Kiwi Kitty

I was in New Zealand for a gathering of very large database geeks, so I decided to spend a couple of extra days there and go diving. I was in Auckland, and the nearest place that is supposed to have good diving is the Poor Knights Islands (which, if you believe everything that you read on the web, were on Jacques Cousteau's top 10 places to dive in the world). They are about a 45 minute boat ride from the Tutukaka coast, which is about two and a half hours north of Auckland. Or three hours, if it is your first time driving on the left side of the road, and you are terrified of twisty mountain roads. The drive up there was pretty scenic, with some great views of the Pacific as you come over the hills.

I dove for two days (Friday and Saturday) with Dive! Tutukaka. I chose them out of the several dive operators there using a complex formula including the Google page rank, how pretty their website is, and what I read on Scubaboard (that they are probably the most likely to go out on any given day during the winter). On Friday, all of the divers (a total of 6) were out of towners, and none had dived there before. Most were pretty inexperienced divers, which I was a little surprised by since it is a cold water destination. I buddied up with the other experienced guy on the boat (Brendon, who also happened to be an instructor back in Australia). So I guess I got pretty lucky with my first insta-buddy experience. I had brought Rob's old point and shoot camera (sans strobe) to take some pictures. I have only used it a couple of times in the past, and didn't really remember all of the settings, so Rob instructed me to just point and shoot, and not bother fiddling with the settings. That sounded good to me, especially since I didn't know if I would end up diving with someone who wasn't very tolerant of waiting around while I doodled with the camera. Anyhoo, we were on the "Bright Arrow", which is 11.5 meters long, and was quite comfortable for 6 divers. They do things a little differently there... we got all the way out to the site before anyone really starting setting up gear or getting into their suits (I put my suit on before boarding the boat which got me some strange looks). I guess this works well when the water is crazy calm, as it was. When we got to the first site, they gave us a spiel about the islands, their geology (they are part of the rim of an old volcano), history (natives pillaging each others' settlements), fauna (fish, birds, and bugs), etc. It's a marine reserve, so it is no-take pretty far out from the islands. Apparently the islands have no rodents, but instead they have giant bugs. Ewww. Or maybe that is just what they tell people to keep them from going on the islands (which is not allowed).

After all of that, the diving commenced. The first site was called Cream Gardens, because of the gardens of cream-colored gorgonians. This site is on the northeast side of the north island. The water was cold -- around 57 degrees. I instantly decided that bringing my drysuit was well worth the hassle. I can't imagine diving that in a wetsuit, which is what everyone else on the boat was doing! Anyhoo, we started out in a shallow sloping cove where the boat was anchored, and from there, the island jutted out in a wall to the east, with the underwater topography mirroring the wall above. Brendon and I pretty quickly decided to take off from the herd (which the DM had told us we would probably want to do). It made it easier to stop and take pictures of things. When we first descended, my first thought was that the overall look of the reef reminded me of the Channel islands (so did the topography above water) -- blue water, rocky reef, short kelp stalks, and lots of sea urchins. Shortly after that, I found a Northern scorpion fish to take a couple of pictures of. They really remind me of Cabezons -- they blend into the reef just like cabs. Then I noticed that the reef was pepper with little spherical orange sponges that looked a lot like our orange puffball sponges! Close up, they didn't have the same texture but from afar, they looked so similar. I was really hoping to see some colorful nudibranchs (which, on the way out, the DM told me were flourishing recently). I pretty quickly found a gray sponge that was covered with little Ceratosoma amoena (known locally as "clown nudibranchs"). The small ones actually look quite a bit different than the big ones, because their spots are so small and to me at least, their gill plume and rhinophores look more purple and less pink. After deciding there was no way my camera could capture these little guys, I headed over to Brendon who was excitedly signaling me... he had found a Gem nudibranch (Dendrodoris denisoni). It was blowing around in the water, so he helped me relocate it and get some pictures. We meandered along, and when we got to the wall, we dropped a bit deeper and headed out a bit from the wall, to see some of the bigger fish that were hanging out at the bottom. Brendon told me that he saw a shark swim by, but I missed it :(

Eventually we headed back to the wall, where the gorgonians were. Their gorgonians are quite different from ours (and from the SoCal and Caribbean ones). They seem more brittle. The wall had more of the same stuff -- a lot of these gray sponges and lots more Clown nudibranchs. There were also tons of moray eels. They have several different species of morays there, but we mostly saw greys and yellows. I also found one other kind of nudibranch that looked very familiar to me -- it was a Cadlina of some sort. Overall, the encrusting life is very similar to what we have here, but in different colors. Their bryozoans, for instance, are much more colorful -- a pretty turquoise one was all over the place and so was a maroon one. As we were cruising along the wall, another shark swam by. While I didn't know what kind it was at the time, I am fairly certain it was a bronze whaler (which are quite common at the Poor Knights). A few minutes later, another, different type of shark swam by -- it was a much sleeker looking shark with a bluer color. I am not certain what it was, but after doing some research into what types of sharks are seen there, and what they look like, and talking to local divers, I think it was most likely a shortfin mako (which are not "common", but are sometimes seen there). We turned the dive and headed back in along the wall, a bit shallower. We passed several large schools of fish -- blue maomaos and demoiselles. We eventually passed the anchor line and after killing some time in the shallows, we ascended. 86 degrees, 51 minutes, 55 degrees

Between dives, we ate lunch and motored over to Riko Riko cave, which is allegedly the world's largest sea cave (by total volume, above and below water, I think). It was pretty cool -- the water looked incredibly clear. Apparently there's some interesting life in the water back there, because it is so dark. After that, we headed to a site nearby called Fruitcake Rock. It consisted of a big rock breaking the water. There were a bunch of New Zealand fur seals sitting on the rock. One of the DMs mentioned that they aren't usually too into divers, they usually just do a swim by and then lose interest. But we figured we would swim around the rock and see if the seals were feeling playful when we came back around. We came across several Tambja verconis, a really pretty turquoise and gold nudi; some of them were mating, and I saw their bright orange egg masses. I also saw a very pretty sponge, Dendrilla rosea, and a sponge that looked just like our aggregating nipple sponge. Also tons of blue-eyed triplefin, which I found totally adorable. When we were almost back to where we started, I had my head buried in a crack looking at a moray, when I got buzzed by a seal. Then he came back a few more times. Then he seemed to be gone, so we continued on, and when we got back almost to where we started, there were quite a few very playful seals dancing around checking out the divers. I took a few video clips of them. They were behaving a lot like our sea lions. 47 feet, 65 minutes, 55 degrees

On the second day that I dove, there were a lot more locals on the boat. We were on a much bigger boat, which included an open water class, as well as probably about 8 regular local divers. I ended up diving with another visitor (from Spain) and a divemaster, Sam, just the three of us. The first site was called Cleanerfish Bay. For the most part, we saw the same sort of stuff as the day before, although I didn't think the site was quite as pretty as far as topography. There were, however, a few little caverns. At the overhang entering the cavern, there were some interesting spots which seemed to have more/different encrusting life than elsewhere. Also, on this dive, I noticed tons of Cadlina willani. The divemaster also found a couple of tiny nudibranchs (one was an aeolid, the other was not) that were too small to ID without magnification. I found another one that looked similar to one he had found. Too bad I didn't have my Bob along to get some real pictures :( I also saw my first "real" starfish of the trip (other than brittle stars) -- I had been thinking it was strange how there weren't any starfish around! 52 feet, 56 minutes, 55 degrees

On the second dive, we were in a spot with a couple of pinnacles, called Trevor's Rock. I was diving with the same buddy, plus one of the other DMs, Debbie, again just as a threesome. Before the dive, we were instructed not to go deeper than 48 feet, since that was our depth from the first dive. Apparently diving to 60 feet after a dive to 50 feet puts you in extreme peril. Anyhoo, we meandered over to the pinnacles, in a sort of boulder field, and then visited a couple of pinnacles of varying size and depth. The last one we ended on came up to about 20 feet, and was very pretty with lots of fish swimming around in the shallows. We saw a small stingray laying in the sand at the bottom of one of the pinnacles. Also several more of all of the nudibranchs I had seen on earlier dives. 50 feet, 53 minutes, 57 degrees

Overall, I thought the diving was definitely worth the side trip. If I went back to New Zealand, I would probably try to dive some other spots too (like the south island, where they allegedly have weedy sea dragons!).

All of the pictures are here.

Big Sur Banks

On Saturday, we went on a much anticipated BAUE charter to Big Sur Banks. Long anticipated too -- on the first day of Tech 1, when we had to introduce ourselves and say why we were taking the class, Big Sur Banks came up during Rob's spiel. Then for the rest of the class, every time Beto was describing a scenario to us, it was at Big Sur Banks :P So, at long last, Saturday at 6 AM we took to the high seas (actually the seas were quite low). The sea conditions were really stellar, I even got a few wink winks in on the way down. It was a bit overcast and chilly, but the visibility over the water was good by the time we got down there. However, I didn't want to take any chances with having to hurriedly get geared up in big barfy seas, so I strategically got dressed over the course of about an hour before we got down there.

Once we were down there, we started to gear up before the hook had even been set. The plan was to drop a grapple, to minimize any damage to the reef, with a float ball attached to it. Actually there were two floats, the idea being that the line between them would serve as a current line on the surface. However, Neptune had other plans for that ball, as it was sucked underwater by the current. One of the DMs hopped in with another little float with line on it and attached it to the ball left on the surface. Luckily that ball was not swallowed by the ocean, so we were left with two floats connected by a granny line. This was all going on while we were sitting on the benches with our gear on and bottles clipped to us. My upper back was killing me from hunching in my doubles trying to stay comfortable. Anyhoo, once everything was setup, we all Geronimo'd off the side, and drifted into the line. Then the fun began. After sorting out the two teams on the line, we started our descent, against a ripping current. Now I know what the term "ripping current" is meant to describe :) In about 20 feet, tons of salps came streaming by in the current. We were pulling ourselves down the line slowly (the one upside of which was that I had no ear problems whatsoever!), but really not slowly since I was getting pretty winded on the way down. I kept cracking open the knob on my reg until finally it would open no further :( At around 100 feet, I decided I needed a little break, so I told the boys we needed to stop for a moment. I was trying to signal something useful to them, which proved tricky since I was holding on for dear life with one hand, and had my light on the other hand. But I think they got the idea. The pause was surprisingly refreshing, as hanging like a flag in the wind wasn't really hard, except perhaps on my hand. After a minute, we continued down (after a little team re-ordering, since Rob had skipped ahead of me on the line earlier).

As we got to 120', I started to get mighty suspicious of the lack of pinnacle. Soon it became clear that the hook had slipped, and instead of a pinnacle from 120-ish to 160-ish, we were over sand in about 170', which was littered with small boulders topping out around 160'. At this point we were about 10 minutes into the dive, and it seemed pointless to abort and try to reposition. For one thing, I was probably too pooped for another long descent against the current, but I also probably didn't have the gas, and the time constraints for the day would have made it tough as well. It also didn't seem feasible to try to find the pinnacle, since it would no doubt require swimming against the current, which I know I was in no mood to do. So we decided to just poke around where we were, and shorten the dive as necessary due to the depth. The problem with the low-lying boulders was that nothing was there to protect us from the current, so even once we got down, we still had to contend with that. We pretty much swam around a handful of these boulders for a while. One that we came upon pretty quickly actually had a nice bushy piece of pink hydrocoral. All of the boulders had hydrocoral in decent quantities, but it was mostly the more two dimensional sheets that I don't think are nearly as pretty as the shrubs. There were also gorgonians and lots of Hermissendas, including the red and peach tipped ones that I find very attractive. After visiting some of the other boulders, we sort of gravitated back to the one with the pretty hydrocoral bush, and Rob took some pics (which was an amusing feat due to the current). Before you know it, it was time to head up. We ascended to 120', and Rob shot the bag from there (we had planned to shoot it from the "reef" but I didn't know how a 150' spool would fare from 160' :P).

The ascent was actually pretty interesting. First of all, we drifted past a couple of huge schools of rockfish. We were also visited by a parade of jelly animals. We were pretty much continuously greeted by more Cyclosalpa's, and then there were some comb jellies. We saw a comb jelly that looked like a Leucothea, but without the chocolate chips (err, red spots). Then later we saw a Leucothea. There were also tons of sea gooseberries. Finally, we saw a reasonably big jelly that I had never seen before, which I am pretty sure was a Beroe forskalii. I am sure there are others I am forgetting! I was a little surprised that there were no egg yolk jellies, since I have been seeing them all over the place lately (including closer in around Big Sur). When we returned to the boat, we found out that the hook had slipped and we were about 150 yards away from the pinnacle. Oops. I guess that's what happens when you put six gear-laden divers pulling on a line held in place with an itty bitty grapple. 162 feet, 63 minutes, 50 degrees

We were diving in two shifts, so the second shift for the first dive had the benefit of the hook being moved back to the pinnacle, sort of. This time Phil used the big boy anchor, and anchored the boat. As a result, the teams had to make it from the gate to the front of the boat, just to get started down the line. This proved an insurmountable feat for the swimming team (despite Phil's supportive cheers about the size of the teams' reproductive organs). The second team was on scooters, and tried to give the swimmers a tow, which resulted in the scooters moving backwards. Yikes. After 10 minutes or so of getting their asses kicked on the surface, the swimming team ended up sitting out the dive. We had a while before our next dive, during which we swapped gear out and had some food. Apparently reporting on the contents of my lunch is lame, so I will have to skip that today. When Beto and Susan returned from their dive, they told us about a "big" shark that was hanging out on the top of the pinnacle during their dive. Hmmm, I wasn't sure whether to be terrified or excited. In any case, I decided to just put it out of my mind for the time being.

Then we sort of regrouped and discussed what to do next. We considered moving to a site closer in, which would hopefully have less current. However, we decided to give it another try here, and to risk not getting another dive in vs. going to a less exciting site. But it was clear that anchoring the boat was not the way to do it. So, instead, we used the approach we'd used on the first dive (drifting into the buoy) but with the bigger anchor. We got in the water, and swiftly found ourselves at the buoys. We started the descent (right behind Clinton and Nick), which was also a strenuous pull down the line. And a looong pull. There was zillions of feet of scope, it seemed. We eventually dropped off the line, hoping that the pinnacle would shield us a little from the current -- ha! Instead, we were just kicking against the current and deeper :( However, it turned out to be worth it, when I saw a vase sponge (or boot sponge, people seem to call them different things), which I have never seen before! That was neat. We continued along and finally got to the pinnacle at around12 minutes into the dive. We worked our way up the side of the pinnacle, and ended up settling on top, since that's where all of the really huge pieces of hydrocoral were. They were incredibly big -- much bigger than any hydrocoral heads I have seen before by a large margin. I tried to pose for a couple of pictures behind various chunks of hydrocoral, which was quite comical -- in there current, it was nearly impossible for both me and Rob to hold a position long enough for him to get any shots. However, we did get at least one nice pose of me and Kevin behind a piece of hydrocoral. I also attempted to pose for Clinton too, but also found that to be pretty impossible.

Before you know it, it was time to start our ascent. That's the downside of spending half of the bottom time to get to the site :( Bob shot the bag and we headed up. As soon as we left, we seemed to fly off of the pinnacle. At around 70', we flew by the anchor line. The ascent was pretty uneventful, until we were at 10'. All of a sudden, Kevin seemed to charge us and shake us around and point down below. All I could think of was the "big shark" that was supposedly seen on the previous team's dive. My fears were not allayed when I scanned the water and saw a flash of silver... which was a curious mola mola! He kept swooping around us coming closer to check us out. I held my hand out and he swam up about 6 inches from it, as if he was sniffing it like a curious kitty. We played around with the mola for a few minutes until he lost interest and swam off. 166 feet, 61 minutes, 48 degrees

The water was dead calm for the ride back, so we made great time getting home. There was plenty of time to eat, swing by Cynthia's, and still make it home in time for kitty feeding time.

All of the day's pictures are here.

Scootering with Ted

On Saturday, we scootered at Lobos with Ted. Someone decided we were going to Beto's Reef (apparently Rob and Ted had decided this before I even knew we were diving with Ted). So that was the plan. I managed to negotiate a "late" start of 8:30, hehe. Ted was amazingly unlate (no later than we were, anyway). We decided that Ted would lead us out there, we'd hang out there for a while, then head in shallower, and maybe doodle around in the shallows with the reel (just for practice, since I was saying recently that I haven't actually run line since T1).

We scootered out on the surface until we were a little bit beyond the worm patch, and we dropped in the sand channel. We scooted out, and then Ted took us to Beto's in a slightly more east-ish route than I am used to. So we ended up coming up to Beto's on the right side, instead of the usual straight on or left side. So we hopped over to the other side, and scootered out to the end, just for giggles, and then came back closer to the beginning. Then we clipped off and kicked around. Rob was shooting macro, because I guess he has given up on getting glamour shots of Ted :) We were kicking around looking for interesting stuff, but I really wasn't seeing too much exciting stuff. I did find a Eubranchus on some hydroids and an Aegires or two. Of course there was the wolf eel, who we stopped to visit. Rob was poking around looking for the warbonnet but never found him (I am fairly sure he was too far south). I did find this cool little hole that I dropped into and found it was crawling with Berthellas. It was funny, since I hadn't seen any of them elsewhere on the reef, but they had taken over this little cave. There was a lot of mating going on :) Other than that, I saw a very cute sculpin hiding under a piece of seaweed flopping around in the surge, and a big fluffy Dirona. Before you know it, it was time to head in.

The scoot in was pretty uneventful, except that Ted had some "buckle issues". We'll just leave it at that. When we got to 35 or so feet, Ted stowed his scooter and I towed him in just for practice. When we got to worm patch, after a little discussion, I retrieved the reel from Rob and played with it for a few minutes. As I was reeling in, I noticed a stalked jellyfish on a piece of kelp. I showed it to Rob, and he stopped to take some pictures. It was a bit of a challenge with the surge and the kelp, but I tried to hold the piece of kelp it was on while he took pics. When we were finished with that, I finished reeling in and as I was cleaning up the reel, I heard scooters. I figured Rob and Ted got sick of waiting for me and decided to play a mean trick on me. But when I looked up, it was Kevin and Karl buzzing us. After that, we headed to the sand channel and ascended there. I was pretty wet, so while Rob and Ted were dawdling on the surface, I told them we should get going. I scootered off and as I was going, I saw a cool little jelly just below the surface. I showed it to Rob and we hung out while he took some pics. Then we headed in, and as it turned out, I saw another of the same type of jelly on the way in. 106 feet, 91 minutes, 51 degrees

After warming up and refueling a little, we decided to just do an easy middle reef dive for dive 2. But with scooters of course (yes, I know it is very lame to scooter to the end of middle reef; I blame Ted). We scootered down to the sand channel, to the end of middle reef, and then swooped around through the rubbly patch at the northern end. It got super dark when we entered the kelp forest because of the kelp canopy. We then scootered down the east side sand channel a little bit, and picked a spot to hang out around. I found a little overhang with a Berthella orgy going on underneath. Other than that, I saw the usual stuff, including lots of cute sculpins. We meandered down the channel by kick, and when it was finally time to head in, we scootered back in, and ascended near the worm patch. 64 feet, 62 minutes, 53 degrees

All of the day's pictures are here.

Montana, by Boat

Saturday we were on the Escapade for a BAUE tech charter. We were hoping to get down to Yankee Point, but the weather gods were not on our side. The wind out of the west was punishing on the trip down, with anything not tied down sliding across the deck every time we got smacked by a wave. It was also really foggy. For much of the trip down, I had no idea where we were. We stopped in the vicinity of the Pinnacles and circled around there briefly, then continued on. The fogged seemed to have cleared around there, but then as we continued on, it became apparent that it was just patchy, and it was still plenty foggy. By this point, we decided to try for E3 or one of the other sites just outside of Lobos. So we motored down there, where it was also quite foggy. It was so foggy that I couldn't really tell what sites we were checking out. After a bit of site shopping, things weren't looking good. Then someone had the bright idea of checking out Montana (instead of heading back into the bay, which was the other option). We headed over there and it seemed doable. A little choppy, but not as foggy as other spots.

On the way down, we kept hearing rumors of a really thick layer down to about 60' and then 10 to 15' viz below. I was skeptical. It turned out to be not nearly that bad. The layer wasn't that thick, and once we got to the bottom, the viz was probably around 50 feet. On the way down the line, we saw a bunch of egg yolk jellies (which I never get tired of seeing!). We were anchored near the southeast side, and headed clockwise when we got to the bottom. We were actually moving at a fairly quick clip, and pausing when Rob stopped to take pictures (he was leading). Rob found a starry rockfish, which I was very excited to see. I don't think I have ever seen one before. There weren't a ton of fish out, but there was a good variety of rockfish. There were also several big lingcod (at least 3, all in one area). A few of the corners of the reef had some very pretty Corynactis and hydrocoral coverage. Other than that, we saw the usual small critters -- nudibranchs, simnia snails, and lot of pedicularia snails on the hydrocoral.

Before you know it, we had made it nearly the whole way around, and it was time to leave. Kevin was on bag duty and I ran deco (mad with power!). At 50 feet, a big school of blue rockfish suddenly appeared below us and started to swim up toward us. They weren't there at 60 feet, so we must have drifted into them or something. But as we left the 50 foot stop, they lost interested in us. We also saw a lot more jellyfish on the ascent, including some egg yolks -- we had to move Kevin around to avoid them :) There were also a lot of different tiny jelly creatures in the water, which I was checking out and pointing out to the others. I have no idea what these were. The deco was surprisingly pleasant, probably because I was wearing my purple suit, which has this amazing property of actually keeping me dry (knock on wood).

When we got to the surface, we were the first team up (not surprising, since we were the first team down too), and Jim came over to pick us up. It was quite choppy on the surface. The boys implemented the "ladies last" rule of reboarding the boat (I think they learned it from Ted, who has been trying to start a "no girls" dive club) so I was stuck on the line getting knocked around while they dilly dallied with camera/bottles. If you are going to push your dive buddy out of the way to get back on the boat, you should at least be quick with the hand off! By the time I got to the ladder, I was eager to get back on the boat; it was a slightly harrowing experience. I was just relieved to sit down and take my gear off. By the time we were back on, one of the other teams had reached the surface, so we headed over and got them. I think their return to the boat was even more painful with all of the additional bottles. After gathering all of the teams, we got the hell out of there. Jim seemed eager to get back to the bay, I guess expecting conditions to deteriorate. The trip back was actually surprisingly not bad. 151 feet, 71 minutes, 51 degrees

Photo by Susan Bird

On the surface interval, we were treated to some croissant sandwiches (the Kitty's favorite, thanks Jim). Just to be fair, I guess I have to whip out the stamp of approval for the Escapade too (although the Escapade always had the stamp of approval, sandwiches or not!). We also took a little detour for a whale watch -- there was a humpback. I only got a brief glance at it breaching, and then saw its spout a couple of times. When the conversation turned to where/whether to do a second dive, there was a lack of enthusiasm. Several people planned to sit out a second dive, and I registered ambivalence about (would go if we did it, but wasn't totally attached to it). Luckily Rob and Clinton were enthusiastic enough to make up for the rest of us, and Rob suggested Ballbuster (once he woke up from his Cheetos stupor). So that's where we went.

Based on my extreme ambivalence, I told Kevin he had to lead :) I also suggested a relatively short bottom time (35 minutes) because I suspected I would get cold. We headed into the water, and it was pretty ugly on the way down. But it cleared up somewhat by the time that we got down to the reef, and suddenly the pink (Corynactis) with white spots (metridium) appeared out of the haze. After checking the anchor, we meandered around the reef pretty slowly, pausing here and there to pose for pictures. I noticed a bunch of juvenile rockfish at one point, including one that was nuzzled in a piece of staghorn bryozoan, between a row of horns -- very cute. It was very dark and green, which as far as I can tell, it always is at Ballbuster. Rumor has it that it can occasionally be better, but I've never seen it :) Eventually we made it back to the anchor line, and Kevin suggested we doodle around for another 5 minutes and then head up. So Rob took a few final shots of us posing next to Metridium, and then we headed up.

At 30 feet, the viz suddenly got super icky. All throughout the dive, my mask kept fogging up, and I would flood it to de-fog. At 30 feet, I realized I was foggy again, but hesitated for a moment, because the water was just SO ICKY, I didn't want to get those chunks of god-knows-what (whale poo?) in my eyes. But finally I decided that ascending blind would be inconvenient and sucked it up. At 20 feet, we bumped into (literally, perhaps) Clinton and Harry. They soon left us and then we bumped into them (figuratively this time) again at 10 feet. By the time we got up to the surface and swam to the back of the boat, they were still lollygagging, so I swooped in after Harry got back on the boat, and invoked the rule of ladies first. After everyone got back on, it was a short trip back to the dock, just long enough for an Escapade cookie. Then we adjourned to Turtle Bay. 97 feet, 44 minutes, 50 degrees

All of the underwater pics are here, and topside pics are here.