Goat Harbor

Not sure I have last Sunday's dives in the proper order, but I'll start with Goat Harbor a bit past Long Point on the way from Avalon to Two Harbors on Catalina. As I usually do, I dropped down to about 100 ft and slowly worked my way back up into the shallows. I saw a nudibranch (Acanthodoris rhodoceras) that I only remember seeing once before (near this site). In this case I saw two and they were mating ventral surface to ventral surface. Sex in sea slugs is not really all that excviting... after all, it does proceed at a snail's pace!

I did run into a mass of California sea hare (Aplysia californica) eggs looking like a pile of day old spaghetti. In the shallows I saw a large mass of eggs from a group of unidentified whelks who were mating as I filmed... again, at a snail's pace. Then a giant sea bass swam by overhead, on his way to meet the rest of his spawning aggregation at Italian Gardens no doubt. And there was a garibaldi male who had created his red algal nest in the saddle of a small rock formation. As I filmed he engaged in "dipping" behavior to attract a nearby female into the nest. She wasn't buying it, probably due to the strange shape of his nest. Wow... almost everything else underwater is breeding except me!

Towards the end of my dive I  found a small horn shark (14" or so in length). It allowed me to gently pick it up with little struggle, and I turned it over and rubbed its belly to calm it down. I was able to film the mouth with its small teeth for use in future DVD's and TV shows.

12:01 PM - 6/8/2006 - post comment