Date: 3/16/06
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Main Lifeguard Tower, LJS
Dive Length: 45 mins
Surf: moderate: 2-3 ft., muliple lines of breakers
Viz in Shallows: 2-5 ft.
Viz at Depth: 12-15 ft.
Max Depth: 116 ft.
Temp at Depth: a b-b-bone chilling 52 degrees
Critters Seen: Cusk eels, Rockfish, GIANT Male Sheephead in his hole, numerous Fringeheads, Octopi, swarms of unidentified baby shrimp hatchlings [we think], Butterfly Ray, Thornback Ray and Spot Prawn
Barbara and I met with Merrianne and Kathy for a Secret Garden night dive, with the idea of going out together, but circumstances and something about a Laurel and Hardy routine of Kathy needing to doff and don her suit a couple times before getting in the water prevented them from actually going out with us.
So, Barbara and I went out first, through the surf, which although not high or particularly fearsome, nonetheless required vigilance, as it was like that last unfortunate time with Peter, a lot of ‘low and slow’ waves, packing a bit of a punch if you weren’t paying attention and you had to wade out through multiple lines of breakers.
But, we finally made it out and swam until the pier lights lined up and the trusty depth finder indicated about 45 ft. of water between us and the bottom and dropped down.
Dropping down onto the sandy bottom, we pointed our compasses West and made our way down the canyon.
Our first inkling that it was going to be a cold one [other than our temp gauges] was the inevitable ‘ice cream headache’ on the way down.
After a couple of minutes in stirred up viz, it began to clear up a bit between 80 and 90 ft. and we could make out the Main Wall of the Secret Garden on our left and I knew that Barbara had dropped us in right ‘on the money,’ as usual.
By prior agreement, it had been decided that I would do trash detail on the bottom of the Garden while Barbara busied herself with The Camera from Hell at the top, taking stills and video of local marine life, so, I dropped down into the detritius and began my search for ‘sea trash.’
I noticed there were quite a few Red Rockfish and Cusk Eels and Spot Prawn buried in the kelp, but was careful not to go digging around in it, cautious after our recent discussions here on the list about lurking Mantis Shrimp and their .22 caliber powered finger slicers.
I sighed as I spotted the enevitiable piece of clear plastic wrapping sticking up through the detritus. From prior experience, I knew it was merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of wrapping used to pack a Lazy Boy Recliner Chair in and, sure enough, as I pulled on it, just just kept coming and coming until I was nearly wrapped in the damn thing myself, surrounded in a cloud of sand and debris, obscuring everything around me.
I knew this would happen: it never fails with those ‘tiny pieces of plastic wrapping’ sticking out of the kelp. But, now I had it out, I couldn’t in good conscience return it to the kelp, because that would be a dereliction of my duty as trash collector of the deep, so, after carefully checking it for resident marine life, I managed to stuff the huge thing into my oversized goody bag, brought along for this purpose. The mass of the thing underwater me created a hydrodynamic drag similar to pulling a trailer along behind me.
After the cloud of debris cleared from my location, I peered up to check on Barbara, to make sure she was OK, 15 ft. above me and saw that she was surrounded by a cloud of her own. At first, I clucked my tongue, as I mentally scolded her for knowing better than to kick up such a cloud of debris on the Garden, not realizing that far from being a cloud of sand, she had in fact, stirred up a cloud of what appeared to be baby shrimp hatchlings, which had formed a yellow halo around her which glowed in the lights of her camera, creating quite an eerie effect when viewed from below. She’ll post the shots to www.divascuba.com and we hope someone can help us identify the hatchlings.
Around this time, I began to grow weary of stuffing giant plastic wrappers into my goody bag and decided to ascend a bit to check on the photography wing of the operation.
On my way up the wall, I made a point of looking in many of the nooks and crannies and was fascinated to see quite a few Fringeheads, poking their heads out of their holes, almost as curious about me as I was about them, the little fringes above their eyes wiggling in the current.
The GIANT male Sheephead was in his cave/hole, as usual, and he and I went eyeball-to-eyeball for awhile, although he didn’t seem to happy to have my light in his face, so I backed it off a bit and left him in peace to do whatever it is he spends all night doing in that hole.
The Red Gorgonians seemed to be a good shape and I mosied over the top to join Barbara. She was busy getting shots of a nudibranch and the cloud of hatchlings was still creating the eerie yellow glow around her.
About this time, I began to notice my right hand going from cold to numb to the ‘burning’ stage, so indicated to Barbara that I’d like to start heading in sometime before it dropped off or actually shattered, like a tomato dipped in liquid nitrogen and she indicated back that she was getting a bit cold also, so we began heading in to the shallows.
But, not before stumbling across a cool Red Octo, making his way across the sand, which Barbara got some good video of. As he scooted along the bottom away from us, he had one arm stuck straight out, pointing at us, with the tip curled up into a little ball, almost as if he were shaking a ‘fist’ at us for disturbing him. The little fellow seemed quite annoyed with us for following him along with the camera. But we got the shot of the ‘fist shaking,’ so that was priceless.
Next, we came across a beautiful little Butterfly Ray, about 12 inches across, carefully camouflaged in the sand, hoping against hope that we hadn’t seen him, which of course, we had and Barbara got some excellent footage of him as well–to be posted soon at above URL.
Coming back through the shallows, we noticed the surge picking up quite a bit in about 20 ft. of water and I began to be a bit concerned about what the surf would be like coming in. We didn’t really want it more than what we had encountered on the way out.
I surfaced in about 7 ft. of water, and sure enough, I came up right under a sizable wave, which bopped me in the head, causing me to kick harder to get beyond the reach of whatever was coming in behind it. I saw Barbara surface and decided to remain behind her, so I could keep an eye on her, in case she ran into problems with the camera getting thrown about in the surf.
We both walked backwards through the surf, watching each wave as it came in. A couple clocked Barbara pretty good, but she maintained her composure responding “OK” to each time I inquired. We continued walking backward through the surf, with my high beams on the waves as they came in, until we were both safely on the sand and ‘high ground.’
Both with our fins still on.
OH. WELL.
Better safe than sorry………anyone who thinks they’re going retain their dignity in this sport is in the wrong hobby. 
