Date: 1/28/09
Location: Vallecitos Pt., La Jolla Shores
Time: 8 pm-ish
Dive Length: 43 mins
Max Depth: 138 ft.
Viz: pretty good at depth: 15 ft. +
Dive Buddies: Jackie, Merrianne and Kathy B.
Marine Life: Numerous Sculpins, Jack Mackerel, Octos, Horny-Headed Turbo, Sheepcrab, Hemphill Crabs, Cusk Eels, Swimming Crabs, Round Rays and baby Thornback Rays…
Remarks:
So, the usual gang showed up at V-St. and we broke up into deep vs shallow divers: Merrianne and Kathy decided they wanted to stay above 100 ft. and check out Zion and Jackie and I decided…….well, we just wanted to…ummm…. get narced, OK? I’ll admit it.
I had heard she had been complaining lately about some divers ‘cramping her style’ and so, I deliberately went and got a 27% mix and set my PPO to 1.5 so I’d be ready for anything. I’m glad I did!
We all kicked out to about 40 ft. under a beautiful orange sliver of a moon hanging in the night sky and dropped…..the ‘plan’ being to try and hit Zion on the way down. I remember passing Zion, but only briefly. Initially, I landed on the bottom with no dive buddy, then gently made my way back up to the surface, to find Jackie adjusting some hair in her mask, and with that done, we dropped back down and began the dive.
At around 40 ft., we all found ourselves in a detritus pit and began making our way Westward and down.
We passed numerous orangish-red Sculpins s peering out from the kelp detritus on the way down, along with the occasional octo and lobster. I got one lobster to cling to my forearm for a bit, until he tired of my company and leaped off.
We continued following the detritus pit down past 80 ft., 90 ft. and 100 ft., where I briefly remember seeing Zion go by.
As Kathy and Merrianne leveled off and headed South, Jackie and I just kept right on going: 110, 120, 130…….I remember thinking, ‘Gee, I need to take my reg in for servicing, it’s beginning to taste a bit rusty….’ Rusty? Uhh…..right.
Right at around 135 ft., all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these blue-ish bullets about 5-6 inches long began coming out of nowhere and ricocheting off our bodies at fairly high speed……..turns out they were some type of Jack Mackerel, if I’m not mistaken.
Anyway, given their size and speed, when they collide with you, it hurts, lemme tell ya!
They grew more and more numerous, until there were literally dozens of them, hurtling at us from all different directions and bouncing off our bodies like bullets.
We put up our arms to shield ourselves, but it didn’t seem to help much………they just kept on coming and coming from out of the darkness.
We figured our lights were both attracting them and disorienting them………actually, we probably should have turned them off and the attack would have slowed or gone away, but I wasn’t about to turn off my lights at 135 ft., at night, thank you very much!
Finally, after a few minutes, they began to thin out, and the ‘attack’ began to wane a bit, so we continued West.
At around 138 ft. the ‘rusty taste’ in my mouth began growing stronger and it felt like I could feel every square inch of the 4 atmospheres of pressure on my brain, so I figured it was time to turn around, so I signaled Jackie and we began making our way slowly Eastward and up.
On our way back up through the detritus pit, we passed more octos, out for their evening strolls as well as quite a few lobsters.
We would take turns ‘shooting’ lobsters at each other, which is actually something of an art. Sort of like that old game of Tiddly-winks, but with bugs.
You have to make sure the lobster’s…..ummm….’butt’ [OK: 'tail'] is facing your buddy. Then, you tickle him under the chin, until he decides he doesn’t like it any more and he zooms, or ‘shoots’ over in the direction of your buddy.
Now, I can tell you from experience that if you’ve ever had a lobster ‘shot’ at you, you better be able to duck fast, because they are faster than a speeding bullet underwater.
And, if you fail to duck in time, then, are struck by the speeding lobster and immediately begin plotting revenge against the ‘shooter,’ and the pattern repeats itself all over again, until you run out of lobsters to ‘shoot’ at each other.
Opinion: this is less cruel than eating them.
We made our way slowly ‘upslope’ along the canyon walls.
We passed some more kelp where I spotted some really cute little Hemphill crabs, with their little frilly ‘costumes’ waving in the breeze.
It seemed to take forever to make our way uphill, because we were crawling at a snail’s pace, which is wise at these depths……I hadn’t seen this much deco on my computer in a dog’s age….yikes!
Finally, we ascended up to the rim of the canyon, around 40 ft. or so and ran into a strange blizzard of what appeared to be ‘silvery’ sand particles all around us. In over 8 years of diving the Shores, I don’t recall ever seeing these silvery particles before.
Anyway, the blizzard of ‘silver’ particles followed us all the way into the shallows, where we came across some really cute, baby Thornback Rays, about 4 inches long, scooting along the bottom.
In the silvery blizzard, I also almost put my hand down on Mr. Stingray, who darted out of the way at the last minute, to avoid inflicting some nasty karma on me. He seemed to glance back at me, as if to say, ‘Watch it, buddy!’
We continued on through the shallows, slowly off-gassing, until we were in 3 ft of water, where we surfaced and both started babbling at the same time about what a great dive it was.
Jackie was cold, but not as hypothermic as usual, but that’s all about to change…[wink, wink....]
Merrianne and Kathy surfaced about 15 mins later, also having had an excellent dive.
Great dive, everyone!
Let’s do in again……in…ummm……..about a week, shall we say?
Dive safe, everyone……….
