Date: 10-16-05

Time: 11 am

Location: Vallecitos, La Jolla Shores

Surf: 3-5 ft. [and packin' a wallop!]

Viz in Shallows: 1-2 ft.

Viz at Depth: hard to tell in the dark: 10 ft.?

Dive Time: 45 mins

Max Depth: 115 ft.

Critters seen: Gobies, Sandabs, baby Turbot, Nudibranch eggs and a bat ray

Barbara was on call, so Dave B. and I thought we take our doubles out for a spin at Vallecitos.

I had heard various reports in the days leading up to Sunday: high surf was predicted for the weekend during the week, but it wasn’t clear when the conditions would ‘peak,’ Sat. or Sunday.

When we arrived at the Shores, conditions seemed OK: the sun was shining and upon first glance, the surf didn’t seem too high, enough to cause me to [rather unwisely, it turned out], use the unfortunate term ‘Lake La Jolla,’ to describe the conditions, a phrase Poseidon was soon give me cause to regret using.

So, we suited up with our backs turned to the surf and when we turned back around, conditions had deteriorated a bit. Actually, more than a bit. ‘Lake La Jolla’ had been replaced with some rather wicked looking waves, coming in in rather close together sets. That, combined with a minor equipment misbehavior with one of Dave’s backup regulator, caused us to change our plan from a ‘techie’-type dive, complete with valve drills and bag shoots to, “Oh, hell: let’s just do the Cruiser and come back.” Even that would soon seem excessively optimistic.

So, out through the surf we went. Probably should have counted sets first. Yeah. Fascinating concept that: counting sets. Have to try it sometime. First one was not too bad, then came the second, packing a bit of a punch, then the third…..I heard the familiar cry of ‘Wave!’ from Dave, and heard the roar of a freight train bearing down on me and looked up just in time so see a Big One, about a two feet over my head, heading right for me: WHAM! I ducked, but it managed to smack me right in the side of the face, driving me down about 3 ft. I could swear I saw stars…..seemed like I kept going down and down forever [I really hate that part], but finally, it passed and let me up again. Whew…..luckily I had my mask around my neck and didn’t lose any equipment.

Good motivation to start kicking out……..and fast! So, we did……..I didn’t see what happened to Dave, but when I caught up to him, I noticed he was winded, so whatever it was hadn’t been very pleasant for him either.

After a good bit of serious kicking, we made it past the nasties out to the Orange Buoy and our estimated drop spot for the Cruiser.

Dropping down into 50 ft. of water, we noticed it was pretty green and stirred up, so we fired up our lights full blast and kept dropping down into the canyon. Upon arrival in the canyon we realized that due to the cloud cover, no sunlight was going to penetrate to this depth: although the viz itself wasn’t that bad, maybe 5-10 ft., it was hard to tell, lack of sunlight had turned it into a Pitch Black Night Dive. We could only see what was in the beam of our flashlights. So, we cautiously made our way down the draw to about 115 ft. when I decided we were going to cut this one short: after the battering we had taken in the surf, I wasn’t in the mood to stumble about in total darkness, narced, looking for the Cruiser, so we began turning Eastward towards the canyon wall.

We made our way slowly up the wall and into a bit more daylight, even though it was more like the Green Gloom.

I realized this was one of those days were the only way we were going to see anything of note would be to look for the small stuff, so we kept our faces down into the sand and algae, looking for pipefish, who all seemed to be elsewhere for some odd reason. We did see quite a few nudibranch eggs scattered about.

We did come across a cute little albino [white] baby Turbot, about an inch long, in among the kelp pieces. I put my finger next to him, and he would do this comical little hop that would land him about 3 inches away, satisfied that he had given me the ‘slip.’ I would repeat this and he would do his comical little hop agin and land 3 inches further away, thinking he had left me behind once more. Out of shear boredom, I kept up this little game for my amusement, until the surge tipped me over and in my efforts to right myself, I accidentally knocked a small rock onto him, which pinned him down onto the sand.
Horrified at my clumsiness, I managed to right myself and flick the rock off him and he hopped away, relieved, I’m sure, and seemingly no worse for the wear. This is the kind of thing that provides for entertainment on days like this, you know?

Anyway, we kept cruising back into the shallows, where daylight was slowly restored to normal, but the surge was picking up and I was growing concerned about the ‘rock ‘n roll party’ we might be faced with on the way back through the surf, given that the closer we got to shore, the more we were getting thrown around. My plan was to wait until we were fairly shallow, say, 3-4 ft. before surfacing, and hope the worst of the surf was behind us.

When we were in about 10 ft. of water, the surge knocked me to the left and I put my hand out to brace myself, always a calculated risk in the shallows and noticed the sand seemed a bit spongy in this area. I let most of my weight sink down before realizing it wasn’t sand. In fact, it was moving under me, but with most of my weight committed, it was too late to stop and most of my body rolled onto it, before I realized it wasn’t sand. And, it wasn’t just a small area under my hand that was moving, as it might have been with a round ray: it was the whole area under my body that was rising up and lifting off. Alarm bells began going off in my head. This was no sting ray I had rolled over onto: whatever this was was almost as big as I was and was moving ever faster. Naturally, I went, “Arrrrrgh!” and it went, ‘Arrrrrrgh!’ and we each bolted in opposite directions, which was hard to do when your weight is pulling you the other way, but it’s amazing what a jolt of adrenaline enables you to do. Finally, I was able roll off this moving carpet…..or more accurately, it managed to ‘flick’ me off in the directions I had planned to go anyway and I spun around a couple times before the realization sunk in I had planted myself firmly into a rather large Bat Ray, at least 4 ft. wide, who had been no more pleased to make my acquaintance than I had been to make his. A classic “Oh, [insert favorite expletive]!” moment, I can assure you.

Well, with that behind me, now the waves didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore………a bit ‘anti-climactic,’ if you will. And, sure enough, after finding myself in 3 ft. of water, I surfaced, turned to face the surf, and removing my fins, managed to back my way out, with only a couple ‘biggies’ roaring by me, but with little effect. Pleased with myself that I had managed to make it through the surf unscathed, I turned around and almost collided with Dave, who had surface behind me without me seeing him.

Just goes to show: it ain’t over until Neptune says it is!

An odd footnote to this whole thing: while suiting up for the dive, we had been approached by a diver who asked if we had been in yet, because he said he had lost some gear in the surf. When he said this, we were thinking ‘mask or fins,’ right? We said, ‘no,’ but we would keep an eye out for his stuff. What was it?

Turned out that on his way out through the surf, he claims to have collided with a seal or sea lion rather hard, knocking the wind out of him and [get this]: forcing him to ditch his entire kit of tank, BC and weights in about 15 ft. of water. Everything. Claims he felt he couldn’t breath and so, had to ditch ALL his gear and it was sitting out there in the shallows, lined up with the 2nd palm tree from the bathrooms at Vallecitos.

We were a bit incredulous when we were heard this, but said we’d keep an eye out for his stuff. Never did see it, so somewhere out there is a complete setup of BC, weights and tank. Keep your eye of for it. If you find it and are feeling honest, we have the guys’ phone number.

Food for thought………an interesting day, to be sure. Better than staying at home watching TV, that’s for sure!

Dive # 522

Date: 10/8/05

Time: 3:05 pm

Dive Time: 40 mins

Max Depth: 140 ft.

Viz at Depth: 12-15 ft.

Critters Seen: Schools of Blacksmith Fish, Yellow Sponge and Orange Sponges, Brown Gorgonians and several San Diego Dorids

We took a local charter boat out to Scripps Canyon [La Jolla, California] and were surprised that it took over an hour to get from from Mission Bay to the dive site.

We dropped anchor slightly NE of the buoy, suited up, jumped in and followed the route marked in red in the map of Scripps Canyon above, beginning in the area labeled ‘South Branch,’ and heading West and around ‘the bend’ Northward, at Fishead, at about 130 ft.

It was like ‘old home week’ again [mercifully, without the Everest ascent up the hill in full SCUBA gear, to the Scripps parking lot at the end of the dive]……..seeing the terraced outcroppings jutting out below us, deep in the abyss, schools of Blacksmith fish swarming all around us. Barbara and I took took two divers who had never been on the Grand Tour, around Fishhead an North along the wall [see map above] and showed them the sights.

While opposite Fishhead or thereabouts, I got to play with my new toy, the fathometer and pointed it West, to the opposite side, and pinged it, and got a return of 35 ft., so we know how far it is ‘across the Gap’ from that particular spot, anyway [see route marked in light blue]. So, we got to have fun and play with toys and show others the Yellow and Orange sponges, as well as several brightly colored San Diego Dorids sitting at various points along the wall.

We reached our agreed upon turnaround point and headed back to the narrow point where we came down and found the bar and the ascent line where we had gone down and came up with a feeling of satisfaction: we had had fun and shown the sights to two divers new to the canyon.

Dive #523

Date: same

Time: 5:10 pm

Dive Time: 50 mins

Max Depth: 90 ft.

Viz at Depth: 0-1 ft.

Critters Seen: none

As you can see, this dive was not nearly as pleasant as the second one: the four of us went down the line on a lobster trap about 50 yards North of the regular buoy line, on the West side of the canyon, North of where I had ‘pinged’ earlier, which was doubly stupid, as two other divers

had already been down that route and reported extremely poor viz., but I guess we thought we could ‘get below it.’

Neptune soon punishes such hubris, I can assure you………

We went down the line, where viz was not actually too bad, a bit greenish, but still some hope…… and into the canyon, where the visibility immediately dropped to absolutely zero. We’re talking ‘total-white-out, sand-storm-in-Iraq-can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face-what-the-hell-are-we-doing-down-here’ ZERO visibility. In over 100 dives on Scripps, I’ve only seen it this bad once or twice.

We turned our lights on to double beam and they only went a few inches. We put out our hands and began ‘diving by Braille’ along the canyon wall. We knew we were on the West side of the Sumner, somewhere South of Dillhead on the map, so we proceeded Northward, hoping to find or ‘get below’ this underwater blizzard of sand flying by us; unfortunately, all this did was take us down further into the narcosis zone, which never helps navigation, as we’ve all found out, at one time or another. So, we decided to try and ‘jump the gap’ to the East side, hoping the viz would improve somewhat over there. No go: it was just as bad on the opposite side. Ok, maybe 1 ft. or so. Not much of an improvement.

Finally, realizing that we weren’t going to get below it, we decided to head back to where we had come from. It was an anxious few minutes jumping across the gap again in this sandstorm, using only our instruments to navigate with, death grip on our compasses, and the usual thoughts: “I know the opposite wall is here somewhere…..” “Are we there yet?” “This is taking waay too long..” “What if we’re going the wrong way…?” etc. You know them: you’ve had them too. You’ve just got to trust your instruments and not your senses.

Finally, we reached the other side, breathed a sigh of relief and began heading up towards daylight and hopefully, some recognizable landmarks.

Neptune’s wrath must have dissipated by now [or, he was satisfied that we had suffered enough] and by sheer blind, dumb luck, we found we had doubled back to exactly where we had started: the lobster trap and line we had come down….boy, I’ve never been so glad to see a lobster trap in my whole life.

Anyway, that was the end of THAT dive. We began our ascent vowing never to anger Neptune like that ever again with our hubris.

[Actually, Neptune wasn't finished with us yet: upon our return home, my sweetie noticed an itchy, purple rash covering her stomach, a mild case of the 'skin bends' [nitrogen bubbles trapped beneath the skin], most likely caused by ‘suit squeeze’ cutting off circulation in that area and not allowing the skin to purge itself of nitrogen on the way up. Unlike it’s dreaded close cousin, ‘the bends,’ this form is easily treated with pure oxygen administration and most often goes away by itself, even if left untreated.

In this case, it responded well to 120 mins of breathing pure O2, which flushes nitrogen from the tissues, and the story has a happy ending. ]

Date: 10/5/05

Dive #: 513 Location: La Jolla Shores/Fringehead City/Secret Garden

Time: around 7:40 [Haven't downloaded data yet]

Surf: 2-3 ft. and packing some ‘punch,’ but only one line of breakers to get through.

Viz in Shallows: 3-5 ft.

Viz at Depth: Good: beyond range of lights, around 20 ft.

Max Depth: 110 ft. Critters Seen: Octopi, 3 ft. Horn Shark, numerous California Sea Slugs, Sheepcrab, Gorgonians, Horny Headed Turbots, Thornback Ray, unidentified shrimp on Gorgonian

We parked in the North Lot, but, because the surf was packing more ‘punch!’ than usual, we elected to walk south of the Main Lifeguard Tower and go in just North of Vallecitos, where, using our trusty depth finders , Barbara, Merrianne and I were able to drop down right around 50 ft. where the canyon starts.

Viz was excellent, once we passed around 80 ft., so by the time we got to 90 ft., it was beyond the range of our lights. The plan was to head North, pass Fringehead City and hit Secret Garden. Almost as soon as we began heading north, with me a little below the ladies, I came across a 8 inch brown octo, out in the open, out for a stroll. We continued on, coming across a Thornback Ray and several Fringeheads poking their heads out of holes, being their usual sarcastic selves, telling us we were somewhere in the vicinity of Fringehead City.

We continued North a bit more and then, lo and behold, we came across the telltale Red Gorgonians, marking the top of Secret Garden; Barbara did her usual ‘Indian War Dance’ and ‘whoop-whoop’ into the regulator that she does when navigation and pre-dive planning meet head-to-head. The girls stayed at the top of the Garden, while I dipped down below for a bit, to investigate a really odd-looking shrimp on a Gorgonian, near the bottom of the Garden. I’m not even sure it was a shrimp, but it had the brown, segmented body of a shrimp, about 3 inches long, but the head and tail were indistinguishable, so I couldn’t tell which was which, other than they both ended in sort of forked antennae. I welcome any intrepid invertebrate IDers out them helping me with that definitely isn’t on DBs Invertebrate ID section!

So, after admiring this strange critter for a while, I rejoined Barbara and Merrianne at the top of the Garden and our dive computers were telling us it was time to head back in. On the way in, in the shallows, we came across a nice, friendly 3 ft. Horn Shark, who seemed attracted by our lights and hung out with us for a bit, circling around and then doubling back to us. You can never be sure, but after a while you get the impression you’re seeing the same exact animals over and over again, but you can’t really know for sure unless you tag ‘em or something, right?

Anyway, all in all, it was an excellent dive. Got a knocked around a bit coming back in, but we had expected that, given what the entry was like. Again: the waves were not particularly high, but they were packing a bit of a punch, so bear that in mind if you go out in the next 48 hrs. or so–hold on to your masks and fins!

OK, here are some recent pictures taken [below] over the past two weeks, of the 22 ft. foot dive boat [with a 220 HP Evinrude engine] that Barbara bought recently, with a marine band radio, brand new GPS, modest cabin down below and enough deck room and tank racks to hold 4-5 divers.

A couple notes are in order here about the photos.

Last weekend was supposed to be the ‘maiden voyage,’ with the original owner coming out to give Barbara some basic piloting instructions, but we experienced a few ‘hiccups’ with the engine, flooding and a missing spark plug wire, to name two, and had to be towed back to the dock by by VAAA, the ocean-going equivalent of AAA–never go anywhere without your [V]AAA card!

Two friends who thought they were going on a dive that day, didn’t get to go, the first photographer, and the other person in the photo of us all standing together on deck, Peter, with the beard.

OK, so then, Barbara took the engine in to be looked at and we got all the kinks worked out and today, Saturday, Oct. 1, was the maiden voyage, with ‘Scuba Do’ performing flawlessly in absolutely beautiful weather.

With coordinates to ‘Wreck Alley’ plugged into our new GPS, we headed on out to ‘HMCS Yukon,’ the 366 ft. long Canadian warship sunk in 100 ft. of water about 2.5 miles from Mission Beach and did our first dive, on which Peter was the photographer. The other friend, who took the towing photos, wasn’t able to make it, so he has a rain check.

Just the way dive computers the size of wrist watches have revolutionized diving, so to have GPSes revolutionized ocean navigation, making it nearly ‘idiot-proof:’ just plug in the numbers and follow the coordinates to your spot to within a 2 meter accuracy on a color map of San Diego’s water ways.

Peter is an excellent photographer and was able to catch some amazing closeup photos of marine life, or ‘macros’ as they are known, in the trade, today on the Yukon.

He was able to capture shots of crabs eating ['Mine, mine, mine!'], as well as some gorgeous nudibranchs [pronounced: noodi-branks], which are basically colorful snails without shells. [Hard to believe they are basically 'sea slugs,' huh?] amid the red Strawberry anemones……the Spanish Shawl is a nudibranch also.

He also got a great shot of a rather large Ling Cod, which lives on the Yukon, along with an even larger [and very venomous] Scorpionfish, which I discovered by nearly putting my hand on it, so well was it camouflaged against the hull of the Yukon.

The other nudibranch photos were taken on the wreck we dive immediately after the Yukon, the Ruby E., smaller ship that was originally involved in pot smuggling and later confiscated and sunk by the Coast Guard as an artificial reef off Mission Beach.

So we finally got to have our ‘maiden voyage’ of Barbara’s new boat and it purred like a top all the way out and gave us two excellent wreck dives in perfect, 75 degree San Diego weather. Tomorrow, we go back out to Wreck Alley to explore more wrecks.

We plan to eventually take longer trips out to the Coronados Islands, about an hour South of here in Mexico, and further North, to Catalina.

Stay tuned for more adventures!

Mike and Barbara