dragging them along with me. Sigh. But I was able to hover and feel a lot more confident now about how much weight I'm carrying and how fast I make my ascents and descents. 
Curtis on the other hand is quite the pro! He would swim through those hoops as gracefully as a seal. Here's his dive profile from the second dive yesterday. Beautiful!
So what did we see while we were practicing floating as calmly as a fish? A few cool things like... a new type of nudibranch - PURPLE! and quite large! Can't wait till we have another fun dive and can try taking pictures again now that we are better at hovering. And ... we made it to the Metridium Fields! Lots of giant white anemones swaying gracefully in the current. I saw a pretty big crab booking it into hiding after he saw us coming.
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