Covers: Dives 11-13
It's Christmas Day and I am using my free time to update my adventures in diving and revel in the beauty and possibilities of my new UW camera (to be discussed momentarily).
12/20/07 (30 min to 60 feet) - Will and I decided to go for a night dive and when we got to the dive shop to rent our gear, in walks Sean with an invitation to join him and a student on an AOW night dive. We were glad to accompany someone who knew the site better than us and about an hour later we were dropping into Cove 2. It was pretty wild how low the tide was; you could 60 more feet of beach than usual and pylons ominously threatened the safety of our shore entry. About five minutes in, seals began swarming around us, using our lights to fish by. There had to be at least three although it was difficult to tell given the surrounding darkness. We approached the Honey Bear and Sean pointed out an octopus beneath, about 12 feet wide. After awhile of shining our lights in its eyes, it started to turn white with red stripes, meaning it was getting pissed. At that point we moved off and finished the dive. I noticed that I am getting a lot better at controlling my trim and buoyancy when not kicking. I bought a smaller light tonight that I used as a backup with my rental but which will be my primary in New Zealand. This was also the first night I strapped on the knife Emory gave me for Christmas. It fit well with my leg and after a minute, I forgot that it was there. After the dive, we all went over to an Alki biker bar and bought 2 pitchers for the table and three $1 tacos each. It was delicious and we had some good dive and life stories to share. I like biker bars; they are warmer and it doesn't take 20 minutes to get a drink.
12/22/07 (40 min to 82 feet) - Went out with Will, Sean and Todd to a wall down on the Tacoma Narrows called the Day Island Wall. We were loosely accompanying a marker club (a club that lays marker lines for divers who are new to the site). The wall starts at maybe 150-200 ft out and runs parallel to the shore (see pic below).
This is a more difficult dive because it must be times to a slack current or one risks getting swept away. We timed it ALRIGHT and dropped at about 45 feet. After about a 20 ft. underwater swim, we swam out over the wall and into what seemed like an endless drop into space. We slowly dropped further and established neutral buoyancy facing the wall. Will and I quickly got separated from Sean and Todd and continued the dive on our own. Investigating the crevices and dens of the wall face revealed new life I had never seen. We saw 3 wolf eel nestled into their spaces, who didn't seem to mind too much having lights shined in their face. Todd, who brought a camera, later showed us photos of a mother guarding her nest of eggs and a few octopi. Will and I missed these as we generally stayed at the North (shallower) end of the wall. When we began our swim back to shore, we began to face quick current at about 30 feet and were forced to surface and complete the swim back to the beach on top of the water. Even then, it took us a good fifteen minutes to get back to shore swimming against the current. There is definitely a reason you must correctly time this dive.
12/24/07 (40 minutes to 70 feet) - Will and I felt the urge to do another night dive on Christmas Eve. After a delicious dinner with Jen's family, I headed towards the West Seattle bridge and Cove 2. Upon reaching the cove and meeting up with Will, he realized that he did not have a light with him. Although not the safest of solution, we decided to dive connected to each other so he could use my light as well and not risk getting separated in low viz. Our connection piece was our catch bag for crab and shrimp; we each held one handle. At this point I realized that I had forgotten my weight, a situation far worse than no light as it is impossible to sink without weight. It is also important to have the right amount of weight so as to maintain neutral buoyancy and not get stuck at the bottom having to put too much air in your BCD. Yet again, we crafted a fantastically dangerous solution. I jimmy rigged my gear bag to my BCD and filled it with rocks. Through some trial and error in the shallows, I managed to attain the proper buoyancy, although I was anything but graceful. After dropping will maintained negative buoyancy so as to prevent me from floating away if I somehow lost some of my rocks. We had a relatively uneventful dive with little in the way of moving sealife, although we did see an absolutely enormous sea star and swimming with our makeshift equipment was amusing enough to make the dive interesting. Will managed to catch two shrimp by hand (while totally screwing the viz), which we later boiled at his apartment. It was a lot of work for a meal of a shrimp each, but they were so much more delicious than shrimp you buy from the store.
Today, for Christmas, I received some dive related gifts. I got my Canon SD800 digital camera and the WP-DC9 underwater case, also made by Canon. I also received a rudimentary dive watch from my Dad, a Timex rated "Water Resistant" to 100 meters. It says not to use it as a dive watch but who cares, I will never be 100 meters deep and am not really worried about it leaking. If it does, oh well, $30 down the toilet. I tried a couple of shots with the camera and some video. There results are below. I thought the photo was pretty cool. I ran it through a watercolor filter in Photoshop to give it some extra artistic flair.
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