Fri: Hen Rock, Goat Harbor and Blue Car Wreck

What an unexpectedly fantastic day of diving last Friday. I did three dives on the dive boat (Scuba Luv's King Neptune). Since I can't keep up with my blogging on my dives, I'll just give a brief summary for each of the days this past weekend.

First stop was Hen Rock near Long Point, usually our third site because it was shallow. I was disappointed because it meant we wouldn't be hitting any of the more north-western (and deeper) sites that day, but it turned out to be a great dive. Ever since I started diving over the sandy bottom and ignoring the reef and kelp forests, I've had great dives here with many "new" species to film.

For 50 minutes of this 70 min dive I sat within about 10-15 ft of where I dropped down (at 45') and watched three male orange-throat pikeblennies displaying to attract females. I think I got two of them as the female responded and slid into his worm tube (how cozy). Awesome. In addition to courtship and mating, the males would occasionally reach their bodies out of their worm tubes to snag an invertebrate to munch on. Also filmed a few sea pens and an English sole. As I sat on the bottom filming the male orange-throat pikeblennies, I could hear a number of dolphin "talking" to one another in the distance. Quite cool! I don't remember ever hearing them before.

Second dive was Goat Harbor. I dropped down to 100' to find angel sharks or torpedo rays with no luck. Spent a fair bit of time in the shallows (15-20') to release nitrogen, but on my way back to the boat I saw two small (250#) giant sea bass courting and dropped down to 25' to film them. They were very cooperative and I stayed with them for an additional 20 min.

Third dive was Blue Car Wreck. I only had 12 min of tape left but was too lazy to break open my housing and change to a new tape. I dropped down to 151' (in honor of the rum!) and slowly worked my way up. I had done my deepest dive (181') at this site during the winter... it has a steep drop off. Found a beautiful huge (7-9") yellow-orange dorid nudibranch (Anisodoris nobilis). Worked my way slowly into the shallows. Found several bat stars at 125' with their stomachs everted or the symbiotic worms that live in their arm grooves. Filmed them.

Up about 20-25' I was looking at a garibaldi nest full of 1-2 week old eggs when I noticed something strange wedged under a rock. I slowly removed the rocks around it after shooting a few short sequences. It was what I suspected... a slate pencil sea urchin (Eucidaris). I've filmed this species in Mexico, but don't remember seeing them off Catalina. I shot the rest of the tape of the urchin after placing it in the open to get better views (replaced it in its hole and put rocks back around it afterwards). When I got back up to the boat, I looked in the field guide and their northernmost range is Catalina! Very cool.

8:36 AM - 6/19/2006 - post comment