7/29/2007 - When Will Winter Get Here?

Merry and I arrived at Marineland early, hoping to get in the water before the weather got too hot. At 7:30 I was already sweating. After putting on my heavy, leaky, bulky backup drysuit I needed to pour water over my head twice before heading down the long path. My regular drysuit has been in for repair at Diving Concepts for nine weeks now. They don't answer emails nor return phone calls to Pacific Wilderness. I wonder if I'll ever see that suit again.
The new path at Marineland is twice as long as the old road. On hot days, it feels like ten times as long. The USGS should change the name of this site from Long Point to Long Haul. We swam out to the point and dropped through a thermocline. The temperature at depth was 54F, ten degrees colder than last week.
We headed to Ted's Pinnacle to check out Our Lady of the Garden and the statue formerly known as Jesus. The plaster washed away from him. All that remains is the concrete and sand screw from his inside. The green anemone in the water bucket of the Lady is thriving. The statue has an urchin on a leg and encrusting sponges covering it. It's nice to see it has become an artificial reef. The Jesus Blob had a Batstar on it.
On our way back to the cove we saw several rockfish, rubberlip surfperch, senioritas cleaning an olive rockfish, a school of mackerel and a sheepcrab. Among the nudibranchs spotted today were San Diego dorids, Spanish shawls, sea hares, Porter's chromodorids, Laila's cockerelli, Cuthona divae, Hermissendas, White spotted porostome, Limbaugh's cadlina, Yellow edged cadlina, Yellow dorid and Hudson's dorid. I found two Porter's dorids mating in a field of Vancouver phoronid.
The water had a lot of particulate matter today, although the visibility at the point was good, about twenty feet. The surf was down so entries and exits were easy, although we heard a few divers had some trouble. Denis Gunn managed to carry his scooter 3/4 of the way up the hill. Some innocent bystanders were recruited to carry it up the rest of the way. There were also a few people using carts today.
It took a long time, but we finally made it back up the hill where everyone enjoyed the donuts Merry brought. The parking lot was overflowing. There were fourteen cars in the ten space lot, with a few more parked on the street.