1/7/2007 - Palos Verdes; West Side Story

Merry and I went on Marc Bacon's boat, the Big Easy for a couple of dives along the west side of Palos Verdes today. We saw The Webbs and guests aboard the Popeye Maru and they told us the vis on the Avalon wreck was about ten feet. I was hoping to find Giant Sea Bass, but ten feet is great for nudibranch hunting. It turned out that the hunting was easy today. I've only seen a handful of Berthella californica sidegill slugs in more than 1200 SoCal dives. We found a couple dozen within the first two minutes of hitting the reef. Nearly every rock had one, two or three on it.
After cruising the reef we decided to look for the GSBs near the crane just north of Flat Rock. We got to the bottom only to find 2-3 feet vis and no idea which direction the crane was. I was still too excited from the first dive to let that bother me. I hope I don't bore anyone with multiple images of the same species, but I did narrow them down to ten pictures out of more than forty.