A Day Late And A Doliolid Short

With reports of sixty feet visibility on the Redondo barge and Dendronotus iris at Marineland, I was excited to get in a couple of great dives today. I ran into Scott Susoeff at Dive n' Surf yesterday He told us about his dive on the barge. I jokingly said we would probably have brown water there today. We did. The top fifteen feet was warm and blue, but the brown layer extended to within ten feet above the barge.We made the best of it by shooting nudis and attempting to shoot jellies in the muck.

Cuthona albocrusta

Christmas tree full of Hermissenda ornaments

Aegires albopunctatus

Cuthona divae

Thetys vagina

Craig Hoover told of Rainbow nudibranchs, Dendronotus iris in the sand near the 120 Reef at Marineland. When they have shown up before, they arrived in large numbers in an area we call Rainbow Nudi Bank. I decided to dive there, but it was a bad decision. We were skunked. Kevin Lee and I each found a Hopkin's rose while Merry got more incredible jelly photos.

Hopkin's rose

Octocoral, Alcyonium rudyi

A single star, just like the rating I get for my choice of dive sites today. :(

5:55 PM - 5/20/2012

Marineland Platform With Frank And Charlie

With swell model predictions in the blue for this weekend I was really looking forward to improved conditions and good visibility. The ocean had other ideas. Visibility at Pt. Vicente was marginal, but the wind and swells would have made gearing up uncomfortable. We headed for the Marineland Platform instead. Frank and Charlie (FrankPro1 and SPKelpdiver) hadn't dived here, so they got to notch another site to their list.

Charlie seemed happy to get in a dive anywhere due to his work and school schedule.

Frank was very upset and hated every minute of being here...just kidding.

Eventually the both cheered up and swam to the down line. Visibility was quite nice, do to about fifty feet. Unfortunately the platform is in seventy-seven feet. We had ten feet of vis on the bottom. The wind pushed the boat away as the anchor fell, so I had to tie off my spool and find the platform thirty feet away. The buoy we placed there last year was still in place, but probably not for long. The line had been wrapped around the rusty bolts on the platform, tearing the three-strand line down to two flimsy lines.
While attempting to untangle the line, I tore my right dry glove. My right sleeve began filling immediately. I continued the dive, but was getting pretty cold.
Life on the platform is slowly making a comeback after the last time it was dragged by squid nets. I didn't find a large assortment of nudibranchs, but the sand bass were large and curious.

Cabezon

Ploycera tricolor

Aegires albopunctatus

Merry cut the buoy free. We will clean it, re-mark it and attach it to the platform soon with new line.

4:15 PM - 5/13/2012

No (water) Pressure Diving

Margaret Webb joined us this morning to see how far along the sculpin eggs on the barge were. They're pretty far, in fact, they were gone. I then looked around in the ten feet of visibility for a Cuthona albocrusta, the tiny nudibranch I've been finding recently. I spotted one right away. It was much larger than the previous finds. It's hiding behind a snail in this photo. That is my finger to the left.

I found more of the usual nudis and flatworms, but nothing new today. The water has warmed up ten degrees since last week. It was also windy and overcast. Looks like summertime has arrived in SoCal.

We headed to the Landing Craft, hoping for better conditions. It was a little worse with eight feet vis and surge. I found three Cuthona divaes but little else. Whe I got back on the boat there was no water pressure. This meant no hot shower. No rinsing cameras. No flushing the toilet with two women onboard.
We made it back to the marina, where I spent most of the day replacing the water pressure pump, filling tanks, washing gear and the boat. It was a twelve hour day for two dives within a mile or so from home.

8:38 PM - 5/12/2012

Bay City Blahs

We waited all week for the ocean to calm down enough to try for a dive on the Elevated Pipe off El Segundo. Kevin and I dropped first , only to find six inches of visibility on the bottom. We tucked our tails under our crotch straps and headed back down to the Redondo Beach barge. Merry planned to shoot jellies again while Kevin and I looked for more unusual nudibranchs and shrimp.
Beginning just below the surface and continuing all the way to the top of the barge was a sea of bio-snot. I waved my left hand in front of my face like a windshield wiper all the way down.
Visibility on the barge was decent, but I didn't find anything new today. Here's more of the same old stuff.

5:49 PM - 4/29/2012

Shrimp Identifiction

Even Kevin doesn’t have this one! Any ideas?

2:13 PM - 4/26/2012

Forget Everything I Have Ever Said About he Barge

I officially apologize for every negative comment I have ever made about the barge in the Redondo Beach Artificial Reef. The past couple of weeks have been filled with new discoveries and exciting dives. Before I bought a 90mm lens I used to think of the barge as a home to sea lions and simnias and not much else. Now I'm spending all of my time there looking a lot closer than before.
Today I found my first Doto kya, another tiny nudibranch to add to my collection. As with Sunday, the visibility cleared up dramatically after we surfaced. We didn't have another tank to go back down, but we could see the water change from milky green to dark blue in less than one hour.

Doto kya with my fingertip for scale

7:18 PM - 4/24/2012

Diving On The Lee Side Of The Barge

Kevin Lee and I went on a macro hunt while Merry was jellin' in mid-water. I looked for more shrimp but came up empty today. I did manage to find enough subjects to keep Kevin's and my strobes firing all day.
While Kevin checked out the fish eggs Merry found last week I found another tiny Cuthona albocrusta. After taking several shots, I took the piece of rust with a white speck in the center to Kevin.

I later found a Cadlina modesta on a rock which held the shrimp yesterday.

The barge is crawling with Hermissenda crassicornis, many laying eggs on every surface.

Other nudis, flatworms and caprellids covered the remaining landscape.

Nearing the end of my dive I spotted movement near some rusting metal. A minuscule worm wiggled away from me, but not before he was captured on digital media.

With poor conditions this weekend we decided to make a second dive on the barge. It wouldn't be great, but we knew we would find more subjects. As I descended I was shocked to see that the schmutz that has clouded the water for so long was gone. Visibility was thirty feet on our second dive, thanks to the 48° water that had just swept through.
While looking at the same rock from the previous dive I found two Aeolidiella oliviae, one laying eggs. It was a great way to end a day of local diving. Hopefully the great vis will hold out until the next storm.

7:51 PM - 4/22/2012

A Shrimp On The Bargy

With poor vis everywhere we were limited to another dive on the Redondo Barge this morning. We tried blue water diving, but Merry couldn't see her fins at depth six miles offshore.
At the barge, I kept my lens buried, looking for any tiny animals crawling around in the dark water. I found a variety of critters today.
Tritonia festivas crawled between branches of red gorgonian and across the back of a sea cucumber. A small patch of fish eggs are slowly developing. Merry found them last week, so we need to keep an eye out for, well, eyes!
Each time I looked closely at a rock, shrimp would scatter. I bought a Sola focus light from Kevin Lee that has a red light. When I use it, the animals don't seem to see it and stop long enough for a photo. I even used it on a rarely seen Zebra goby. It let me get within two inches.
Other sightings included unusual worms, nudibranchs and a couple of tiny scallops which also didn't react to the red light.

Podocerus cristatus

8:40 PM - 4/21/2012

S'not Bad Conditions

With a couple of days with nice weather I was hoping for a decent dive after work today. We headed for the Redondo Beach Artificial Reef where we found oily, green surface water. When we dived here last week we had a layer of dirty water that was only three feet thick. Today it reached the bottom.
While looking for some of the minuscule nudibranchs I found recently I continuously saw shadows move overhead. Each time I looked up I saw nothing but sea snot. Merry was able to get some nice jelly shots in the soupy water. I had to settle for more of the usual life on the barge.
Visibility was eight feet on the barge but much less in the water column. Water temperature was 50°.

7:19 PM - 4/17/2012

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

With gale force winds and deadly surf conditions I knew there would be no diving this weekend. Merry and I went down to the marina to adjust our dock lines and pout about another non diving weekend. As we were leaving we spotted a jelly, Scrippsia pacifica floating next to the dock. I ran back to the boat and grabbed a bucket and scooped the little feller up. After taking a few surface photos we released it into the wild. I jumped into the choppy water to get a few shots from just under the surface.

4:56 PM - 4/14/2012

Smaller Crowd At The Barge Today

Merry wanted to make a do-over dive on the Redondo Barge this afternoon. I remembered my macro lens this time. Patchy fog and wind chop at the surface gave way to fairly nice conditions under water. Eighteen feet vis and 51° water is very nice compared to what we've experienced lately.
I only found one tiny Tritonia festiva today, but when I looked under a small piece of rusty iron I hit the jackpot. I noticed a small dot in the center with rhinophores. It was the smallest Aeolidiella oliviae I have ever seen. Nearby was an even smaller flatworm. When I downloaded the photo I found not only my first Cuthona lagunae, but two of them. They were barely visible in the original photo.
During our ascent we worked on our jelly photographic skills. We did better, but still need improvement.

Cuthona lagunae bycatch

Flatworm

Aeolidiella oliviae

Tritonia festiva

Doriopsilla albopunctata

Aegires albopunctatus

Flabellina trilineata

Hermissenda crassicornis

Navanax inermis

Painted greenling

I found Margaret's little sculpin hiding under a rock

Pleurobrachia bachei

Mitrocoma cellularia

Leuckartiara spp.

While going through my photos from Sunday I found another tiny nudibranch. Dr. Jeff Goddard identified it as Cuthona albocrusta. The larger Aeolidiella oliviae next to it was 1/16" long.

8:30 PM - 4/9/2012

De(com)pression Diving

It's been awhile since I've had some really nice dives. I can count the number of good dives I've had this year on one hand. Two of them were at Morro Bay with current and two feet vis. My depression was building until I heard some good news last week. The swell models were predicting small seas this weekend, so I got my hopes up. I've wanted to get some wide angle shots of the UB88 for a long time, so we headed there first. My downline landed two feet from the hull, but the visibility was less than five feet. I knew my camera wouldn't focus in that water so I thumbed the dive. Merry and Kevin dived Coke Bottle Reef, where Merry found another Coke bottle.
The swells picked up and we spent the rest of the day fighting our way through five foot swells back to Redondo Beach.
I was content to sleep in this morning, but Merry wanted to get in a local dive. It wasn't as bad as yesterday, but the water was very green near shore. I made a blue water dive four miles offshore. Visibility was better than sixty feet, but I found only a few tiny jellies, too small for my video camera to focus on.
We thought about diving the landing craft but the surface water looked like split pea soup in a bucket of oil with molasses stirred in. We sadly headed for the barge to look for any vis.
Scott and Margaret Webb arrived just before we did, so we anchored off the southwest corner of the barge. We lowered our cameras into the water and could barely see them a foot below the surface. When I got in the water I couldn't see my fins.
Fortunately, the muck was only a few feet thick, and we enjoyed a good fifteen feet of vis on the bottom. The barge was covered with Hermissenda crassicornis, with a few Tritonia festivas to add some variety. I also found two Navanax inermis, each about one inch long. I still had my wide angle setup from yesterday, so my nudi hunting was limited. Lots of small jellies and yellow snot in the water column.
After getting back on the boat, a small Gray whale surfaced, then dived ten feet off our bow. It swam toward divers from the Divercity dive boat, but none of them saw it under water.

Scott Webb

Margaret "MaggieD" Webb

Maripelta rotata

Painted greenling

Navanax inermis

Cadlina flavomaculata

Tritonia festiva

5:06 PM - 4/8/2012

Redondo Beach Conditions Today

Not many divers out today.

3:44 PM - 3/18/2012

I Otter Be Diving

The swell models predicted 1-2 foot swells this weekend. Once again, they were way off. We had four footers with a short interval pounding us all the way to Marineland. Everywhere we looked we found muddy water. By the time we reached Marineland I had enough "fun" and decided to go home. Along the way we found things to make our day less miserable.
At Pt. Vicente we found five Pacific White Sided dolphins, Lagenorhynchus obliquidens. I hadn't seen any in many years. We remained with them for a few minutes, then continued toward Redondo Beach. About a mile off Vet's we spotted a sea otter. Two have been spotted at Pt. Vicente recently, but this was the first time I had seen an otter south of Morro Bay. We harassed it with Merry's camera for several minutes before heading in to wash the boat. At least we didn't have to fill our tanks and wash gear today.

Bonaparte's Gull, Larus philadelphia

Pacific White Sided dolphins, Lagenorhynchus obliquidens

1:51 PM - 3/10/2012

Great Way To End A Disappointing Weekend

With warm temperatures and predictions of one foot swells, I was looking forward to this weekend all week. I planned to dive a few spots that I haven't visited for a few years.
We headed to the Caissons off Pt. Fermin on Saturday morning. Visibility was a murky ten feet on the tower, but there were several species of salps and jellies in the water column. I snapped away, hoping to get some great shots.
After fueling up in L.A. Harbor where gas is a dollar cheaper than the fuel dock in Redondo Beach we headed for the Garden Spot, a bus-sized reef between Marineland and Abalone Cove. I changed lenses to shoot macro on this dive. Visibility was only three feet, and I was unable to get my camera to focus. I had to find a tiny subject and move the camera back and forth until it was close enough to focus. I realized after surfacing that I had accidently flipped a switch on my camera to manual focus. Without focus gear on my lenses I was stuck. None of my shots from the Caissons came out and only one from the Garden Spot was in focus.

Coenocyathus bowersi

Merry got one shot on the Caissons, but the poor visibility gave her nothing but backscatter in her other shots.

We decided to try again this morning. My first dive would be on the wreck of the Jenny Lynne off Marineland. Visibility was less than six inches! I turned around the moment I reached the silty bottom. When I reached the surface there were two Mola Molas near our dive ladder. I got a couple shots in the dirty surface water.

I was ready to go home, but we stopped to ask about conditions on Hawthorne Reef from Walter Marti, Peter Gallup and Linda Blanchard aboard the Mary Q. They reported great conditions and a Mola cleaning station above the reef. We geared up faster that we ever had before.
The visibility was probably the best I have seen here. It was amazing, considering I had a few inches of vis a mile away. I didn't see any Molas here, but Merry spotted three. She also found a new nudibranch, Conualevia alba. I saw her photographing it and was amazed that she could even see it. It's the tiny white dot in the middle of this rock.

I didn't have as exciting dive as Merry did, but I was thrilled to actually see more than a few feet.

5:35 PM - 3/4/2012

Good Conditions At Marineland Today

Despite the large swells we've had lately, the conditions at Marineland were very nice today. There was some current at Pt. Vicente, where we planned to dive so we headed for the Marineland Platform. Visibility was better than fifteen feet. Schools of fish hovered over the platform as we descended, and the platform itself has settled into the bottom, no longer sitting at an uphill angle. Bryozoans and corynactis anemones have made a big comeback since the platform was dragged by a squid net for the last time. It rests in the Abalone Cove State Marine Conservation Area, so hopefully there will be no more commercial boats fishing on it.
Nudibranchs are still a bit scarce. There were a few species scattered about the platform. I concentrated on the anemones and windmill worms today.

4:30 AM - 2/25/2012

Catalina Midweek Report

Margaret Webb joined us for a couple dives in Palos Verdes this morning. We expected poor conditions, but it was worse than we thought. Whitecaps, large swells and milky water were all we saw. I considered turning around until MaggieD suggested Catalina. Walter Marti posted a new video yesterday showing squid eggs covering the bottom from 65 to 105 feet at Goat Harbor. We decided to check it out. We anchored in the middle of the cove and headed downhill.
As soon as we got wet we were surrounded by dead and dying salps. I tried to pretend it was a blue water dive and get great shots, but the water was full of suspended sand. Merry had much better luck.
Margaret pointed to a sleeping Angel shark, the first of five I saw during the dive. At 65 feet I saw a few single squid eggs scattered about. I went as far as 130 feet but never found more. We have bad luck every time we hear about squid runs. Today was no exception.
I headed up the slope, finding a few nudibranchs and more dead salps along the way. At thirty feet I saw a few female sheephead heading toward the reef. I was bored, so I followed them. Suddenly I spotted a mantis shrimp sitting out in the open. This was my first time seeing this, so I made a slow approach and got as many shots as I could. The mantis didn't seem to like the intrusion and kept his back to me. I put some spin moves on him, faking right them moving left, but keeping my camera on the right. After awhile he gave in and let me get some head shots. A couple of times he leaped forward, but I was able to pull the camera away before he could scratch my lens.
An inflatable pulled up as we returned to the boat. It was two DFG wardens checking up on us. I recognized one as Officer "Splash" Potter, Elaine Jobin's old friend. He asked about how she was doing.
We only had time for one dive, so we raced back to Redondo Beach. The wind had died, but the swells had grown. I think we'll make a dock dive tomorrow instead.

Splash

4:28 AM - 2/23/2012

Topside Attraction in Morro Bay

A dozen otters have made their home near Target Rock in the bay. A telephoto lens would have come in very handy.
 

5:52 PM - 2/20/2012

Much Better Muck Diving Today

We entered at high tide this morning and were greeted with slightly better visibility than yesterday. We could see close to four feet today. It was also a bit brighter under the North T-Pier, perhaps due to the high tide and getting in an hour later. The sky has been clear the entire trip.
We explored the north section of the pier today. Merry found two Catriona columbianas about the size of a pinhead. She pointed out the larger of the two, but I couldn't see it. Kevin and Merry were using bright focus lights. I left mine at home, so I was having trouble getting anything on the pilings. I headed for the bottom and slowly made my way toward the exit spot. Along the way I found enough to keep me busy.
A monofilament net was wrapped around a few pilings. I didn't have a collection bag, and with the current I didn't think it was wise to try to remove it. I'll get it next time.
I found more nudibranchs today than yesterday, including my first Janolus fuscus. I took several shots, then noticed when we got back to the hotel that it was laying eggs.
After 96 minutes in the 47° water I was ready to warm my toes. As I ascended a Dendronotus frondosus floated past me in the current. I cupped my hand behind it and placed it on a rock, which it quickly grabbed a hold of.
There were a few other divers under the pier today. They made two dives in wetsuits while we were under. They must have really enjoyed their dive to get back in for a second dive.

Dendronotus frondosus

Janolus fuscus

2:13 PM - 2/20/2012

Morro Bay Winter Diving

We're back in Morro Bay this weekend for more diving under the North T-Pier with Kevin Lee. We timed our entry to get in a half hour before high tide. We'll try to get in later tomorrow. We had an annoying current throughout the dive, making photography difficult. Kevin probably got stellar shots again.
Visibility was only a couple feet and the nudis seemed to be in hiding today. After over an hour I had amassed a total of twenty-seven shots. Most were horrible. I saved three.

Adalaria jannae

Aeolidia papillosa

Doris montereyensis

Metridiums under the dock open in the current

Kevin demonstrating the T-Pier crawl

The 48° sea water felt warmer than the fresh water hosedown

12:41 PM - 2/19/2012