theskull
June 26th, 2006, 08:24 AM
Planned beach dive at Laguna Beach for Friday PM had to be cancelled due to high surf—beach was closed to divers. I spent the afternoon lunching with a friend and strolling around the port taking photos of gulls and sailboats instead.
Boarded the dive boat SunDiver in Long Beach at 6 am Saturday morning for a 3-tank day of diving with 25 divers on board. Boat could provide Aluminum 80 tanks, but my buddy brought one of his Steel HP 100 tanks for me to borrow. Air fills were provided between dives by the compressor on board the boat! We set up our gear and left dock at 7 am for the 2+ hour cruise out to Catalina Island, with a hot breakfast cooked for us in the boat’s galley while underway.
Anchored in Eel Cove just off Catalina Island and made 2 hour-long dives at this site. We were diving in a large kelp bed with depths ranging from 15-60 ft. We weaved our way through the kelp in 64 F water with 30 ft. visibility and had a wonderful time finding and photographing huge lobsters, plentiful Garibaldi, octopus, sea cucumbers, sea stars, sea bass, sheepshead, ever-present spiny urchins, and a tiny horn shark. Navigating and winding through the kelp was interesting and beautiful, and did take some care to not get tangled up too often.
Then had a lunch cooked for us while moving to our next dive site. Hot lunch of cheeseburgers, grilled cheese, turkey, or salami sandwiches with chips and chocolate. Anchored at Lion’s Head for our third dive, another kelp bed. J This was a shallower site but with vegetation of greater density and the current and wind had picked up. Found a pair of very large green moray eels nesting with each other in a small rocky hole, and additional giant lobsters along with more of the critters already mentioned and some I can’t identify. Surfaced from this dive to find our boat had slipped it’s anchor in the wind and we had to swim out to it and get picked up while on the move.
Then the 2 hour cruise back to the mainland while watching the movie “Into the Blue” on the boat’s VCR, and pausing to watch off the stern while a few seals and a pod of dolphins played in the surf for a while.
Boarded the dive boat SunDiver in Long Beach at 6 am Saturday morning for a 3-tank day of diving with 25 divers on board. Boat could provide Aluminum 80 tanks, but my buddy brought one of his Steel HP 100 tanks for me to borrow. Air fills were provided between dives by the compressor on board the boat! We set up our gear and left dock at 7 am for the 2+ hour cruise out to Catalina Island, with a hot breakfast cooked for us in the boat’s galley while underway.
Anchored in Eel Cove just off Catalina Island and made 2 hour-long dives at this site. We were diving in a large kelp bed with depths ranging from 15-60 ft. We weaved our way through the kelp in 64 F water with 30 ft. visibility and had a wonderful time finding and photographing huge lobsters, plentiful Garibaldi, octopus, sea cucumbers, sea stars, sea bass, sheepshead, ever-present spiny urchins, and a tiny horn shark. Navigating and winding through the kelp was interesting and beautiful, and did take some care to not get tangled up too often.
Then had a lunch cooked for us while moving to our next dive site. Hot lunch of cheeseburgers, grilled cheese, turkey, or salami sandwiches with chips and chocolate. Anchored at Lion’s Head for our third dive, another kelp bed. J This was a shallower site but with vegetation of greater density and the current and wind had picked up. Found a pair of very large green moray eels nesting with each other in a small rocky hole, and additional giant lobsters along with more of the critters already mentioned and some I can’t identify. Surfaced from this dive to find our boat had slipped it’s anchor in the wind and we had to swim out to it and get picked up while on the move.
Then the 2 hour cruise back to the mainland while watching the movie “Into the Blue” on the boat’s VCR, and pausing to watch off the stern while a few seals and a pod of dolphins played in the surf for a while.