Tuwanek 24/07/2010

I had tried to plan a trip to Tuwanek all week, but couldn't get a dive buddy. In the end I decided to go on the Topline boat and pick up a buddy, but on Friday Ivan emailed me saying he'd go along.

After the poor visibility at Whytecliff on Thursday I cancelled the Topline in favour of the generally better visibility at Tuwanek.

The morning started off badly. I set my alarm for pm instead of am. We missed the ferry we wanted by minutes. Fortunately there was a 9:40 ferry so we weren't too far behind.

The plan was to do three dives. Ivan had double AL80s and a single AL80, and I'd divide my S130s into thirds. It worked pretty well. Each dive was shorter and shallower too.

I took my scooter along to cut the surface swim. It was slower than I expected towing two fully laden divers, especially on the surface. The prop kept breaking the surface and sucking air. But it still worked. It was at least as fast as swimming. I didn't use the scooter on the dives except for the last one. I got practice stowing it and towing it behind me.

Dive 1 was to the North/right island. We descended a bit too early, so wasted some time looking at sand before hitting the walls and boulders around the back side. We also didn't find the wolf eels. Oh well. Right at the start was a big orange tritonia nudibranch. There were tonnes of tunicates covering everything. Apparently they were seasonal. Moon jellies were everywhere. There were lots of tiny flabellina nudibranchs too. A big cloud sponge came out of nowhere too on the bottom all alone. I had not seen any at Tuwanek before. It was a small hotel for several small fish and crabs.

Dive 2 was to the South/left island. Divers had told us there were two octopii there. I parked the scooter on a marker buoy line this time. I was a bit nervous leaving it and made sure it was totally secure. We saw a big swimming nudibranch and a red buffalo sculpin. The highlight was a giant pacific octopus in his crack. We found the one people were talking about! It was south from the marker buoy at about 60 feet. The scooter was recovered without incident, but on the ascent we almost ran into a lions's mane jellyfish.

Dive 3 was back to the North island, but more right than left. There was another octopus reported there, but we didn't see it. Visibility was poor and we were shallow, around 20 feet. The other dives had better visibility, but below 50 at least. I did doughnuts around Ivan with my scooter on this dive. It was fun!

We had to rush, but made the planned ferry back. All in all a good set of dives!