Kawika's and Shale Island

Photo by Clinton Bauder

I had to take two weekends off from diving, due to a rebreather-related back injury.  Rebreathers are a lot like cats, in that they apparently spend their free time plotting to kill their people (or that's what Clinton tells me anyway :P).  So after two dry weekend, I was back in action for a tech boat on Saturday.  And of course, my triumphant return was greeted with a horrible forecast.  It was supposed to be windy, really windy, and Jim didn't think that it was too likely we'd make it outside of the bay.  Sigh.  But, I'd been dry for two weekends, so I wasn't voting to cancel the boat!  As it turns out, Jim's read on the forecast was not wrong, and we ended up at Kawika's Garden.

Photo by Clinton Bauder

I was diving with Rob, Kevin, and Matt (the new Team Kitty, perhaps?).  The dive was... a dive.  The viz was pretty good for Kawika's, but it was pretty much the usual suspects.  I saw at least one wolf eel, and some brown rockfish.  I guess at this point, brown rockfish are pretty standard for bay tech dives (and maybe you could say the same thing for wolf eels!), but I still find it a bit exciting whenever I see one!  And also as usual for Kawika's, there were plenty of lingcod, including one or two giants.  It was a nice dive, with nicer than expected viz, but there wasn't really much that stood out to report.

Photo by Clinton Bauder

Given the good (for the bay) viz, and the early hour, there was plenty of interest in a second dive.  We decided to go to Shale Island, since it seemed like no one had been there in a while (which was probably preceded by a period where we went there all the time and everyone got sick of it!).  Rob and Matt decided to sit out the dive.  I think Rob had a leak or something, so he was wet/cold; I don't remember Matt's excuse.  Kevin and I got back in though.  It was a somewhat short dive, we just followed the ledge out in one direction, got a bit past the big anchor, and then turned and headed back.  The most entertaining critters we found were some crabs, not because they are entertaining on their own, but because of Kevin's habit of molesting the crabs.  He just can't help himself.  And sometimes I egg him on, since I know he can't help himself :P  I'm sure there were a lot of more interesting little critters to see, but I didn't really bring my critter-peeping A-game, because I was feeling kind of seasick on the dive.  It was a little surgy, but not really enough that that made sense.  But by the time we happened back past the anchor, I thumbed it, because I felt like I'd had it!  Once back on the boat, I actually felt a bit better.

Rob wasn't taking pictures, he's still working out the kinks with his camera housing (ever since the big flood, it just hasn't quite been behaving, so it went back to Backscatter again).  So I've snarfed some Clinton pictures from the day, of critters that I may or may not have seen on the dive :P