Date: 8/28/05

Time: 11:30 am

Location: Del Mar Lifeguard Station, Del Mar

Surf: 3-5 ft.

Viz in Shallows: 5 ft.

Viz at Depth: 0-2 ft.

Max Depth: 33 ft.

Purpose: Marine survey of preselected reef area

Well, the day started off promising, with gorgeous weather and excellent viz to the South for the past week, so we were excited about the prospect of diving with the Baykeeper biologist and helping with another reef survey. We have been on their list of volunteers for the past year, but due to bad winter conditions and the Red Tide, this was the first opportunity to go out with her and the Del Mar Lifeguards in almost 9 months. The Lifeguards assist in the surveys and provide eye-widening rides out to the sites in their bright orange Lifeguard Zodiacs.

Our first clue that all was not well at Del Mar today was the surf: great for surfers, but 3-5 ft. breakers are not what you want to see when going out in a Zodiac through the surf, despite the expert piloting provided by the Lifeguards.

We manage to get out between sets and out to the survey area, throw our gear in the water and get kitted up.

Upon arriving on the bottom, however, we encountered a strong surge and viz was greatly reduced, but we gamely plodded ahead with our assigned task.

Halfway through, however, viz became so bad, we could barely see our hands in front of our faces, and the surge was flinging us back and forth pretty violently, so Colleen wisely decided to abort. Data could not be obtained in these conditions. We only got halfway through our survey, but the other buddy team that Barbara was attached to, manage to complete theirs, so the dive was not a complete waste: we obtained one set of usable data.

The ride back was an eye opener and made the whole day worth it, by itself: we motored in to about 100 yards from shore and just stopped to watch the 4 ft. breakers crash into shore. I wondered how they were going to handle this–how do you get a Zodiac through surf like that? You don’t really want to be riding in on the backs of those puppies…..

The two Zodiacs sat there for a minute, then the one just to our North spotted a gap in the sets and gunning its engine, leaped ahead, to try and get in before the next set of breakers came crashing in. Our Zodiac ‘captain’ saw the same gap and with our engine roaring to life, he skillfully zipped in behind the first one and we made it in, just ahead of the next set of breakers. Whew! Good job guys….gotta remember, they do this for a living, so you gotta trust their judgement!

So, all in all, it was fun as always, even if conditions were not suitable for collecting data, I still wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Now, back to decent viz in La Jolla!