Three Nixies

Today we went to Three Nixies.  It seems like there was a period of time where we went here a lot, but not so much anymore.  Or maybe I just remember it differently.  Seems like Mount Chamberlin was, for a long time, the old standby area to go to if we could make it to Yankee Point.  Then we started going to Dos Gatos/Three Nixies a lot more, and now the pendulum has swung back the other way.  Anyhoo, we were there today.

The water was pretty green on the way down, but around 160 feet or so, the water got very clear and very cold.  But of course it was a bit dark down there, under the 160' layer of greenness.  We still had a great dive, though.  We headed down to the sand and after wandering around near the bottom of one of the pinnacles, we headed over the sand to another pinnacle, and along the way, we found a couple of orange sea pens.  I don't know why, but I just love those things... they look so fluffy!  One of them was out in the sand by itself, and we spent quite a bit of time getting pictures of it.  Posing right on the bottom, with a sandy bottom, is always fun.  Not.  To make matters more fun, there was some current (which is why it looks like the sea pen is taking a bow in the picture).  When we finally continued on, we ended up finding another one at the base of a wall, which made for slightly easier posing, but I think a much less cool picture.

It's kind of hard to believe, but by the time we were done with the sea pens, it was past time to get shallower.  Yea, we were playing with those sea pens for quite a while :)  We came back to the pinnacle where the downline was, which comes up to about 100 feet, and we swam around on that for a while.  It was both warmer and greener here.  We eventually ended up at a little side pinnaclet, or really more of a small peak on the main pinnacle, and I was sent UP for some silhouette shots.  I was pretty skeptical that this would work out, since it was so green, but I actually really like the way this picture turned out!  Except that I look like I have three legs.

There was an option to do a second dive at Eric's Pinnacle, which we passed on.