Cordell 2022 Day 3: Craine's Point

Today only Rob and I were diving, since the other divers had to work :(. We decided to go back to Craines Point, which was the first site we visited on the first trip to Cordell, and we haven’t been back since. On the first visit, it was kind of dark and green, but viz was reasonably good, and there was a big school of widows. It was completely overcast but no sign of fog. It was a cold ride out.

When we got into the water, the viz was very good. But as we headed down the line, it very quickly got murky, and then very murky and warm. As we continued down, it was getting so murky and dark that I thought we might have to thumb the dive when we got to the bottom. Then we popped out of the layer, and it was crackling clear (but dark as night) and freezing. It felt like someone threw ice water on my face. It reminded me of a cave dive because it was so dark and clear. And there was no school of fish. We initially continued down to the wall, to around 160’, but then I headed up and over the lip to look for a spot to put the boxfish. As soon as I came over the top, I saw that there was a school of widows over the peak. I signaled to Rob and suggested he move the camera over here. He seemed to be having trouble getting it to stay where he was trying to put it, so he abandoned that spot and moved to the school of fish.

One of the most notable things about this dive was the intense whale song that was going on for most of the dive. It had a sort of spooky quality to it, which went along with the dark darkness of the dive. Another notable thing — there was quite a bit of current.

The fish did not like the light. Whether it was the boxfish or my video lights, they were just very skittish. So I had no success getting video of them. I decided to focus on getting video of the encrusting life on the reef instead. The site is kind of a plateau, with little ups and downs, which are very well encrusted, but subjectively not as pretty as the other sites at Cordell. I think this is at least in part because the reef is more brown and less pink. There corynactis seems to be more orange, there’s a lot of that golden hydroid, and also some kind of red algae that is not very pretty. But it is still quite impressive how encrusted it is! In addition to the school of widows, there were a fair number of rosy rockfish skittering about.

Given the darkness and the current (and a minor camera issue — floppy strobe arm), I only video’d for like 15 minutes and then put it away and enjoyed the dive. We eventually went down the wall a bit and explored the structure a bit. It was rather convenient to have the boxfish on top of the plateau as a beacon to return to. We could see it as we scootered around the wall, which turned out to be shaped like a horseshoe. Also, we briefly visited a little side pinnacle across a sand channel. I saw a quillback rockfish and more roseys along the side of the wall. There were also some of those holes, but less distinctly holey at the bottom of the wall in one spot.

When it was time to start the ascent, I was shocked by how warm and murky the water was as soon as we got to 120’. Apparently the current also calmed down because we barely drifted on deco according to the boat crew. There weren’t any interesting sightings on deco, since the viz was terrible. A whale would have had to swim right into us for us to see it :)

Although this wasn't the prettiest dive, it was quite memorable due to the whale song.

Cordell 2022 Day 2: Quillback Ridge

For the second day, we checked out a new site that Rob found on the bathymetry, and that he and Kevin did a short recon dive on the previous day. It looked big on the map, and was a sort of crescent shaped ridge coming up to 140’ or so, and dropping to a bit over 200’. It was not too far from Northern East Ridge. On the way down, the water did not seem as warm. It was pretty clear and blue on the bottom, but not as bright as the previous dive. The water was also a little schmutzy. There was a little bit of current, which seemed variable as you moved around the site. The site was more like a plateau than a pinnacle. I spent pretty much the entire dive on the plateau, with just a very brief foray down the side to about 170’.

The first thing we noticed when we got to the structure was the lack of fish. Or at least, no big schools of fish. There was a little school of young of year around, but nothing nearly as impressive as northern west ridge. The other thing that I noticed right away was that this spot really reminded me of Northern East Ridge — different shades of pink corynactis with lots of white elephant ears sponges (covered in brown hydroids) and some biggish heads of light pink hydrocoral. There is a picture that Rob took our first year at Northern East Ridge, which is the picture in my head of that sight, and it looked so much like that.

Although there was no big impressive school of fish, there was some notable fish life. There were quite a few lingcod, though they were all relatively small. There were tons of rosy rockfish. Clinton got a picture of like twenty of them piled up in a crack. But the coolest fish pile was a group of around ten quillback rockfish hanging out in an otherwise boring flat open area. They blended in so well, it seemed like there were one or two but then your eyes would adjust to the background and more and more would appear. Definitely the most quillbacks I’ve ever seen at once!

At some point, Rob pointed out one of those holes in the reef. We also briefly headed down the side to look at another quillback perched on a little ledge on the wall. The wall drop off was very vertical below us but probably only dropped another 50 feet to the sand. One other nice sighting was a siphonophore with its head attached.

The deco did not have as dramatic of a warm layer, which was a bummer since I had a leak in my left arm. A mola passed us once on deco. It was a very nice fly by but he didn’t stick around. When we surfaced and I was scanning around looking for the boat, I saw a whale less than 100’ away. Apparently there were five whales swimming very close to our bag for most of deco. Sigh.

It was Sunday, and Monday's forecast looked promising, but unfortunately several of the divers had to head back to work, and Nick had to head home.  But Rob and I stuck around with Jim to try to eek out another dive on Monday.

Cordell 2022 Day 1: Northern West Ridge + a Recon Dive

Conveniently, the weather opened up for diving over the weekend.  We all drove up on Friday afternoon, arriving at various times, and met at the AirBnB that we were sharing, which was really nice and really close to the marina.  Nick from NOAA (the keeper of the Boxfish) flew out to join us for the first weekend, which was fun.  I was hungry by the time we got there, and stuff closes early in Bodega Bay, so we headed back to the Fishetarian Fish Market before it closed.  It was busy, full of people that didn't understand the concept of figuring out what they wanted to eat while they stood in line for 15 minutes, and had passable food (but not very good french fries).  

Anyway, I digress, this is not the day this post is supposed to be about!  So the ride out to Cordell Bank on this day was interesting, because it was relatively rough in terms of swell.  It wasn't really rough, but since we only go at Cordell when the forecast is really flat, AND we usually use the first day to move the boat, it means that by the time we get out there, we are on day 2 of a 4 day window of flat weather.  So, I guess it's obvious, but the way we did it this year means that it might not be quite so flat flat when we get out there.  It was still perfectly diveable, and it actually flattened out while we were in the water and was quite flat on the way in. 

Since we hadn't made it to Cordell Bank in 6 years, we of course kicked off the trip at our favorite site, which is Northern West Ridge.  Every time we have dived it, it has had "fish-limited visibility" at the top of the pinnacle.  Aside from the little bit of swell, the conditions looked great when we got there -- no discernible current, and the viz looked great from the surface.  The water was pretty warm on the way down. On the way down the line, the viz got a little murkier, from about 20 feet. At 80 or 90 feet, the line flattened out due to a little bit of current. We continued along the line and suddenly I saw a wall of brown ahead of me. As I got closer, I realized it was a huge, dense school of widow rockfish. The visibility opened up and the water felt colder (it was 49 on the bottom) as we came through the school of fish. At the top of the pinnacle, the water was super clear blue, probably around 100 feet of viz, and it was quite bright.

Rob set up the 360 camera and I got my video camera mounted on my scooter, and got some footage of the fish at the top of the reef. The top of the reef was completely engulfed in rockfish, and they did not seem bothered by the video lights. The fish were primarily widow rockfish, with the occasional olive or blue mixed in. After my camera was set up, I headed down the pinnacle to join Rob and Kevin. Kevin was at the bottom of the pinnacle, because he had followed a giant pacific octopus down there. T give an idea of the viz, I could very clearly see his tanks from 100 feet above. I passed Rob on the way down and joined Kevin at approximately 250’. I saw a quillback rockfish down there, but my camera couldn’t start running at that depth so didn’t get any footage. We headed back up to join Rob with the school of fish shallower.

Rob moved the box fish several times during the dive, to different spots near the top of the pinnacle. I spent a lot of time video’ing the school of rockfish, and also did several passes around the pinnacle to document the dense invertebrate life all over it, including several different shades of corynactis, and lots of yellow and white sponges. John and Clinton found a second giant pacific octopus in a crack along the side of the pinnacle. It was not coming out, but you could clearly see it and it looked huge!

In addition to the schooling rockfish, there were some nice bigger fish around. I saw several very big yelloweyes and big Boccaccio. There is a crack that goes down one side of the reef starting from the top where two really big Boccaccio were hanging out. I remember the same crack from previously years, also being a spot where some of the bigger fish hung out. One of the Boccaccio had a black splotch on its side, which we have seen before at Italian Ledge (and Tom Laidig explained to us… I think it’s some kind of fungus). Anyhoo, I made sure to get some video of that. I saw one other big big fish by that crack. It was silver and not a rockfish. It was tall and skinny. Kevin saw it too and described it as a tuna-looking thing. For some reason I did not get video of it, which was dumb. Maybe the box fish caught it. There were some relatively big lingcod around too.

When it was time to go, we shot our bag and headed up. From about 70’ up, the water was noticeably warmer, and got to 57 degrees at some point. We didn’t see too much on deco, but there were a few Leucothea pulchra.

After the first dive, Rob and Kevin did a short recon dive on a new potential site, which they said looked good, so we decided to dive it tomorrow.

The ride back in was flatter than the ride out.  After we got back to the dock, we headed to Fisherman's Cove for lunch, which is pretty much where we always go for lunch after a dive at Cordell.

Winter Big Sur Diving

We had a crazy good winter diving season, which included 4 tech trips to Big Sur, of which 3 were back to back weekends.  It was really unusual, and because we made it down there so many times in such a short period, we were more willing to take a chance on something new.  On one trip (to Sur 20), Rob and Kevin did a short second dive to check out a mark that Rob found on the bathymetry.  They found a site that was actually worth diving, so the following weekend, we went back.  The structure there had really interesting formations that caused us to name the site Funnel Cakes.

Anyhoo, since I also got new video lights relatively recently, I was actually shooting video on all four dives, and I put together not one, but two videos from these dives -- at Sur 19, Sur 20, Funnel Cakes, and Sur 19 again.

In addition to making it down to Big Sur a lot this winter, it was also a great winter in the sense that we only cancelled one boat due to weather, and I think I did not dive in the bay at all!

At the time of the dive at Funnel Cakes, the formations seemed really unusual to me; it was like nothing that I'd seen underwater before.  But then a week or so later, Rob and I were heading down to Garrapata State Park for. a hike, which we do *all the time* when I noticed that these kinds of formations appear all along the coast down there, and all along the side of highway 1 as you are approaching that area.  So okay, maybe not that unusual :)

Taveuni, Fiji: New Year's 2022

When we heard that Fiji was reopening in December, we almost immediately booked a trip there for over New Year's.  It was the one place we had most closely been waiting to reopen so we could go there and dive.  After our last trip to Fiji, I decided that the ideal next trip would be a week on the Nai'a and then a week land-based on Taveuni (so we could dive Rainbow Reef a lot).  Since the Nai'a wasn't reopened yet, we had to settle for just the week on Taveuni :).  Based on (not that) extensive internet research and the limited selection that was available, we stayed at Paradise Taveuni, which was very nice.  Details are in the play-by-play posts below.

Taveuni: Getting There and Back

Taveuni: Paradise Taveuni

Taveuni: Day 1

Taveuni: Day 2

Taveuni: Day 3

Taveuni: Day 4

Taveuni: Day 5

Taveuni: Day 6

Taveuni: Day 7

Taveuni, Fiji: Day 7

We were supposed to do a 3 tank trip to Rainbow Reef on the small boat (there were just four of us), but for some reason the plan was changed to instead do two dives in the morning at Rainbow Reef and do a separate third dive in the afternoon. We were leaving at 7, so we had to get up a bit early, though in reality I've been waking up at like 5am all week anyway, so it just meant I had to actually get out of bed and leave the room earlier than usual. I had French toast for breakfast, which was predictably a mistake, because I was hungry while we were diving, due to the all-carb breakfast. On the plus side, there was mango AND coconut on the fruit plate this morning.

So we headed out to Rainbow Reef, and the water was dead flat, so we went very fast and made the best time we've made all week. It took like 20 or so minutes to get out there, and it was a very comfortable ride. As I mentioned, there were only 4 divers (Rob and me, plus two guys named Dave and Rick who we'd been on the boat with all week), and we posited that the fast ride was a combination of the flat seas, lighter load, and we had a different captain (Kim) who seemed more willing to use the full range of throttle positions :P Once we got out there, we discussed where to dive, and Dave (I think) mentioned Fish Factory, which was a site that had been discussed earlier in the week, which he'd dived on previous trips and really liked. Given the name, it seemed like a promising site.

We were diving with Christine as our guide today. She gave very clear, thorough briefin. Basically there was an area with a pinnacle from about 60 to 100+ feet with a lot of fish on it. She mentioned anthias of many colors, and anemonefish. And a combination of hard and soft corals. The site did have a ton of fish, but the coral was in pretty bad condition. I guess it was damaged in the last cyclone, as Dave said it used to be a completely different site. So while we did see huge schools of anthias, the backdrop was not that photogenic, so overall I thought it was kind of a dud of a dive.

After that dive, since it was our last day of diving and we really wanted to see more soft corals, we basically got to pick where to go. There were a couple of possibilities given the current state of the tide, and we decided to go back to Jerry's Jelly, since we really liked it last time. (Dave and Rick had both been on the previous dive there too, and did not have a great time due to the current, but they were kind enough to let us go there anyway. Christine again gave a very clear and thorough briefing and I think they both had a great time this time around, since there was more of a plan related to dealing with the current). One thing that Christine mentioned in the briefing was the possibility of down currents when we left the reef for our safety stop. She said if we saw our bubbles going down, not up, to swim away from the reef to get out of the down current. Cue foreboding music now.

The plan was to spend 15 minutes or so around the "jellyfish" bommie, then cross over to the other side of the reef and drift back along there, possibly ending up at Rainbow's End (I think we did in fact end up there, but I can't distinguish the various sites well enough to say... but it definitely had a similar look). I thought that the current at the bommies at the beginning of the dive was not as bad as it was on the previous dive, but Rob thought it was worse, and said there were spots he could photograph last time that he couldn't today. So who knows. But I spent more time on the main jellyfish bommie and less time on the other ones near it, because the other ones seemed to not have quite as much stuff going on (open soft corals, anthias). After maybe 20 minutes hanging out there, we headed to the crossover point.

This time around, I knew what was coming, so I got my camera out and just started videoing as we went flying across the reef. There was so much current that my light arm got pushed into a different position by the current, hehehe. Near the beginning of the crossover, we zoomed past a rock with some really nice, really open soft corals, which I managed to at least point my camera at, and which I knew Rob would not be able to resist trying to photograph. But there was no way I was going to hold station in that current, so I had to leave him behind :). The fish in that crossover section were hilarious, there was tons and tons of them streaming across the reef in a line and above the line of fish, there'd be a cloud of fish that got knocked back by the current. It was quite strange to watch. Eventually we made it to the other side of the reef and the ride settled down. Just on the other side of the reef, we saw a turtle. Yay! Last time, we saw a white tip shark there, so I guess it's a good spot to look for big stuff.

We then drifted back in the direction we'd come from, on the other side of the reef. I don't know if this section of reef is technically Rainbow's End, but it looks a lot like it, though we were going in reverse. There are scattered coral heads with tons of soft coral on them, and zillions and zillions of little fish all along the reef. It was a fun ride. At some point Rob hung back and was taking pictures, so I turned around and faced into the current and finned to stay where I was, while I waited, and waited, and waited. I finally (after 5+ minutes) signaled to Rob and told him we were moving. I wanted to enjoy the ride in the current, and Rob was annoying me. So I was hanging with Christine, with the others just a little bit in front of us, and once again, Rob fell behind (plus he was down at the bottom of the slope for some reason), and I had to swim into the current to find him. Eye roll.

It was past time to start our ascent, so Christine signaled to head to our safety stop and we swam off of the reef and headed up. Sort of. I wouldn't say that there was a dramatic downcurrent or anything, but I was definitely having trouble getting from 30 feet to 20 feet and when I looked Dave and Rick, their bubbles weren't going down, but they weren't going up either. They were sort of spiraling around in the 5 feet above and below them. It was intriguing. Just as I noticed that, I also noticed that I was no longer at 20 feet, hehe. It was nothing that a little air in the wing and attention to our depth couldn't solve. As we were ascending back up to 20 from our downward bobble, Rob swam over to me and gave me this "come here" hand signal and swam right up to me and was reaching out toward me. I thought he was trying to fix something on my gear, which annoyed me, because while trying to swim out of a downcurrent really did not seem to be the time for Rob to doink with my gear. So I kind of pushed his hand away, and after a brief exchange I realized he wanted my long hose. Ahhhh. Way to give an unambiguous sign that he needed to share gas! Okay so I deployed my long hose and we headed up from our 20 foot stop to 10 feet. As soon as I whipped out my long hose, Rick was practically on top of Rob to make sure everything was okay, which was very nice. Everything went fine, and when we finished our 10 foot stop and I signaled to ascend, Rob insisted on switching back onto his gas. This annoyed me, as it seemed to just make things more complicated for no reason. Of course right after he switched off of my long hose, he dropped to 15 feet, and I was like -- great, do I need to go down there and donate gas again (giant eye roll). We headed up to the surface, and Rob got an earful about both his ambiguous signal for my long hose and going off of it before we got to the surface. I think he needs a fundies refresher.

That all probably sounded pretty dramatic, but it was like 90 seconds of an hour long dive, and 60 seconds of it was us hanging out at 10 feet sharing gas.

After lunch, we headed back out to Vuna Reef, and got our pick of what site to go to.  Since we really liked the mini white wall at The Stairs, we asked to go back there.  I was kind of expecting this to be a disappointment of a dive after the awesome dive this morning, but it turned out to be a great dive!  First, the mini white wall did not disappoint.  We had fun hanging around in and under the ledge again.  But more importantly, Christine made some very good macro finds.  We saw both of the purple aeolids that I love, which was a nice way to wrap up the dive.  But the find of the dive was... drum roll... a pygmy seahorse!  She got my attention and I swam over and she was pointing to a little white coil on some hydroids.  At first I thought it was nudibranch eggs, and was expecting there to be a nudibranch there.  But it was actually the tail of the seahorse -- a tiny white pygmy seahorse.  He flapped a bit in the moving water and unveiled himself.  Then he took off swimming!  By the time that Rob appeared, he had landed on some little green algae leaves, which I think are what the seahorses on the house reef supposedly lived on.  Now I could see how one of those seahorses could hide in that algae.  Considering that Rob had been looking for a pygmy seahorse the entire trip, it seemed like a good last dive of the trip.

After the dive, Rob said that the seahorse didn't look anything like what he was looking for.  I told him that I knew that the pygmy seahorses in Fiji looked different than the ones in the Philippines and lived on different things, and since I couldn't remember what they looked like, I figured I had no hope of finding one, so wasn't even looking.  Apparently he did not remember that they looked different.  Doh.  I think this one is Pontoh's pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus pontohi).  There are some nice pictures of the various species here.  I think the ones in the Philippines are cuter (is that mean?).

Taveuni, Fiji: Day 6

It was really windy in the morning, and there was talk of it being too rough to go out in the afternoon/evening, but it ended up being crazy flat on the water for all three dives. After breakfast, we headed over to Rainbow Reef on the big boat. I think we made the best time yet getting over there, because it was so flat. It was really cloudy over Taveuni, but over the reef and Vanua Levu, it was sunny. For our first dive, we went to Purple Wall. We dove in two teams, and Rob and I were diving alone with a guide (Dee). We'd been there before, but not when the current was running, so we saw the purple fans and gorgonians on the wall, but not a lot of the soft corals were open. Today, the current was running, so we should see the soft corals too. It was an awesome dive! I told Rob afterward that I thought it might have been the best dive yet of the trip (he begged to differ -- I think he liked yesterday's dive at Jerry's Jelly better).

The current was quite strong and on the purple section of wall, near the top, there were tons of soft corals that were open. They were mostly purple with some white and the occasional pink. Some of the spots with soft coral had small reef fish darting around, but there weren't *that* many anthias and such (which is why Rob didn't think it was as good as Jerry's Jelly). We stayed on that section of the wall for almost 30 minutes, drifting down current, then swimming back to the beginning to get more photos and video. The current was strong, but there were little outcroppings that you could hide/rest behind when you needed to. Eventually I suggested to Rob that we go down the wall a little and drift past it one final time, and then we continued on from there. The reef kind of petered out and then we crossed over a finger sticking out in the deep (as discussed in our briefing). At this point, Dee thumbed the dive, earlier than expected. I didn't know if it was because she wanted us to ascend there or what. But once we got to our safety stop, we drifted over the rest of the group, who were still on the reef. Apparently there was another really cool section with some white and purple soft corals that we missed, grumble.

As I mentioned, I thought that was a super awesome dive. However, most of the other people on the boat were not as happy to dive in high current as we were, so we didn't get to do another awesome soft coral dive for the second dive (grumble). We went to a site which I think was called Nuku Reef, though I may have gotten the name wrong. This was described as having a combination of hard and soft corals. We'd go to the end and then circle back up the reef for our safety stop, before drifting off into the deep for the pickup. The reef here was really not that great, as Rainbow Reef dives go, though there were a lot of fish. The hard coral was in really bad shape in sections, and while there was the occasional soft coral, there weren't really any spots with tons of soft corals. There was also a decent amount of current, so I'm not sure why we couldn't have gone to a better site if we were going to dive in current anyway :). The fish life was impressive, tons of anthias, some barracudas off of the reef, but it was not my favorite dive.

After lunch (we both had kokoda, yum!) and a micro-nap, we headed back out to a site just north of the resort, whose name I didn't catch. Rob was shooting macro, so we were looking for critters. The site was described as three rock fingers pointing out into the deep, and the current was running south, so we'd just work our way over/around the fingers. It was a bit of a fail as far as macro dives go, but it was fun to look for stuff. We got separated from the group pretty quickly, and I found a whopping one nudibranch the whole dive (a bumpy dorid, and a boring one at that). Before we managed to get separated, one of the other divers, Rick, pointed out a green moray eel sticking out of a hole, and that may have been the highlight of the dive :P. Rob found a pretty big octopus in a hole, but it was really in a hole, so not photo or video worthy. When it was time to ascend, I shot a bag since we'd gotten separated and were drifting in current. It was my hot pink bag, which Kevin gave to me a while ago, but I have never actually shot before! It performed admirably.

We managed to find a guide to go night diving tonight, Oscar, so we headed out a little before sundown. We headed down the slope and of course Rob spent half of the dive looking for a Pygmy seahorse (more on that later). Well he didn't say that's what he was looking for, but I know that's what he was doing. We made some good finds on the dive. I made one *really* good find, which was a super exotic looking frog fish of some kind. He was scurrying across the reef and there is absolutely no way I would have been able to pick him out on the reef if he weren't moving. It was red and orange and really warty/frilly looking, and I wasn't even sure it was a frog fish until I saw it reach its spindly little frog leg out to step across the reef. But it was so cool!  I looked at an ID book and my best guess is a freckled frogfish (Antennarius coccineus).

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I made the find of the day (maybe the trip), we did see some other nice critters. First, we saw a few of these weird lionfish variants that have these long nostril poker thingies sticking out in from of them. I think it is a twinspot lionfish (Dendrochirus biocellatus). We saw one on our other night dive (but it was in a hole, so I didn't get an unobstructed view) and I could tell it was super awesome but didn't know what it was. Rob said he thought it was some kind of lionfish (or maybe a baby lionfish, I can't remember). On this dive, we saw at least three and at least two of them were out in full view; one was the first thing that Oscar found after we descended. I asked Oscar after the dive what they were and he said some kind of lion fish, maybe people call them "butterfly lionfish" but googling didn't really turn anything up by that name.  But perusing an ID book, it looks very much like, and only like, the twinspot lionfish.

Other than that, I made one other nice find, which was an itty bitty slug. It was so small that while I was pretty sure it was a slug, I wasn't sure if it was a nudibranch or not, I could basically just discern what I thought were black rhinophores on a mostly white body. Rob got a picture of it and thinks it is some kind of sap sucking slug. So probably a non-nudibranch slug. It looks a bit disheveled in the picture, possibly due to my double-ender inspection to determine if it was really a slug. Whoops. Aside from that, we saw one of the blue ribbon eels, a couple of nudis of varying coolness, and lots of shrimps.

After the dive we headed to dinner. It was "roast night" which entailed a plate of various meats (pork, beef, chicken), a baked potato and a big pile of veggies. Yum. I was least excited about the chicken but I think it was actually the tastiest of the meats. But they were all tasty. For dessert, we had chocolate mousse, which was more like a dense chocolate pudding than a mousse, but in any case it was delicious!