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7/3/2009 - Independence Day Dives

Date: 07/03/2009

Time In: 8:54am / 11:45am

Dive Location: Laguna Beach, California

Dive Site: N. Crescent - Dead Man's Reef

Waves: 1-2', occas. 3'

Viz: 10'+ in the shallows, 15'+ deeper

Water Temp: 54-55°f deep, 61-63°f surface(SUUNTO)

Max Depth: 65' / 64'

Bottom time: 59 / 52 min.

Buddies: Rob C

Rob C drove up for two dives in Laguna to start the Independence holiday weekend off right. By 7:15, we were taking some of the final parking spots at N. Crescent. We chatted with a couple of the DMR regulars, then got suited up and headed out to the DMR dropdown point. As we arrived we saw a circle of bubbles from Flo and his buddies, we descended and headed southwest past them down to the backside of the reef.

Since my last dives here on Memorial Day weekend, the invertebrate life, especially nudibranchs, has exlpoded. We started seeing ton's of spanish shawl's, and then some Porter's Chromodorids, Clown dorids and finally came across an area that was covered with Hermissenda's. While more common in La Jolla, I had not seen any Hermissenda on DMR since last spring. Another nudi highlight was seeing a Polycera Tricolor, another more uncommon (I've only seen two at Dead Man's in the last year, and the most recent was spotted by Ruth a couple months ago) nudi for Laguna.

For our second dive, we planned to head back to hermissendaville, and continue around the point of the reef and back in instead of completing a 4th surface swim for the day. We fought a small current on the second trip out, but within 20 or so minutes we were at the drop point. We started right about where we had hoped and continued to take advantage of the nudi explosion, finding more of the same from the first dive, including another P. tricolor! I took more video, and kept snapping away until I filled my memory card (I knew I should have formatted it first today!)

Nudi List for the day:

Polycera tricolor

Doriopsilla albopunctata

Polycera atra

Peltodoris nobilis (lemon dorid)

Flabellina iodinea (Spanish Shawls)

Triopha catalinae (Clown Dorid)

Chromodoris macfarlandi (Macfarland's chromodorid)

Mexichromis porterae (Porter's chromodorid)

Cuthona divae

Flabellina trilineata

Hermissenda crassicornis