The first dive was at Magic Mountain. The ride out was fairly choppy. There was current on the site, along with a lot of fish activity and soft corals. We spent a good amount of time on the shallow part of the reef. Here, there were a few rocks with lots of really nice soft coral, one of which had some batfish trying to line up (or not) in front of it for a picture. At some point, when the current eased up a bit, we went around to the back side and dropped down.
The back side was not quite as nice, but still had patches of soft coral in various places. At one point, we saw a dolphin below us at around 70 feet. I was kind of in shock when I saw it and realized what I was looking at. It hung around long enough for me to signal Rob and for him to get a look at it too. It was rubbing against a piece of coral for a bit and then swam away, which seemed a little strange behavior-wise, but who knows.
The second dive was at Eagle Nest. Yes, that’s really the name of the site! It’s a large pinnacle that overall was not especially memorable, but one side (I think the north side) was really encrusted, which I liked quite a bit. I saw a number of bumpy dorids (yes, that’s a technical term, and I saw at least two different kinds), and there was also a moray eel.
The third dive was at Jiliet Reef. This one had a lot of schooling fish—large groups of jacks, two kinds of barracuda, fusiliers, redtooth triggerfish, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. Also saw two scorpionfish. On the topic of redtooth triggerfish… I saw one of these on a previous dive and noticed the red by its mouth. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at, so I looked it up later and found out that these fish have red teeth and are called… (drum roll)... redtooth triggerfish. After that I became a bit obsessed with looking at and video’ing their red teeth on subsequent dives. Anyhoo, overall a very fishy dive!
The night dive was at Romeo Reef. The goal was to find an epaulette shark, which we did (and which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before… they are super cute). We also saw a crocodile fish, a free-swimming moray, crabs, shrimp, and a lobster.
There was some current on the dive, and there were also two blacktip sharks and a very large barracuda that seemed to be on patrol for most of the dive, which made things a bit more interesting. I kept catching them zipping by at the edge of my light.
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