Valentine's Dive

On Saturday, Rob, Kevin, and I had a romantic Valentine's dive for three planned. I recently realized that we haven't done a macro dive on the Road in ages. I miss all the little slugs out there. So I penciled it in for our Valentine's dive, and somehow Kevin managed to invite himself along :) Unfortunately the conditions were looking pretty bad all week, and we kept postponing a decision about whether to go. Finally on Friday evening, we "decided" to check the buoy and various web-cams in the morning and have a final call about whether to drive down at 7:15. Getting up was painful, especially with the rainy overcast weather. However, I couldn't stand the idea of sitting at home in the rain, wondering if we should have gone. So we decided to meet down at Lobos and take a look.

The crappy topside weather disappeared by the time we were halfway down there, but it was quite cold. But once we got to Carmel, the temperature seemed to magically rise 5 degrees, so it was a balmy 55 degrees at Lobos. The water didn't look too rough. It looked diveable, but the water level on the ramp was low, so with the swell, it didn't look like the most fun entry. But we decided to go for it. While Rob and Kevin would staging gear on the float, they helped a guy who got sort of stuck in the rocks on his way out. That caused my level of ramp-fear to spike beyond its usual already-unreasonable level. Anyhoo, we finished gearing up, did some final checks and headed down the ramp. Rob claimed it took about 8 minutes for me to make it down the ramp because of the overly careful, baby steps I was taking. He claims that the longer I take getting down the ramp, the more likely I am to fall. I don't completely disagree. I got to lead, since it had been my idea to go out to the Road (and Kevin was just "along for the ride" as usual). We surface scooted out until the viz was good enough.

We dropped in the sand channel in about 30 feet. The viz was not very good and it was quite surgy. But it was actually fairly bright. That wasn't necessarily a good thing, since Kevin's primary light was dead. It was kind of disorienting to navigate in such poor viz. I could handle the sand channel, but once we turned the corner at Hole in the Wall, things got much sketchier. I actually had to navigate with my compass! I never actually found the Lone Metridium, but I eventually decided I must be there-ish, and headed out over the sand. I eventually hit the first sister (or so I thought). Rob was signaling emphatically that I needed to head left, as if I was going the wrong way. So I was like.. what the heck, isn't this the first sister? He agreed that it was. I guess he was worried I might have spontaneously forgotten how to get from there to the second one :) After we hit the second sister, we headed out along the Road. By this point, it was really dark. The viz never really cleared up; there was tons of particulate. Due to the bad viz, I was skittish about going out too far or around any curves that would be non-trivial to navigate. So I basically went straight out along the reef-sand interface until about 130', and suggested we clip off there.

Even down there, it was surgy. The surge seemed sort of variable. It was definitely worse on top, but even on the sides it would occasionally be pretty surgy. However, there were periods of calm, which was good for Rob. We started looking around for macro subjects. Rob had told me I should look out for Dotos and other tiny hydroid slugs, but with the surge and the particulate, I was having trouble getting my eyes to focus on the swaying hydroids. I pretty quickly gave up on that. I found a gaggle of Diaphorodoris lirulatocauda. When I saw the first one, at first I thought it was an Aegires, until I got close enough to see its loong rhinophores. After I spotted the first one, I found 3 more right in the same area. I would eventually find another three in a different spot. I also found quite a few Adalaria jannae. I usually cannot tell these apart from Onchidoris muricata, but for once, the white gland thingy behind the gill plume was very obvious (on the first one that I saw, anyway). After I saw that first one, I kept happening upon more, probably at least half a dozen in total, scattered around the reef. Those two species were the most interesting finds on the dive. Other than that, I saw a couple Spanish shawls, and I noted the lack of Dironas. Turns out Kevin found one, and tugged my fins to show me. When I turned around, he wasn't even vaguely looking in my direction so I figured I imagined the tug and went on my merry way. Kevin also pointed out a Berthella, which he seemed quite excited about. Apparently he has never seen one before. I keep telling him it's not safe to dive with your eyes closed, but I guess he doesn't listen :) In all fairness, it was the only Berthella I saw on the dive. Rob also found a super cute little fish with really pretty orange and aqua markings. I was not sure what it was, but I think we saw one along the Road once before on a dive with John. Clinton says it is a longfin sculpin. In the non-macro category, I found a decent-sized ling cod, and showed it to Kevin, who was taking video.

The return trip was pretty uneventful. I carefully followed the reef-sand interface back. Usually, when we get to the second sister, we peel off (even though the rocks continue back to the first sister). I was watching for the second sister, but I never did see it... eventually we ran smack into the first sister, and we had to do a quick pass over the center hydrocoral to be sure. Yea, not such good viz. From there, we headed along the Lone Metridium-hat vector, until I started to doubt my navigation and we were in 70'. Usually we switch to our deco bottles at the ridge just past (west of) Lone Metridium. So when we got to 70' and hadn't hit any ridges at all, I gave up and stopped us so we could switch to our bottles. Then I swam about 8 feet, and hit one of the ridges. Yea, the viz was that bad. After we meandered around there looking at critters for a few minutes, we headed on to 60', where we took another pause on the back side of Hole in the Wall reef. There was a Diaulula orgy there, and a pair of Flabellina trilineatas in a very cozy position. After that we hopped over the reef and headed in along the sand channel. When we got to the sand channel, I decided we should ascend there, given the poor viz. After passing the time with some antics for the video camera, we ascended to somewhat better conditions. The tide had come in, which meant that getting out was a much more civilized affair than getting in.

Afterwards we hit Baldemiros in Seaside for lunch. Mmmm, burrito.

BAUE Lobos Day

Sunday we had a BAUE Lobos day. Unfortunately the conditions turned out to be non-ideal. I think there were a little over 20 people slated to attend, but between the ubiquitous cold and the crappy conditions, a few people didn't make it. However, the showing was surprisingly good, considering the dire forecasts that had been making the rounds on the internet the previous week. The park aid working the gate also strongly encouraged us to not dive. But we had to at least take a look. The tide was super high so the water was sloshing out of the ramp into the parking lot. The water in the cove looked like pea soup, with some chop. The waves breaking on the non-existent beaches (high tide) at the south end of the cove were pretty big. There was a lot of negativity in the group of people who had already arrived. We headed up to the bluff to take a look. The waves crashing against the cannery point rocks were pretty big, and there was white water in the channels between them. However, the granite point side was surprising calm -- the waves breaking over there weren't unusually big. And the water over the middle reef area looked reasonably calm. There was also a distinct change of color not far outside of the cove, from pea soup to blue.

Karl left the decision up to me, and after a bit of waffling, I decided to give it a try. As we got back down to the parking lot, a team of divers who had gone in like 10 minutes before came out. I don't think they swam out far enough to get to the clearer water. So we were not deterred. A lot of the people who had showed up opted not to dive. I assured them that no matter what the conditions were, I would report 80 foot viz in my dive report (the good thing about blogging is that you don't have to be bothered with that pesky "journalistic integrity" thing). Somehow we managed to be the first team in the water. Getting in was not at all a problem, because of the extremely high tide. Since we were more than halfway up the ramp when we stopped to put our fins on, we had some shelter. After that, we swam out to what I figured we about 30 feet, and dropped. The plan was basically to play it by ear and see what the conditions were in the various areas, and let that guide us. On one hand, I wanted to get deeper and under the weather, but on the other hand, from the surface the middle reef area looked calmer than the more westerly deeper spots (Sisters, Beto's). Anyhoo, once we dropped, we were a bit further east than usual (the churning water to the west was discouraging), so we dropped on top of rock, about 28 feet, with crap viz (5 feet-ish). We headed northwest until we hit the sand channel, and then headed north along that. At 39 or 40 feet, the water suddenly cleared up like that (snaps fingers). It was suddenly blue and clear-ish. It was still a bit stirred up with particulate, but overall pretty clear. The viz was probably about 30 feet. Once the viz cleared up, we headed east to the reef, and swam along it. We stopped to say hi to the wolf eels. I briefly attempted to look for the warbonnet, but gave up pretty quickly. We got to the end of middle reef, and then headed across the sand channel to Hole in the Wall.

Once we hit HITW reef, we headed south, because I was wondering how conditions were on the other side of the sand channel. The viz was a little worse at the south end of that reef, so we hopped over it to the back side of HITW. It was amazingly calm and clear on the back side there. After hanging out and poking around in the cracks for a couple of minutes, we continued north to the rock north of HITW. I found a gaggle of about 8 San Diego dorids there. After lingering there briefly, I was sort of feeling like heading out to Beto's, but I wasn't feeling very commited to it, so we headed over to the Lone Metridium. By the time we got there, I was commited to heading deeper. We headed north from that, and then cut a little east when I thought we were deep enough that we would definitely hit Beto's. We hit it pretty close to the south end, and headed along on the east side. I mainly just wanted to check if the wolf eel was in, so we swam out to his den. I noticed one of the gorgonians on the side of the wall just south of the wolf eel den, and was thinking about how we used to be so excited to see the 3 or so gorgonians out there. After saying hello to the eel, we headed in. We came over the top of Beto's and headed south, skirting the east side of side of the next stairstep south of the wolf eels. I found a couple of Tritonia festiva hanging out under an overhang along there.

From the end of Beto's we continued south and pass to the left of Sea Mount, then swam through the little kelp patch off to the east of sea mount. We ran into Clinton, John, and Sami around the rock just north of HITW, and posed for a couple shots before continuing on. We got to HITW and then headed back over to middle reef. We swam in along the reef, poking around in the crevices. I noticed a bunch of China rockfish in some cracks and there were also some sheephead loitering near middle reef. They seem to have become a fixture of middle reef recently. As we approached the south end of middle reef, I figured we'd hit all the hot spots, so we might as well head in. I figured we'd keep going until the viz got terrible again, and ascend wherever that was. We hit that spot in about 25 feet, and I thumbed it. We ascended pretty darn close to where we had dropped. As soon as we hit the surface, I said to Karl "I swear I can hear Rob's voice". He and his buddy were about halfway between us and the ramp, and I guess they were chatting loudly on the way in :) It seemed like conditions had improved a bit since we started the dive. So the exit was even easier than the entrance (although I was having a little trouble getting my fin off -- I knew the ghetto spring straps would bite me one day).

We were definitely glad we got in the water, considering how ambivalent everyone was beforehand. However, we decided to pass on a second dive, so instead I headed to Turtle Bay with Rob, Clinton, and John. After that, we went to the aquarium, and all huddled around the new nudibranch tank, oohing and ahhing at the beautiful Triopha maculata that they have. I have never seen a "big" orange one -- the orange ones I find are always tiny, and the big ones are always cream-colored. Then we went to a talk by nudibranch expert Jim Murray. The talk was about Tritonia diomedea, and how they orient to flow. It was an interesting talk; I especially liked the videos he showed of the slugs, sped up a couple hundred times. It looked like they were running around on the screen :)

I borrowed the pic above (from Hole in the Wall) from Rob, just to show what the conditions were like. Here are all of Rob's and Clinton's pictures for the day.

Gran Sabana

Sunday morning we were on the Escapade for a last minute tech boat. Beto set it up earlier in the week. I was a little bit torn, since we stayed in Monterey last weekend, and I was feeling like a little kitty time this weekend. But since it would be an early morning boat, I figured there would be plenty of time for kitty-loving (and Super Bowl watching) in the afternoon. Beto and Rob traded some numbers for potential new sites, and eventually settled on a site Beto found on the bathy maps, about half a mile south of Flintstones. The site was a main pinnacle, with a smaller pinnacle off to the east, and some little ridges off to the west, in the 130' to 200' range. Based on the depths, Rob and I were interested in the main pinnacle and the east pinnacle, which was in easy scootering range of the main one. The main pinnacle had a skinny peak in the center coming up to about 130' from 160'. Then at 160', there was a plateau on the north and south sides and then a slope down to about 200'. It was a choppy ride down, and then the ritual circling of the site left me feeling pretty barfy.

We decided to live drop on a buoy. We were nominated the lucky guinea pigs, to be dropped to determine what was up with the current (we were so nominated because we had scooters and we were only two, so the faster team to drop I guess). I couldn't really complain though, since being in the water seemed better than circling around in the boat. There was a bit of current on the surface, but with the scooter it was not a problem. Rob and I met up at the buoy and then headed down. The water was pretty green, and it was quite dark at the bottom. I thought the viz was pretty good, but apparently it wasn't up to Rob's rigorous standards :) We dropped on the west side of the peak and headed clockwise around it. On the north side plateau, there were lots of elephant ears and some gorgonians. We came around to the east side, where we ran into Clinton and Matt. The east side featured a more precipitous drop but without much big stuff -- fewer elephant ears and no gorgonians. There were lots of nipple sponges in one area. While Rob was taking some pictures I became transfixed by some type of hydroid that looked like a different kind of hydroid than I had seen before. While I was staring at it, I noticed something pink! There was a pair of big, very pink Doto amyras mating (or surrounded by a bunch of egg ribbons at least) at the base on the hydroid. Upon closer inspection there were a couple other smaller Dotos in there. The mating pair were such pretty specimens, it was unfortunate no one was shooting macro! I showed them to Rob and not long after that, we decided to journey to the other pinnacle.

We headed out into the abyss in that direction, hoping it wouldn't take too long before we could see the other pinnacle. Just as I began to make out a shadow in the distance, a bunch of light beams came into view. Phew. Beto's team had already made it over to the second pinnacle and they were heading back now. As we got to the pinnacle, I looked down and saw them scootering along the base. We landed on a gently sloping side with a lot of elephant ears and gorgonians -- similar to plateau on the main pinnacle. After Rob took a few shots around there, we headed around to the east side, which was more wall-like. I posed for a couple of pictures while looking for macro critters on the reef. I found a trilineata (cool, but less cool since I had seen 4 of them in 20' yesterday!). While we were there, a school of blue rockfish descended on the pinnacle. We headed back to the main pinnacle, and hopped over to the west side, in sight of the anchor (and Matt and Clinton shooting their bag). We agreed to spend 3 minutes more before beginning our ascent. With about one minute left, Beto, Sue, and Karl came scootering around from the south, and as they lined themselves up nicely for a shot, Rob started packing up his camera for the ascent. What a meanie. Then he thumbed it, and we headed up to 120', where he shot the bag. This was the boat dive debut of "the big bag". It is a lot easier to shoot from 120' than for 40', like we practiced yesterday :)

The deco was pretty uneventful. Rob had a bubbly bottle at 70', which he fixed easily. We met a variety of deco critters on the stops after that, including a really sad looking sea nettled, and several moon jellies. One of the moon jellies was a really big, beautiful specimen. We marvelled at it for a while. Rob also found a little red-orange amphipod (so he says) propelling itself around in the water. Rob caught it on his finger to show to me, and then couldn't get it off of his glove. He finally did, and then a moment later, it was back on his glove. I guess it liked Rob. When we got to the surface, all of the bags were line up in a nice line. We were the first team to hit the surface. As the Escapade headed toward us to pick us up, Matt and Clinton surfaced. Reboarding the boat was a slightly choppy ordeal. After collecting all of the divers, we had a pretty smooth ride back with no whale or dolphin sitings :(

Beto named the site "Gran Sabana" after a peak in Venezuela with a similar shape.

Counting Slugs and Taking Names

On Saturday, Rob and I were diving at Lobos. We were very waffly about what to do, and finally after chatting with John on Friday about his plans for the day (to count slugs with Clinton), we got inspired and decided to do that too. When we rolled into Lobos at 9:20, it seemed like everyone was at Lobos! And they were all waiting to heckle us for arriving so "late". But I see that as one of the benefits of diving just the two of us -- we can arrive whenever we feel like it! Anyhoo, after chatting with John and Clinton, we split the transects up, and we agreed to take the deeper transects at the end of middle reef. Our plan was to go out there, each count one transect, and then meander back in on the east side as time allowed.

We got into the water to find excellent viz and very calm water in the cove. We swam out to the mouth of the cove, and decided to drop there, since the viz was so good. On the descent I found out that my sketchy dry glove was indeed still leaking. Boohoo. I was too lazy to go back to the surface and pull the vent bungee from the seal, which I would come to regret later on :) We headed down the sand channel, and then cut over to middle reef around 30'. We saw a HUGE sheephead (and a slightly less huge one) cruising middle reef, and then we also found a HUGE cabezon sitting in the rubble just off the wall. After marvelling at its hugeness, we continued on. As we past transect 5, I saw two big juicy Berthellas there, and I wondered if we should have chosen the shallow transects :) We stopped for a brief visit with the wolf eels. I hadn't visited them since the return -- it is definitely a different male wolf eel in there now. The new one is less "ugly" and not as huge. I could see the red one back in there too. Next we stopped at transect 4 to look for the resident warbonnet, but we couldn't find him :( Then we finally headed out to transects 1 and 2.

Rob counted his transect (1) first. While he was counting, I swam around his transect looking for anything interesting. I saw tons of slugs, but nothing particularly interesting. I think the most interesting find on his transect was a Limacia. I also found a teeny tiny San Diego dorid. It's rings were so tiny they first looked like spots. When he was finished, we moved on to my transect. It was a pretty slow slug day, and there wasn't really anything too interesting. Near the end of my count, I found a Limacia, which was a relief, since that is at least a little exciting :) Once I was finished, we compared our gas and decided we should head straight in. I led us in on the east side of the top of the wall. There were TONS of slugs up there too. We also saw another big (but not quite huge) sheephead swimming around up there. When we got to about 20' (on top of the wall), we cut back over to the west side and down off of the wall. When we got to the worm patch, I thumbed it and we ascended there. The wind had picked up quite a bit, so it was pretty choppy on the surface.

Since we were running late in the morning, we didn't manage to stop anywhere to get surface interval food. The good thing about so many people we know being at Lobos is it means there are more people to mooch food off of. Cynthia even baked brownies! There was also a gaggle of docent-trainees enjoying some lunchtime refreshments at the picnic tables. When they were finished, Matt the lifeguard offered us the scraps. It was a pretty efficient way to get rid of a big plate of cheese, fruit, and sandwiches, and little bags of Doritos. Rob noted that the docents should really be trained not to feed the wildlife :) After the mooching of food was complete, we headed back into the water to do some drills. We kicked out to the worm patch and dropped there. The plan was to head out to 40-ish feet so we could put up a line and do some "midwater" stuff. Before we headed out there, I did a quick maskless drill. When I got my mask back on, before I even managed to look up at Rob and give him the okay, I noticed a white glowing line hanging out from under one of the worms on the patch. After a second look, I realized it was a little trilineata. Then I found another. I showed them to Rob and then we headed out. We got out to 40 feet, after finding another trilineata on a piece of kelp on the way out. We put up a bag and did some bottle drills. At one point, as Rob was in the middle of a bottle rotation, I noticed another trilineata floating in the water next to him. Why couldn't any of them have been on my transect!?! Life is so unfair! After we did some drills on the bottom, we moved up to 20' to do some more. All in all I thought it was pretty successful. When we were finished, we went back to the bottom, cleaned up the line and ascended. Then we kicked in on the surface.

Dinner at Turtle Bay with a bunch of the other Lobos dive crew.

Fun with Fundies

Last weekend I helped do the video for a Fundies class. It was Kenn, Steve, and August's class (who shall henceforth be known as "Team Bunny"). I played around with the camera in the pool a month or so ago, just to get the hang of it. I was supposed to help with the pool sessions the previous weekend, but I had an ear infection, so Rob was left to do it all himself. So I had to pretty quickly figure out how to maneuver around the team and get useful video (without kicking too many of the students), all in the surge and otherwise "real" conditions outside of the pool. It was definitely a bit of work contorting myself around them, trying to get good shots without getting in their way. However, Team Bunny was quite cooperative in their positioning, and they didn't seem to mind the occasional kick. Overall, it was quite fun to video the class, but I was just glad no one was videoing me!

So I did the video on one dive on Saturday and just hung out and watched for the second dive (which Rob video'd). I must admit, I got a little distracted by the kelp critters nearby -- I found one kelp stalk with both a stiletto shrimp and a kelp clingfish! Score.

On Saturday night, I came down with some horrible form of food poisoning (now I know what they mean when they say "projectile vomiting"). I have pseudo-scientifically tracked it down to a peanut butter Clif bar that I ate Saturday morning, and later found out was a subject of the FDA peanut butter recall. Pre-dive nutrition is very important to staying warm, but I can't say I recommend this form of nourishment :)

Anyhoo, Kenn wrote a pretty nice class report about Team Bunny's experience in fundies. Check it out here. Thanks Kenn for the Team Bunny mascot photo.

Fishy Friday

On Friday, Team Kitty was out on Phil's boat. The forecast looked pretty good, and Rob came with his wetnotes jam-packed with GPS numbers for all the various sites we should consider. After some chatting about the conditions and what sites would be doable that weren't always doable, we settled on Pinnacle Point Wall. Rob and I have been there once before, but Kevin hadn't been there before. Rob was eager to go back there with scooters. I remembered it being shallower than it is, I guess because there is a peak that comes up shallower, which is where we dropped and spent a good bit of time on the last dive. After being assured that it was deep enough to make good use of our gas choice (wouldn't want to waste that extra 10% Helium), we decided to go there. It did seem like it would make for an excellent scooter run, since it is a pretty long reef.

After a short ride out to the site, we found ourselves in dead calm water, which was nice. I remarked while we were getting geared up or doing gear checks that it was nice for once not to be getting knocked around or feeling seasick while getting ready, which always makes me feel rushed. Rob had a pretty specific idea of the path he wanted to take along the wall, so he led. I refused to shoot the bag on principle (actually because my wrist was bothering me), so that left me with the role of Deco Queen (my favorite). When we flopped into the water, there was literally no current. Again, nice to be able to take a minute on the surface without trying to keep track of the line. The water also looked very clear -- we could see very far down the limp noodle of an anchor line. After everyone got their scooters and cameras sorted out, we headed down the line. I was leading, since I am, shall we say, the weakest link, when it comes to descents (especially having just gotten over an ear infection). I wow'd the boys with a 60 foot per minute descent, and then handed over the lead to Rob when we got to the reef.

Right next to where we dropped there was a giant column of rockfish. It was one of those "most fish I've ever seen in one place" type of columns. And the great part was, they didn't seem to mind us at all. We were zipping around on scooters, Rob was taking pictures, and they didn't scatter. There were also a variety of fish in the column. It was mostly blues, as usual, but there were some others in there too -- a decent number of olives, and a few canaries (Rob regarded my claims of canaries in the school with extreme skepticism, until we reviewed Kevin's video and watched a canary swim right out of the school toward the camera). There were also a lot of Chinas hanging out on the reef -- don't know if they were just out for the show or what. I noticed one that had his jaw hanging open, waiting for a tasty morsel to drift in, I guess. I have a feeling there were some other kinds of fish, that I am overlooking. I noticed there were also a lot of canaries hanging out deeper, under one of the overhangs of the wall. Anyhoo, we hung out there for a bit, not really moving very much other than to scooter around the school of fish. I found a really cool looking little fish that was hanging its head out of a hole. It was one of those long thin sort of snakey looking fish (like a ronquil). I signaled for anyone interested to come take a look, and Kevin rounded the corner from where he was, shined is light directly at the fish, and well, that was pretty much the last I saw of the fish. Actually I could still see him after he hid in his hole, but not nearly as well.

Eventually Rob suggested we move along as planned. We scootered for maybe a minute, and came across a deeper small pinnacle (if you can even call it that) off to the side of the main structure. We went over there, I pointed out a rosy rockfish or two to Rob, and I guess Rob decided that this really wasn't nicer than where we started, so we just headed back over there, to enjoy the fishies some more. I perused the reef for macro critters briefly, but I think the only thing that really interested me were some trilineatas (which I found in a couple different spots). I also noticed there were quite a few Aldisa sanguinea (the yellow shade, not the orange) out and about. I happened upon Rob shooting some fish column glamour shots and decided to place myself in the frame and pose along with them. While I was hanging out there, I noticed what looked like a skuffle going on in an elephant ear sponge on the wall. I looked over to see two painted greenlings doing their weird mating dance (I guess?). It was quite entertaining to watch. There were blue rockfish all over the place, and the one fish (male, I am guessing) seemed like he was trying to get them to leave. It was pretty cool. I called Rob and Kevin over. Rob came over and took some pictures. Kevin just sort of gave me an okay. I was certain he must not understand what I was showing him, so I insisted that he come over and get some video. Then he realized what I was showing him :)

Not long after that, it was time to go. As Rob was stowing his camera and Kevin was pulling the bag out, I was entranced by another few trilineatas on the reef, right below me. So entranced that I sort of missed the part where it was time to go and I was deco captain. Oops. We headed up and found that there was still absolutely no current, top to bottom. We were "drifting" within site of the anchor line until about 50', when Phil pulled the anchor. At 60', I looked up and could see the line all the way up to the boat, and Phil standing over the side of the boat with the float he uses to pull the anchor. Oh yea, did I mention the viz was awesome? We had a pretty uneventful deco, and it was even warm! Well, warm for those of us who take drysuit maintenance seriously :) I wasn't cold at all until about the 10' stop, when my hands got a little cold. Pretty unusual. When we got back to the surface, I remarked how nice it was to be able to take our time getting out of gear and slowly hand gear up to Phil. It was so calm, I couldn't stand to get out of the water. All in all, it was an epic day, with calm water, no current, great viz, and hundreds of fish!

Thumbs Up Project Posted

I held off on posting my dive reports from the BAUE Thumbs Up Project until the project data were posted on the BAUE site. Then when it was posted, I got lazy, and never put up my dive reports. So, finally, I put up my dive reports (day 0 and day 1) and here is the project page.