3/31/2009 - Making Mudpies At Vet's

The water at Redondo Beach was pretty muddy this morning but the waves were down. I was hoping to get below the dirty layer for some more crab and squid video. I stacked three macro lenses on the camera and installed the flat port. This allows me to focus on subjects as close as on the port itself. I figured I wasn't going to get any wide angle opportunities in the muck. Naturally, I had a sea lion all over me for the entire dive. He buzzed me for more than thirty minutes, stopping to settle on the bottom occasionally, just out of the camera's depth of field.
During his trips to the surface for air I managed to get a few shots. I found that it is difficult to hold the camera still while stretching my neck to look for the marauder.
I didn't find any squid, but there are several patches of egg sacs below seventy feet. I saw an octopus jet away from one patch, leaving a large cloud of brown ink. I was ten feet away at the time, so I don't know what scared him.
Water was a balmy 54F with a very dirty two feet of visibility down to twenty feet and eight to ten feet below that.