Yellowtail Reef

I think our next dive was at Yellowtail Reef near the Empire Landing Quarry. I thought we were over about 50' of water when I dropped down. I could see absolutely nothing on the descend... at least not until my camera housing hit the sandy bottom at 32 ft! For some strange reason I had the camera rolling so I captured the impact on tape... the impact stopped the recording but otherwise did no damage so I continued. Vis was 6-12" at that point, but I had my bearings so I headed out to deeper water where it did clear up a bit. Filmed a sea hare high up in an elk kelp... never seen that before!

I moved in towards the shallows and the vis closed in again to less than a foot. I was going forward blindly, relying on my sense of direction since I couldn't see my compass. Strange, the day before the LDS told me the visibility here had been stellar. Then.... BAM! Something hit me and I realized why the vis was so bad. There were dozens of bat rays feeding here, pounding the sandy bottom for worms and clams and really stirring things up worse than a class of buoyancy-challenged dive students! BAM... another one.

As I rose above the cloud at the bottom, I could make out a few of the bat rays feeding thanks to the fact they hold their tails high in the air... er, water... when they feed. A few of them sensed my presence and took off. It was obvious I'd get little on film near the bottom so I ascended up into the kelp canopy. Here I found large schools of tiny fish that I could barely see on the recorded tape. No idea what they were, but it was cool.

12:11 PM - 6/8/2006 - post comment