Snowy Diving in Seattle

On Sunday we went on a boat with Lynne and Peter. We dove with Bandito Charters, on one of their "South Sound" charters. We got up early and as we left, it was starting to snow. But it was like the kind of snow that isn't quite sure if it wants to be snow or sleet or rain. As we headed south towards Tacoma, the snow picked up to the point where it was actually snowing. Like snowing enough to slow down our journey. Luckily Rob is a hard core New Englander, so driving in the snow was no problem (although I grew up in snowy-land, I have never once driven in snow, and would have had to pull off to the shoulder and cried if I had to deal with that). We were borrowing Jeff's car during the trip, and although he seemed to have the same GPS unit that we have (TomTom), it really sucked at giving directions to dive sites, dive shops, boat docks, and the like. I think that TomTom really had something against divers. But we managed to find the dock based on some Google directions Rob had scrawled on a scrap.

When we got to the dock, it was still snowing in full force. We were directed to our boat (the charter company had two boats going out). It turned out that our boat was just the four of us. What fun! We eventually ran into Lynne and Peter (who we had never technically, nor non-technically I suppose, met) schlepping their gear down the boat. After we got everything on the boat, we headed out. The forecast was for crazy (gale force or so) winds in the afternoon. So that apparently affected our choice of dive sites. So did the bad tides, which we had been warned about by Lynne when we were planning the trip. However, since any site they took us to would be new to us, we really didn't care (and didn't know what we might be missing). The first site was Maury Island barges, which is a site that was closed for a while but recently reopened, or so I heard. As we were getting geared up, Lynne's regulator was free-flowing, so she decided to sit out the dive :( Topside, the site consisted of a bunch of pilings breaking the surface, at a regular interval. Underwater there was a bunch of man-made debris, including various sunk wrecks (including a small boat and several barges). When we got to the site, the boat basically backed up to some pilings and dropped us right by them. To be honest, I found the protocol sort of confusing. The boat wasn't anchored, but Peter told us that they don't usually shoot a bag. So I asked if we should ascend along the pilings, and got the impression that that was non-optimal (because we'd have to swim out from the pilings for the pickup). I was confused and not really down with a free ascent in an area with several dive boats, so Rob and I just stealthily agreed that we would shoot a bag.

As the boat was backing up to the site, we positioned on the swim step, resting our butts on the transom. It was actually pretty fun waiting there while the boat inched up to the drop point and then we flopped into the water. I was super cold on the boat, and it was a bit disturbing to flop into 42 degree water and find that it was warmer :) Once we were all in the water, we headed down. Just as we were approaching the bottom, we found a ratfish skulking along the bottom! Rob and I were very excited, since this was one of the things we really wanted to see on the trip. We had even reviewed the Ratfish Rule video earlier in on trip, so we would be prepared to sing the song when we saw one. I was singing the song for the rest of the dive. Apparently Rob was not, despite our agreement to sing it if we saw a ratfish. After he swam away, we got going. We meandered over to the little sunken pleasure boat, and poked around it. There had been a rumor of a GPO under it, but we could not find it. There wasn't a lot of interesting stuff on the boat, and then some other divers showed up to silt out the site, errr, to check out the site, so we headed off. Rob had been hoping to see more Janolus since he didn't feel like he got a great shot of the ones from Friday. Oh boy did we find him some subjects. We saw tons of them. We also saw tons of Dironas. I found a sea spider, which looked very sea spider-like, but was much bigger than I thought they were supposed to be, so I wasn't sure. But I pointed it out to Rob and moved along. Apparently he agreed with my diagnosis. I also found a golden Dirona (D. aurantia), which I've never seen before. Right near the end of the dive, we started finding a bunch of teeny tiny hydroid nudis, that were about the size of our Eubranchus's. After studying the photos, we believe they were Eubranchus rupium. I also found the most textbook Geitodoris heathi I've ever seen, and lots more of those funny looking San Diego dorids. I was really cold near the end of the dive, and finally I couldn't take it anymore and I thumbed it. I thought Rob had finished up taking pictures of all of our finds, but apparently he had not gotten a pic of the golden Dirona :(

As soon as we got back on the boat, they had many wonderful warm foods to feed us, including soup and breadsticks. I also availed myself of the PB&J materials. I've decided that is the perfect dive snack. We headed to the second site, Port Defiance North Wall. I was quite shocked to find that they actually have dive sites with structure, that wasn't, ya know, dropped down there by people. The site reminded me of a cross behind Shale Island and Rubicon Wall. There would be tall steep ledges, and then the slope would sort of flatten out in spots. We headed out along the wall basically until I got so cold that I could not stand it, and then Rob and I turned and headed back up the slope a little bit and shot a bag. The highlights of the dive were bazillions of Flabellina verrucosa (once we saw a couple, I realized that they were *everywhere* on some of the ledges), a grunt sculpin (good find, Lynne!), a GPO under a rock (good find, Peter!), more Eubranchus, a very photogenic hermit crab, and a really pretty blue Stimpson's starfish.

The wind had picked up by the time we got to the surface, and it was howling on the trip in. The crew clocked the winds at up to 48 knots. The weather was crazy, going from blue skies, to sleet, back to blue skies. We were all sitting inside, untouched by the wind, feeling very hard core about how windy it was outside. It had calmed down by the time we got back to the dock and had to unload our gear.

Later that evening, we went over to Lynne and Peter's house for a lovely dinner. We got to meet their kitties, who are very DIR -- they are black, redundant, and always look good. They were also quite friendly. We also got to meet the "big kitties" (aka horses).

All of the trip's pictures are here.

Seattle Night Dive

Saturday we met up with Kirk for a night dive. I'd never met Kirk, but Lynne had set us up to dive with him, and I'd heard about Kirk before from the MoCal cave diving crew. We met at Redondo Beach just after sunset. Unfortunately it started raining on the way there :( After we met up, we got a site briefing (in the rain). We would enter down a set of stairs that go right into the water. My kind of entry :) Then we'd walk over to a little sand channel and swim out on the surface a short while before dropping at the end of the pier. At the end of the pier, there is a rope on the bottom that leads down the slope. We would follow that down, then come back up it partway, and then head off of the line parallel to shore to see some rocky structure. Scott had virtually promised us a GPO siting on this dive, and Kirk told us where along the dive we would see the resident GPO (under the hull of a boat in about 60 feet). At the bototm of the rope, there is a "bottle field" with old glass bottles, where Rob wanted to look for Pacific Spiny Lumpsuckers (PSL). Other critters we hoped to see included grunt sculpins, sailfin sculpins, and gunnels. Kirk also mentioned that we would probably see stubby squid, which I had never heard of before.

The slope was pretty significant. Before you know it, we were poking around a boat hull looking for the GPO underneath. There was of course a pile of crab shells and the like sitting just outside of the octopus's den. We each took a turn looking down the hole that was the entrance, where we could see big octopus tentacles. This was the first time I have seen a GPO in the wild (outside of the aquarium, that is). Then we continued to head down the line, eventually leaving it to head toward the bottle field I guess. Along the way, I found a little nudibranch on a tire, and realized it was the nudi that Scott had photographed the day before -- Onchidoris bilamellata. Before you know it, I had found a bunch more, including several that were mating. They were all over this set one big tire. And their egg ribbons were all over, including on the inside of the tire! Later while we were poking around on another boat hull, I found another new-to-me nudi, Acanthadoris nanaimosis, on the inside of the hull. Very cool. We also saw another GPO under that boat hull (this one was in about 85 feet).

We didn't manage to find any PSLs, but there were plenty of other interesting fish. There were a bunch of these long sort of eel-like fish (Blackbelly Eelpout) sitting in the sand that had serious baby face. We also saw two sailfin sculpins (my first!), the second of which even sort of allowed for photos. And we eventually did run into a gang of stubby squid. I immediately knew that's what they were, since the name is so appropriate :) They were really cute to see swimming, but as soon as they were in the light, they sort of squatted down in the sand and did an impersonation of a red octopus. One of them became almost purple in color which was pretty cool. We eventually made our way to this big pipe, and we swam along it, looking at the critters huddled under it. There were lots of green gunnels under there. At the end of one pipe, there was some metal scaffolding-type structure hanging off, and I found a grunt sculpin lurking in one of the corners. I couldn't believe I had found one! It was pretty well hidden in the corner, hard to get a good luck at from any side. But eventually it must have gotten annoyed with the lights in its eyes, so it swam (if you can call it that) out of that structure and plopped down on the sand. Those fish are so funny looking. Not long after that, I called the dive, because I was cold.

We headed up the slope until we hit the pier pilings. I found more gunnels cowering under the pier, and there was this huge school of tubesnouts, probably a thousand of them, and they were totally spazzing out in our lights. It was crazy how many fish there were! Just as were were about to head away from the pilings to ascend, Rob spotted a nudi on one of the pilings -- an Acanthadori pilosa. We also found another A. nanaimosis on the sand right there. After some photos, we ascended. The wind had really picked up while we were in the water, and the water conditions were almost sporty. Kirk told us that it was basically as bad as this site can possibly get, but it was just surface chop -- climbing up the ladder was no problem at all (with Kirk directing me as to which rocks to put my foot on to get up the first step, which is a couple feet high).

When we got up to the parking lot, we ditched our gear in Kirk's truck (since Rob's key was in his undergarment pocket), and we enjoyed the big thermos of hot water that Kirk had brought... it was very nice poured over my head :) My gauge read between 42 and 44 degrees on this dive (and all of the dives during the trip, actually). While that doesn't sound that much colder than the 46 to 48 that we get at some times of the year, it really is a lot colder! Those PNW divers are hard core.

All of the weekend's pictures are here.

Northern Kitties

Rob and I went to Seattle for a long weekend, with the joint purpose of visiting family and doing a little diving. Lynne managed to round up tanks for us, and also some local dive buddies to show us what there was to see. On Friday, we met up with Scott (who we met on his recent trip to Monterey) and Jeanna to dive Cove 2, which is a beginner dive site right in Seattle. Rob and I were extremely bitter about how "close to home" the dive sites are up there! We got to the site around noon, and the topside weather was great! It was unseasonably warm and sunny. Scott gave us an overview of what there was to see where at the site, and the route that we would take. We got geared up and headed into the water. The tide was pretty low, so it was a bit of a walk down the steep beach to the water. However, since there was no water movement whatsoever, it wasn't exactly a Monastery entry :)

Rob and I were mainly interested in seeing the slugs at this site, from what we had been told about it. Rob packed macro for the entire trip. Scott told us that it is often the case that you will see tons of slugs of one species (which varies over time), but we might not see a huge variety. The site consists of a sloping silty bottom, with logs and various pieces of man-made junk down there for stuff to grow on. The most notable piece of man-made junk are a bunch of big i-beams and a little wreck called the Honey Bear. We dropped in about 25 feet, and saw some sort of jellyfish in the water on the way down. We dropped at a buoy, and at the bottom there was a line (or more like a rope) running down the slope. We meandered along that for most of the dive. The silty bottom is really silty -- just moving your light around to get a look at a little nudibranch is enough to send up plumes of silt. But the silt also settled down fairly quickly.

The highlights of this dive were the variety of nudibranchs, the metridium on the i-beams, and the lingcod. There were several lings guarding their nests, which was cool because they would swim right up to us and stare us down. I saw at least 3 nests with intimidating lings circling. The i-beams at 80 to 90 feet were incredibly densely covered with metridium. There were orange metridiums (a treat -- I've only seen one in Monterey!) all over the place too. But the sheer number of white ones growing on the beams was what was really impressive. And then there were the nudibranchs. As we followed the rope down the slope, I very quickly ran into a Flabellina verrucosa. I was delighted to find such a pretty aeolid as my first slug find. We ended up seeing several more of these on the dive. The other cool finds were a Janolus fuscus (I found a tiny one perched on a rock, but when I moved my light to signal the others, I blew it off of the rock and onto the sand :( ), and a big pile of mating Aeolidia papillosa on an i-beam. They were a speckled purple color and they were huge compared to the ones we see in Monterey. We also saw several other cream-colored ones like the ones we see in Monterey. Other slug finds included a Dialula lentiginosa (we think), lots of Dialula sandiegensis (which look quite different than ours), Onchidoris muricata, a tiny Dirona albolineata, and some Limacias. There might be some pedestrian nudis that I have forgotten. Not bad considering we weren't expecting a lot of variety. Oh, and at the very end, I found some very interesting slug in 10 feet of water, but as I was getting left behind by the team, I had to swim ahead to get Rob. Then I couldn't find it again :( I think it was some sort of Ancula, but I can't be sure.

Oh and there was also a decorated warbonnet that Rob found on the i-beams. That was cute. He was totally curled up and camouflaged, but his headdress was unmistakable when Rob pointed him out to me.

We basically swam in until we could stand up. After that we headed over to the little restaurant by the cove for some chowder. It reminded me of the Breakwater deli, except that the woman there was actually friendly to the divers :) Thanks to Scott and Jeanna for leading us on a fun dive.

After Scott posted his pictures from the dive, we found out that he had found a new-to-him nudibranch, Onchidoris bilamellata, that he hadn't shown to us (bad buddy!). We were a little bummed about that (and Lynne taunted us about it!).

All of the weekend's pictures are here.

Marco's Pinnacle

On Sunday, Team Kitty decided to scooter out to Marco's Pinnacle. I have never been there, really. Well, I have passed it on my way to Great Pinnacle (or not on my way to Great Pinnacle, as the case may be), but it has never really been a destination. So we decided to go check it out. The nice thing is that even though it is a bit of a long scoot, it is shallow, and the route out is fairly shallow, so we could still get a decent amount of time on site. After negotiating all of that, we headed into the water, and off we went. I was leading, woohoo. The water was pretty green in the cove, which was not surprising based on what we saw the previous day. However, we also saw that it fairly quickly became blue, so we were hoping it would be blue out at Marco's. We dropped a little bit before the sand channel, and after the requisite dunking of the face in water (while Kevin video'd), we headed out.

The viz cleared up by the time we hit Hole in the Wall, but the water was still green. Then around Lone Metridium the water suddenly turned a lovely shade of blue. As I scootered through the kelp next to Lone Metridium, I was thinking how it looked almost tropical, but with kelp. It was a sunny day, so it was really bright. We meandered along the 80' depth contour, and eventually I started to get antsy, and wonder if every structure that I hit was Marco's :) We hit some sort of big structure right before it, but it wasn't shallow enough, so I kept going. Then we finally hit it, and it was really big, and came up shallow, so it was pretty unmistakable. Right where we hit it (on the northeast side), there were some nice hydrocoral shrubs. And the viz was quite incredible -- it was so blue and bright and clear! Since I had never been to the site before, I wanted to circle it, to see what was where, and where was the "nice part". So we circled around it counterclockwise. The west side is really not very pretty -- there is lots of palm kelp and it just isn't as colorful. Man is it a big pinnacle! About 3 minutes into the circumnavigation, I was pondering turning around... this side wasn't nearly as nice as the spot we first hit, and I had no idea when it would end! I eventually sort of cut over the top of the south end, and then before you know it, we were back to the east side, where there was hydrocoral.

For some strange reason, Rob stopped to take some pictures of some spindly looking chunks of hydrocoral. Kevin and I were sort of like... what the heck? there is much nicer hydrocoral over there! So Kevin grabbed Rob's manifold and gave him a little tow over to the nicer area, and Rob got that "ah-hah" look and started shooting away. Meanwhile I started poking around, looking for critters. The hydrocoral there was quite a population of cute little crabbies, trying to intimidate the divers with their tiny little claws. I also noticed a bunch of trilineatas on those white sponges with the brown crud on them. I've noticed that those sponges are a prime spot for trilineata peeping, so once I found some of the sponges, I kept an eye out for them, and quickly spotted a few. We also found several Dendronotus albus, which I had just been thinking about the day before (based on a conversation with Phil) that I hadn't seen any for a while. We saw at least 4, or various sizes. Even Kevin found a couple :)

After a nice long time at the site, we turned it on time (the plan was to leave at 70 minutes, at the latest). I could tell Rob wanted to renegotiate the plan (we were actually shallower than we had planned) but he could probably sense that I was cold and that wasn't going to happen :) So we headed back in, this time following the reef-sand interface instead of sticking exactly to the depth contour. Since the viz was so good, we were scootering near the top of the reef, and it was cool to look down the rubble to the sand in those spots where there is a significant drop. Eventually I saw this square-ish reef that seemed sort of Sea Mount-ish. Hmm. I decided to head south at that point, and if I hit a ridge, I would know it wasn't actually Sea Mount, and if I hit Hole in the Wall, then, well, I had apparently veered too far north :) Before you know it, I recognized the big rock just north of HITW, and was relieved to get my barings. Rob asked me what I was doing (I don't think he noticed Sea Mount, and was worried I was going to crash into the shallow rocks of Cannery Point :P). I gave him the "give me a minute" signal, and when we hit HITW, he admitted to my navigational supremacy :P From there we had an uneventful scoot in.

We had planned to do some drills for dive two. Beto was nice enough to loan us one of his little video cameras so we could be vain and video ourselves doing the drills. Rob put together a little summary video. I think putting up videos of yourself doing skills is generally pretty lame, but there is a funny non-skills part at the end. More about that later. We wanted to go out deep enough that we could go to 20 feet and not be able to see the bottom. So we scootered out to the end of the sand channel, and shot a bag from 70'. We clipped off the scoots, and headed up to 20'. We did some valve drills (my best mid-water valve drill ever, I think -- the boys even applauded when I was finished!) and some bottle rotations. I finally go the "snap" to whip the 80 cuft bottle around when I am moving it forward. I was inspired after watching Rob... he does it so violently, I realized I just need to commit to doing it, and not be afraid of bonking myself in the head and rocketing to the surface (or the bottom). So I gave it another try at the end and it went quite well. After a good set of drills we decided to head in. We dropped down and pulled the float, and then got ready to head in. Rob's scooter was on the verge of dying, and so was Kevin's (though through some breakdown in communication, Rob didn't get the memo on Kevin's scoot), so I kept all 3 bottles, and Kevin towed Rob for as long as his scooter would allow. Then they kicked while I scootered on and off to keep pace with them... no way am I kicking those 3 bottles around when I have a perfectly functional scooter in my hand! On the way in, Rob demonstrated his excellent situational awareness and Kevin demonstrated his excellent buddy skills. See the video for more details.

After diving we decided to high tail it out of there so we could drop tanks at Anywater. Actually Kevin dropped tanks while we took our time rinsing gear, and then we all met back at Casa de los Gatitos (hopefully I didn't just say something dirty in Spanish) for pizza and beer and video review.

Ed Cooper's Wall

Friday we did a Team Kitty dive off of Phil's boat. Beto joined us as a kitty for the day. We had been hoping to target a spot near Ed Cooper's Wall, just outside of the Point Lobos boundary. But with all of the rain during the week, Beto reported earlier in the week that from the surface, the water was quite brown all over Lobos. So we figured we would try to make it to Yankee Point, or as a backup, the Outer Outer Pinnacles area. When we got to Lobos, there were little brown waterfalls at the south end of the cove, and the water was indeed a nasty shade of brownish-green. We headed out of the cove in the Yankee Point direction, to see if we could make it down there. At some point, the color of the water abruptly improved, and we decided our original site was worth a look. We found the spot and the water color looked fine, so we got geared up and flopped in. The period of time between pulling up to the site and heading down the line is mostly a haze, because I was feeling sort of seasick at that point... all I really remember was Phil bonking me in the knee with my deco bottle while gearing me up, and noting "that's going to leave a mark".

After dealing with a bubbly regulator, we headed down the line, right next to a narrow canyon that had been the target. Instead of heading down the canyon, we headed west down the wider canyon that runs perpendicular. The top of the canyon was a little deeper than 100', and the bottom was probably about 180' or so at the bottom (the top and bottom get deeper as you run west). Not too long after we started scooting down the channel, we ran into a gorgonian with a basket star on it, on the left hand side of the channel. What a treat! I have never seen one around here before. After briefly oohing and ahhing at the basket star, and posing for some pictures, we continued on, stopping every now and then so Rob could take some pictures. At one point we paused at a not-very-encrusted plateau, which I noticed had several of the red bumpy sponges that the Aldisa cooperi were on last weekend at Twin Peaks. I was looking for the slugs on the sponges, and just when I was about to tell Rob that these were the red bumpy sponges I had told him about, he pointed out an Aldisa he had found. It had an egg mass on the sponge next to it.

Other than that, the wall had lots of nooks with rockfish in them, most notably some treefish, Chinas, and vermilions. Canaries too, I think. The wall was generally covered with corynactis, with the occasional elephant ear or gorgonian. We eventually turned around and scootered back shallower. We briefly visited the narrow channel that had been the original target. It was really cool... very narrow and tall. We'll have to hit that another day. Near the end of the dive, we stopped to check out a treefish, and found a den with two wolf eels nearby. As we were hanging out in that spot, a tower of blue rockfish suddenly descended upon us. Sadly, it was time to start our ascent. We followed the reef shallower to about 90' and then Rob shot a bag and we started our drift. On the deep stops, there was a gang of chestnut cowries on the reef -- they seemed to be everywhere! It was weird. We had a pretty uneventful deco.

When we got back to the surface, Phil had a treat for us -- he had built this little ladder made of metal rings welded together, that he flopped over the side for a trial run. It was definitely easier than no ladder, but still a little unstable. I think Phil got some ideas for LadderV2, which I look forward to trying out next time. We had lunch at our usual Friday spot, Siamese Bay. After that, we reviewed some footage that Kevin took during the dive. I have to admit, I had no idea Kevin was filming during the dive... when we were on the boat pulling up to the site, he was saying that he didn't know if he was going to bother hooking up the camera. I never noticed him actually doing it, and I couldn't figure out why he was scootering around us during deco :)

The Bottom of Twin Peaks

On Saturday I went to Twin Peaks with John and Clinton. Rob and I had this dive date to Twin Peaks with John on the calendar for a while, but got called away to video a class on short notice. Clinton had asked about dive plans earlier in the week, so I figured it was the perfect chance to talk him into a scooter dive (since Rob's scooter would otherwise be stuck at home, washing its hair). It didn't take too much convincing (possibly because his camera is in the shop). The plan had been to go to Twin Peaks and look at the sea pens in the sand at the bottom. I always hear about the sea pens, but never make it to the bottom of the peaks (usually due to our gas choice not being quite right for that). So we wanted to make a point of going out there and making it down to the bottom.

After a brief standoff with John, I offered to lead us out there. After a quick briefing of the features specific to an X-scooter, and a review of the map, we staged our gear on the float (I got to swim, woohoo) and then got geared up and into the water. As we were retrieving gear from the float, someone noticed a stream of bubbles spewing out of John's scooter, from one of the o-rings around the body. Not good. John schlepped that bad boy back out of the water, and debugged the leak. Turned out there was a piece of debris under the o-ring, which was easy enough to fix. After drying stuff off and tinkering a little, John decided that the scooter was good to go, or at least if it wasn't, would likely make that known early in the dive :) While he was tinkering with his scooter, Clinton took the opportunity to descend right by the ramp and figure out the right length for his tow cord. Oh, did I mention that the viz was pretty good right by the ramp? :) After bobbing in the water for quite a while, we finally got going. I really should have insisted that John bring me a snack when he got back into the water. We scootered out to the start of the sand channel, and dropped there. We were within site of Beto and Rob's crew where we dropped.

The viz was quite good in the sand channel, I would say at least 30 feet. It only got better as we headed out. The patch of kelp just north of the lone metridium had stellar viz, and it was incredibly bright. Almost as soon as we left lone metridium, I could see what I thought was Sea Mount off to my right. I was doubtful at first -- I can *never* find Sea Mount on the way out, it seems like it only appears when I am on the way in. So I headed in that direction to check it out and after passing it, we hit Beto's. We scootered out along Beto's and then turned left to go toward the Sisters. I love the ride from Beto's to the Sisters on a good viz day. It seems like you can see forever over the open expanse of sand and rubble when it is bright and clear. Before you know it, we hit the Sisters and headed up the Road. As usual, there were various small and juvenile rockfish hanging out on the Road near the Sisters. Clinton found some sort of rockfish that he couldn't identify (which John and I were of course no help with). I gave him the big shrug and then we continued out. We stopped along the way to look at a couple of Medusa jellyfish, but we were otherwise on the trigger pretty much non-stop. About 2/3 of the way out along the road, we came upon a school of blue rockfish, and not long after that, a school of olive rockfish. The olive rockfish were neat, since I don't usually see them in those numbers out there. After marveling at them briefly, we continued out until we got to the big peak.

We headed to the bottom of the northeast tip, to look for the sea pens. It was my understanding that this is where the sea pens were (which John confirmed on the map). Apparently this isn't actually the spot that is known for the pens, but there were several there. I pretty quickly decided that the sea pens were quite unexciting, considering there was a big wall with various colorful life forms within sight. So after just a couple of minutes looking for stuff in the sand, I headed to the wall, which we worked our way up slowly for the rest of the time there. Clinton found some slug on a red sponge, which I thought was a pretty common slug out there. I thought it was an Aldisa sanguinea, but it turns out it was actually an Aldisa cooperi (which has spots down the center). I am still pretty sure we have seen those before, but I didn't know the spots were significant. The first one he found was on a red bumpy sponge (which are pretty common in the E3-ish area, and I would like to know what they are...), but there were several others nearby, and some egg bundles too. Clinton was clearly very excited about the find (which made no sense at the time, since I thought they were A. sanguinea). I guess these are not generally known to be around here (they are a northern species), hence his extreme excitement.

After working our way up the wall, I came over the top and down the other side of it. I love the view down the face of that wall, especially when the viz is so nice. With such excellent viz, I realized that spending all of my time at Twin Peaks looking for small critters is really sort of a waste. The wide angle view of the northeast-facing wall was gorgeous. It was time to leave, so we got on the trigger and headed back. We scootered in shallower off the reef, with a nice view of the topography below us. We stopped in the vicinity of Lone Metridium to switch to our deco bottles, and hung out there for a few minutes, before continuing to our next stop. Once we made it to the sand channel (after our 60' stop), we were mostly on the trigger the whole way down the sand channel. Around 40', Clinton pointed up and I looked up to see a school of some kind of perch. There must have hundreds of them, which was surreal to see in the sand channel. There were also lots of smaller schools of tube snouts along the sand channel.

When we got to the worm patch, we decided to keep going, because the viz was awesome, so why stop there? Eventually I found a little clearing in the kelp at about 20', so we hung out there for the remainder of that stop. Clinton whipped out his wetnotes to brief us on the "new" nudibranch (complete with a cute little drawing of the nudibranch and its spots). The wetnotes chat was a good way to pass the time, since we were all pretty cold. I think bobbing on the surface for so long before the dive definitely took its toll. When we were finished with that stop, we headed in until we found the line for our float. I clipped my scoot off and we waited out our last stop. It seems like when I am leading, we almost always end up ascending at the worm patch. So I was relieved that I actually found our way all the way back to the ramp :) Rob was impressed. I think he was also impressed that I led us out to Twin Peaks and back (he apparently thinks that I can only navigate when he is there to send me telepathic hints about whether I'm going in the right direction).

When we first got out, everyone was pretty cold, so we pulled our gear and float, thinking we probably wouldn't do a second dive. But then after we reflected on the crazy good conditions (in addition to the viz, the water was dead flat), we decided another dive was in order. There was also a little bit of questioning certain team members' manhood involved in the decision to do another dive (by Rob actually -- backseat team member!). We discussed the various options for the dive, and Clinton wanted to count nudibranchs. It wasn't the most popular idea, but since we did talk him into scootering with us for the first dive, I figured we should go along with the nudi counting. After warming up for a little while (the topside conditions were awesome too), we waddled back into the water. Walking in with a stage bottle (sans float) is such a hardship. Swimming out on the surface with a stage both (sans scooter) is even more of a hardship. Clinton and John are just too hard-core for me. I had called transect 5 (since it always has more nudis, which makes counting more fun), and Clinton was counting transect 4. Poor John, he didn't even have a camera to hold while Clinton counted :) We headed out to transect 5 first, and Clinton did his count. I poked around mostly in the little channel that cuts across to the east side of the reef. I noticed a lot of Rostangas in that area. John found an Aegires in that area too. I also visited the resident warbonnet, who I was relieved to see (since I hadn't been able to find him several times recently). I was getting rather chilly while Clinton counted, so I was glad when he was finished. We stopped by to check out the wolf eels on the way. I saw them the last time I was at Lobos, but what I hadn't seen was the eggs that everyone else apparently had seen recently. So I specifically wanted to look for those, but they were no longer in there. I did get a good look at both eels though.

After that, we continued to transect 5, and I did my thing. I found a ton of slugs, though not much that I would consider exciting -- one berthella (which I like, since their little spots look like twinkling stars). Finally at the very end, I found a Limacia -- phew, a certifiably "exciting" slug :) I also found an incredible number of Rostangas. On one little patch of reef, I counted 7, including two mating pairs. There was also one mystery nudibranch that I really couldn't decide if it was a Rostanga or an Aldisa sanguinea. It really didn't look right for a Rostanga, but it had none of the tell-tale characteristics of an Aldisa. I called Clinton over to consult, but he was waffling on that too. He really needs to get his camera back into service :) The plan had been to hop over to the east side to play around when the counting was finished. However, when I finished Clinton gave me the "I'm cold" signal so we headed straight in. Clinton was swimming like a madman (even more so than usual). I guess without the added drag of the camera, he can really motor. We ascended right by the ramp, and after I caught my breath, I waddled up the ramp.

We had a late lunch at RG Burger, which we haven't been to in a while (Phat Burger seems to have gained favor in recent times). We had to put up with the usual slow service, but the milkshakes were good.

Dos Gatos

On Saturday, Rob and I were on the BAUE tech boat. We were diving as a team of two, since Kevin was off being hard core and cave divering in Mexico (okay, not that hard core). Mark (who had organized the boat) wanted to go to Flintstones. Rob also had some new site in mind that he found on the bathymetry maps, not far from Flintstones. On the way down there, there was some sort of mutiny in the wheelhouse I guess, because John came scurrying down looking for support for E3. Everyone agreed, even though we were already south of Lobos, pretty close to Flintstones. Then the next thing you know, we were dropping anchor, in the vicinity of Flintstones. Jim told us that we were anchored on a "different part of Flintstones" than we usually go, which I guess we a diplomatic way of saying we went to the new site that Rob had numbers for.

Rob and I hopped in the water, grabbed our scoots, and headed to the line. There seemed to be a little surface current, but the line was pretty much vertical below the surface, down to about 80 feet, where it then flattened out. We got down and checked the anchor, and made our best effort to place the chain to prevent the anchor from getting stuck. We were anchored on a pinnacle that topped around 90 to 100 feet. It didn't look like any Flintstones I know of. The south side, where we hit the pinnacle, was fairly steep. We headed around clockwise, and stopped for a while on the east side, which had a much less steep slope (at least at the depth where we were -- 150 to 160 feet). There were lots of nice big elephant ears and a lot of areas had really nice gorgonian gardens. The viz was good -- bright, blue, and clear. I found an interesting little snail, which had a distinctive black and white pattern on its shell, for which I have dubbed it the "zebra snail". I have no idea what it was -- it's not in the BAUE field guide, so I'll have to do a little more research. I also found some strange little metal cylinder (about the size of a backup light) sitting there, with what looked like a bite out of it. Strange. It was also around this point that I realized I had a catastrophic pony-tail failure. The band at the end of my braid had come out, and my braid had slowly unwound itself until there was hair *everywhere*. It made it hard to clip to my right D-ring. This is definitely a weakness of the hog harness, which requires further study.

Eventually we continued on, heading to the west side of the pinnacle. At the northwest tip of the pinnacle, there was a crack with some nice hydrocoral bushes. We were recently chatting about how we don't usually see the bushy hydrocoral very deep (except at Big Sur Banks), but here was a counterexample. As we were leaving that spot, we pass Nick and Clinton. Clinton got some nice shots of a bushy hydrocoral stalk. As we came around to the north side, a school of blue rockfish came into view. Also, we could see a second pinnacle off to the north, and Rob suggested we head over there. So we did, and the fishies seemed to come with us. There was an even bigger school over there. We circled around that pinnacle until we came to a really cool little canyon on the southeast side.

It ran north-south and was in fact the east side of the first pinnacle on the right, and the west wall of a third pinnacle (which we didn't have time to explore) to the left. In between was a well-defined sand channel. The walls had the usual elephant ears and an impressive number of fluffy gorgonians. I think this was my favorite spot of the dive, due to the dramatic topography and the nice gorgonian cover. After Rob snapped a couple of pictures, I signalled that it was time to go. I wanted to follow the reef up and hop over to the peak where the anchor was (which I was fairly confident we could find), but Rob didn't quite get what I was suggesting so we just headed back around the way that we came. We got to the top of the pinnacle and shot a bag just as we saw John, Matt, and Mark doing the same. We ended up basically drifting with them for the entire deco. Rob went over to take a few pics at one stop. The deco was very cold, but otherwise uneventful.

It was overcast and chilly on the surface, which didn't help. Rob was horribly sea sick, and spent the entire surface interval hanging over the side of the boat. He didn't eat a single cheeto! I tried to pick up the slack for him in that department. While we were chatting about gear that had been lost over the years, I mentioned that I had lost many hair bands to the ocean, and Michael mentioned that he had found one on the bench after we got in the water. Phew. I was relieved to know that a baby seal wouldn't end up choking on it. I was thinking that with this viz, it would be a nice day to hit the Pinnacles. So when a few options were given for our second dive, I immediately pounced on Outer Pinnacles.

As it turned out, the viz was actually quite unspectacular. It was greener and snotty. There was also a bit of surge. We found a couple of nice patches of hydrocoral, and Rob took some pictures. We also had fun scootering along all of the little canyons. We found a very small swimthrough (I think that calling it is a "swimthrough" is actually sort of generous) and I poked my head into it. Apparently on the last BAUE rec boat, Kevin found some swimthrough on the first dive, that everyone was searching for on the second dive (and couldn't find). We were wondering if this was the same one (since we were at the same anchorage). Eventually Rob started to get motion sick, or something, from trying to take pictures, so he stowed his camera. Meanwhile I was getting uncomfortably cold, and regretting eating all of those cheetos on the surface interval. So I thumbed it. On the ascent at about 20 feet we saw a gorgeous Leucothea that had its "wings" extended and it's little "arms" fluttering. I think it was the nicest specimen I've ever seen. After getting some glamour shots of it, we continued up to 10 feet, where Rob pointed out some tiny little jelly animal (less than a centimeter long) that was sort of carrot-shaped with pink insides and tiny little fluttering arms. I have no idea what it was, but it was very cute!

When we hit the surface, we were delighted to find that we were only about 50 feet from the boat (we had ascended up a stalk of kelp on the theory that we were "near" the anchor line). Once we got back on the boat, Rob was immediately sea sick again and stayed that way for the return trip :( He eventually recovered after napping in the car while I ate lunch at the taco place :)

After we told Beto about our fun time, he asked Rob for the coordinates and the name of the site. Oooh, the name. I suggested Dos Gatos, for the two pinnacles. True, there is a third kitty which has yet to be explored, but we can save that for another day (hopefully when we have our third kitty along!). I joked to Rob that the small pinnacle is Pepper's Peak and the big one is Oreo Mountain :) Oh, and by the way... the site we ended up at is not actually the site that Rob had numbers for. The target site is 300 feet or so to the west of this one, and remains to be explored at a later date. I can't wait!

All of the day's pictures are here (including topside pics by Mark!).