Thursday, March 22, 2018

Whyttecliff 03/15/2018

Vlad, Nick and I got together for a night dive at Whyttecliff Park. It was steadily getting brighter, and the daylight savings change made it even more so. Summer was on the way!

It was a perfect evening, sunny and dry. Our plan was to go in at the Cut since the tide was high.

When we arrived, we checked out the entrance at the Cut. Everything was clear of logs and debris. What was not so clear were the hundreds of plastic flower petals that had been spread around for some photo shoot. John Nunes reported this a few days ago. It was really unfortunate. With all the marine debris, why are people throwing more in? Spend the extra money and buy real flower petals...

The plan was to have a fun dive, then do some bottle work and skills in the bay. It was a good thing we didn't plan for much more. The visibility was quite a challenge. It seemed like the fish spawning activity lately was having an impact. It was especially bad when we deployed an SMB and started our skills. We started to ascend to 6 meters, but it was just too hard to see each other. It would be no fun if we lost a bottle due to poor vis. Instead we did our skills at 12 meters and it was better.

During the fun part of the dive I saw more yellow tail rockfish than I had ever seen before. There were hundreds and hundreds. We saw the usual interesting hairy lithoid crabs, cloud sponges and plumose anemones. Unfortunately there were no octopus that we saw. I did spy a grunt sculpin hiding.

When we got out of the water, poor Nick said his beard smelled strongly of fish. I was glad I didn't have to drive home like that!

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