Wreckreational Diving

6/15/2006 - High And Dry At Marineland

Once again I brought a bag of squid to lure the Mantis shrimp and Pacific Snake Eel out of their burrows. Unfortunately the water looked too dirty for photography. I decided to spend the morning cleaning up the site and getting a few topside pictures. I walked around the site and felt like a little boy again. I climbed rickety stairs onto a plywood roof with holes in it. It was great! The old coffee shop and cocktail bar roofs were used as the set for MTV a few years ago for a Summer dance show. While picking up trash I thought about making an artificial reef out of an old wooden mast that I have looked at since 1987. It used to have a crow's nest on it, but that is long gone. Rather than taking it into the water where it may have floated away, I dragged the post over to a rock pile and did my Iwo Jima impression, raising the post and then surrounding the base with rocks. We have an artificial reef in Redondo Canyon known as the Monument. Maybe this one will attract a few Marineland momentos.

Cocktail bar and coffee shop