Date: 6-28-08
Location: Cathedral Heights, Scripps Canyon, North Branch
Times: 11:34 am/1:56 pm
Max Depths: 147 ft/106 ft.
Mix: 27%/34% [PPO: 1.5]
Temp: Bottom: 54 F./Top: 64 F
Surface Conditions: flat in the morning, a few winds waves in afternoon
Viz: 40 ft +
Critters Seen: Painted Greenlings, Male and femail Sheephead, Yellow, Orange and Red Volcano Sponge, Red and Gold Gorgonians, Noble Dorids, Huge, Giant Spined Sea Stars, Blood Stars, Blacksmith fish, Senoritas, Black Eyed and Blue Banded Gobies, Rockfish, one tiny Festiva tritonia
Dive Buddies: Dave, Jimbo, Charlie and Jackie
Remarks:
Composite account of both dives: [Actual: #760 + #761]
After a slightly late start, we motored out under slightly grey skies to Scripps Canyon, North Branch and dropped anchor.
Apparently I still need practice lining up the little icon of the boat with the exact spot on the GPS because while it showed 65 ft. of depth when I asked Charlie and Jimbo to drop anchor, we must have drifted a few critical feet West and we ended up dropping it over the edge of the canyon, which was not my intent.
I feel bad for any marine life that may have gotten damaged and it’s a bitch when it comes to bringing up all 300 ft. of anchor line, as Charlie and Dave can probably tell you!
Oh, well: practice makes perfect I guess.
It was decided that Dave and Charlie would splash in first as the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ and report on conditions.
50 mins later, they were back, ranting and raving about 40 ft plus viz on the canyon and swell sharks in the crevices.
As you might imagine, it didn’t take much further prompting for Jimbo, Jackie and me to get suited up at that point. We looked like a video run on fast forward as we geared up.
As we descended down the anchor line, the top 20 ft were a bit murky, but when we hit 50 ft or so, everything opened up and we were stunned to see 40 ft. plus, nearly tropical visibility, with the anchor dropping away out of sight down over the canyon rim into the blue-black abyss far below us.
The plan was simple: drop down and head South in the canyon itself, which is exactly what we did.
We followed the anchor line down: 100….110….120….130…140….147….before leveling off and heading South. My Nitrox computer dutifully reminded me to ascend a few feet to keep within my MOD, so we did: up to 140.
It’s frighteningly easy to get deep on Scripps. You can hit 150 ft. in the blink of an eye. You can hit 200 without even trying.
And trying to do justice to the stunning beauty of Scripps Canyon in nearly unlimited viz is not easy. You just had to have been there.
The top levels at around 70 ft. or so, are sandy ledges with large clumps of lush Gold Gorgonians waving gently in the current.
As you drop past 90 ft, the sandy ledges give way to steep canyon walls, which form terraces jutting out about 5 ft., before giving way to more terraces below them, dropping away almost endlessly into the nearly bottomless abyss below.
Huge schools of Blacksmith flit back and forth both above and below you. Looking up towards the surface you can see them silhouetted against the shimmering, slivery surface, high above.
Occasionally, a long ‘freight train’ of Sliversides will come hurtling up from the black abyss and tear right by you.
As we settled in at our max depth and headed South, we could make out large crevices, both vertical and horizontal, carved into the steep rocky faces.
The entire face of these cliff are a riot of color glowing in your lights: bright yellow, orange, red and pink from the presence of Yellow, Orange and Red Volcano Sponges, along with Strawberry anemones and the occasional splash of bright yellow from a Noble Dorid.
We kept Jimbo busy taking pictures: hey: over here! No, over here! Shining our lights on interesting things as we came across them.
At one point, Jackie and I came across an absolutely huge Giant Spined Sea Star………this puppy must have been 24 inches across, clinging to the steep face of the cliff and we signaled Jimbo to come over and capture him on camera.
Peering into the vertical crevices along the rock face revealed further horizontal ledges way back about 3-5 ft., inhabited by Black Eyed and Blue Banded Gobies which glowed electric blue neon on the beam of our lights.
Huge Rockfish hung bizarrely upside down in the water column, peering at us strangely as if we were the weird ones for being upright!
As in mountain climbing, where they tell you to never look down, you avoid looking down or straight up, because vertical immensity of Cathedral Heights here can give you temporary vertigo when you realize you are truly suspended in a blue-black abyss, with only the canyon walls to give you a frame of reference.
I had that same odd, salty sensation of ‘blood’ in my mouth, but reminded myself it was just Mr. Narcosis murmuring to me, turning small drops of salty water into ‘blood’ at extreme depth.
We began gently climbing towards the lighter, airier depths and the vertical canyon walls gave way to the more familiar terraces dotted with Gold and Red Gorgonians.
More 50 ft. long ‘freight trains’ of Silversides roared by, startling us before disappearing around the corner as fast as they had appeared.
We hit our agreed upon turn around point and began heading back towards the anchor line.
Charlie had been kind enough to attach a flashing green tank light to it at around 80 ft., which proved entirely unnecessary in the nearly tropical visibility.
Surprisingly, we had almost no deco obligations, so hung around the anchor line at around 60 ft. for a while, while Jimbo took more photos.
I can see why photographers have been known to run out of gas at depth, because it seems like there is always ‘just one more thing’ to photograph—especially on Scripps—just one more Goby, one more Blood Star, just one more glowing yellow Dorid.
You have to have a real sense of discipline to terminate the dive and head up while you still have gas to make it—but, Jimbo’s a very disciplined guy and he came up with the rest of us, albeit reluctantly—like the rest of us.
It was almost wrenching to have leave the underwater paradise of Scripps Canyon in 40 ft. visibility, with its lush tropical colors slowly fading from view as we ascended up the line towards the surface.
At the safety stop, Jimbo and Jackie seemed to become immersed in discussing the various merits of Immanuel Kant vs Jean Paul Sartre’s Theory of Existentialism and I became bored and ascended by myself to the boat when my deco obligation was up.
Later, back on deck after we all had unsuited, still babbling excitedly about the gorgeous conditions on the canyon, we asked Jimbo what in the hell he had been trying to tell us at the Safety Stop….turned out it was:
“On a clear day, you can see forever.”
Dive safe, everyone……….
Mikey
