Sun: A Short but Mostly Sweet Day

Sunday there were only four other divers on the King Neptune so we would only do two dives. Fine with me... I am way behind on my editing and there is someone across the continent I wanted to spend a lot of time with on-line last night!

Several divers had canceled on this trip including a nice couple of real divers from Phoenix. The husband woke up with a bad earache and some blood in his ear. They are going to Fiji in a few weeks so they didn't want to risk seriously injuring the ear. Spearo Chris was the only one from his group on the boat today. The rest had left for home. Chris was talking about "all his experience" to the other divers, yet I knew he only had 30 some dives under his belt. He wanted to dive solo, but from what I saw of his diving, he had insufficient experience to be diving solo. In addition he had come back from every dive the previous days with near 0 psi in his tank. I view him as a candidate for the Darwin Awards this year.

The new divers included Andrew, a diver from Russia who was new to California (nice guy) and two cave divers from North Carolina. He gad 300+ dives, mostly in Russia, the Red Sea and Thailand but had never dived temperate salt water. When the two cave divers started talking about diving North Carolina wrecks, I said I had a friend from Texas who dove there and one knew her. Small world (but not small enough to get me to the other side of the continent easily and inexpensively). There was such a contrast between Chris who was way overly confident in his abilities and chose to dive solo, and the other three divers who all had far more training and experience yet chose to do two guided dives because they were in new waters. Tremendous respect for those three, and concerns abouty a possible Darwin Award this year for Chris if he continues solo and completely empties his tank each dive.

On my first dive (Italian Gardens) the water was cold and murky below 25' due to an upwelling and plankton bloom. I didn't go deeper than 46' and spent most of my time just above the thermocline. I ran into an unidentified sea cucumber I'd only seen twice before and both times in that area of the island. I picked it up to reposition it for a better shot and it started spewing its guts out (eviscerating is the scientific term). I was stunned. It did it two more times while I filmed it. WOW! I ended up seeing four more and each of them eviscerated when I touched them. I've never had a local sea cucumber do that. It will make for some great footage although I hated stressing the animals. At least I won't need to do it again.

Second dive was Torqua Springs, site of the old freshwater well that used to supply Avalon with water in the winter. I don't particularly like the site as it is very silty and water motion (which we had today) resuspends it, reducing visibility and making filming difficult. Chris shot four more fish. The first one, a sheephead, I thought was too small. I mentioned it to Capt. Tony and he said he had measured and it was 1/10th of an inch into the legal. No way Chris could judge length that well given his lack of experience. Chris also got a rubberlip seaperch. When he cut it open, he started yelling "It has babies inside." I checked it out and I'm pretty sure he cut the stomach open and the smaller fish were shiner surfperch it had eaten recently! Some "perch" do bear live young so I'm not 100% sure. I should have videotaped them.

So that's the story of my dive day. I liked getting in early as it gave me time to edit AND talk with my friend on the East Coast! Besides, conditions are lousy due to the upwelling and plankton bloom so I didn't expect to get much footage. What I did get was well worth the trip... as was the beautiful sunshine and being out on the sea with the island I love close by.

The boat was going out today and tomorrow so I left my gear on board in case I decide to go (woke up at 5:30 this AM and decided to get caught up on my editing). My first dive today was my 1,400th logged dive since June 30, 2000 when I was fired (illegally) from my job as Vice President of the Catalina Conservancy. I never logged dives the previous 39 years because I didn't need a log here on the island. I didn't start logging until I decided I would do dive travel. So I'm averaging about 235 dives a year.

8:59 AM - 6/19/2006 - post comment