5/12/2008 - Dry Glove Experiment, Take Two

I usually avoid Redondo Canyon during the day, as most of the interesting animals there are nocturnal. I wanted to try out my new dry gloves again, but the water was dirty from Cabrillo Beach around the peninsula to Redondo. Merry and I debated for a long time and decided to go for it. For the first half of the dive we saw pretty much nothing, then all of a sudden the bottom came alive. There were thousands of skeleton shrimp, plus several nudibranchs including Triopha maculata, Dendronotus frondosus, Flabellina trilineata and Hermissenda crassicornis.
We found a dead jelly tumbling around the canyon and many salps washed up on the beach. The big find for me was a large Moon snail laying eggs. I've seen the eggs for decades and never saw one actually being produced.
The gloves remained in place and completely dry until I surfaced, then we each had one pop off. Back to the drawing board. Water temperature in the canyon was 49.3, so I'd better hurry.