Date: 6/10/09
Dive Location: Vallecitos St., La Jolla Shores
Dive Site: Zion
Time: 7:30-ish [haven’t downloaded data yet]
Dive Length: +/- 45 mins
Max Depth: 91 ft.
Mix: 30%
Buddy: Prof. Charles
Temps: sorry, forgot to look….
Viz: quite good below 60 ft: +/- 20 ft., 5-8 ft. in shallows
Marine Life Observed: Mating octos, Sea Pens, Brittle Stars, Swimming Crabs, one very large Bat Ray, several large Sea Hares, several Sea Lemon Dorids, numerous Black-eyed Gobies……
Remarks:
As Jackie remarked, the Big Group met at V-St. last night, then broke up into smaller groups. I had not dived with Prof. Charles in a while and was delighted to have the opportunity to do so last night.
He and I and Navy Dan and his buddy, Erwin, kicked out until the end of the pier lined up with the pink house and dropped.
The idea was to try and hit Zion and move North from there.
I am delighted to report that we appeared to have landed directly on Zion at around 90 ft. and paused here for a while to watch the Black-eyed Gobies dart in and out of their little holes, here in the soft sandstone formations.
As much as I would like to take credit for finding Zion, I can’t. It’s always a crapshoot.
You either drop on it, or you don’t. However, at least now we know it’s just South of Vallecitos Pt at 90 ft.
From here, we moseyed along Northward until we came to the wall at Vallecitos Pt.,
Here, we made an interesting observation: if you come here after the sun goes down, the Brittle Star are all pretty much hidden, with only their arms waving in the current.
However, because we had dropped down well before the sun had set, we found many of the Brittle Star were still out, and you could see their bodies as well as their arms.
I had never noticed this in 8 years of diving V-St.
Moving Northward, along V-Pt., we came across what appeared to be a huge octopus, the size of a basketball.
I gestured for Prof. Charles and the other two dive buddies to come over to see it.
As we all gathered round, and shone our lights on it, the octopus divided in half and separated out into two octos.
We had stumbled across two octopi mating…..
They were understandably not happy with us interrupting their little romantic moment and the female most certainly did not like our lights and began to uncouple and move away.
Touchingly, the male reached out to her with a really long tentacle to try and pull her back, as if to say: “Aw, honey…….don’t let the humans bother you: come back!”
But, she was definitely not happy with our lights and scooted over into some debris to hide, leaving our poor friend feeling a bit frustrated and mightily annoyed with us, I imagine. Sorry, dude!
We left them to ‘get a room’ and moved on into the shallows.
While cruising along in about 20 ft. of water, I came across a site I always dread: a very large stinger, at least two feet long, laying in the sand about 2 ft in front of me—and, I was still moving forward.
I immediately applied the underwater brakes and you could almost hear them screech as I pulled myself to a halt.
Big Boy didn’t hang around to let us collide and before we could, he unfurled his huge wings and majestically took of, just a few feet in front of us. Whew!
From here, it was just a short swim into the 2 ft. surf and we were done for the evening.
Upon reaching our vehicles to unsuit, we all got to drool over some cool video that Penny and Jackie had shot of a huge Halibut, the size of Rhode Island and a Bat Ray taking off……..
‘Nuther day in Paradise, folks!
Dive safe, everyone…….
