The King Neptune had been to Farnsworth Bank Monday (why didn't I go down to dive???) and the anchor chain had gotten caught on the rocky reef. Rather than risk destroying part of the reef, the Captain left it with a line tied to a buoy so we "had" to return today to retrieve it. Darn!

Arrived at the site and our DM Larry dove down the buoy line and attached a lift bag to the anchor. When he returned to the surface, he discovered the lift bag should have been left uninflated so the captain asked me to go down (camera in hand) to remove the lift bag from the anchor.

I descended to about 90 feet and followed the anchor line up over the upper pinnacle (~62 ft) and back down to the plateau at about 70 ft. Camera in hand I tried to loosen the bowline, but the lift bag rendered the line too taught to loosen the knot. Three times I partially deflated the lift bag until I could finally untie the knot and send it to the surface.

On to the real "porpoise" of the dive... videotaping. Yep, the red spotted starfish was present and filmed. Corynactid anemones, painted greenlings, various sea urchins (much healthier in these deeper, cooler waters than on the warm leeward side of Catalina), purple hydrocoral, bat stars, knobby stars, blood stars, etc., etc.

For the first time ever at Farnsworth I stayed above 100 ft and didn't even go into deco (another first).

The highlight of the dive was what I saw above me... a HUGE baitball of at least 3-4 different species and at least two dozen sea lions diving through it for a lunchtime snack. Very cool. I filmed mid-water between 30-50 ft for the last 15 min of the dive, filming the baitball and the sea lions. Very nice.

Afterwards the captain said he thought we'd try China Point. I don't think I've dived there since the mid 70's so that was a treat. Of interest to everyone is the fact that on this colder, more nutrient rich side of the island the kelp forests are already showing signs of recovery! There was a nice healthy forest of young kelp (1-5 stipe "plants" with smaller holdfasts) growing there and it was fun to once again be in a real kelp forest after 2 months of "no kelp" on the leeward side.

To add icing to the cake of a great day, when I returned to my "office" to edit the footage, there was an e-mail from the Island Company that still owns 11% of the island. A Japanese TV crew had been out filming a news story to attract Japanese visitors to Catalina. The footage they shot on the semisubmersibles and glassbottom boats wasn't good enough, but they saw my "Munching & Mating" DVD that plays on the semisubmersibles and wanted to buy about 10 seconds of my footage to use in the story.

What a great day... two fantastic dives and some unanticipated income to bring me closer to buying the high definition video camera I hope to switch to later this month!! And, yes, there was a "free" lunch on board the boat!

Dr. Bill