We hit up Tyee Beach first. It had been some time since I had been, and there were major improvements. Gone was the brambly path, to be replaced by a park, a bathroom and change area. Quite the upgrade!
Jim and I planned to scooter out to Dolphin Beach along the wall that ran to the left of the Tyee entrance, then come back. It was a great looking day.
On the wall, we came across four nice Puget Sound king crabs. Here was one of them.
We also saw three tiger rockfish, which I was quite excited about. I don't get to see these that often. Jim laughed later that he couldn't figure out why I kept pointing them out, because he saw them all the time. A highlight was the large yellow-eye rockfish. That was one thing that Jim didn't see shallow that often.
The best part for me though, was the lewis moonsnail at the end of the dive. These ugly things were always awesome to me!
I made a funny video out of our moonsnail encounter here:
For our dive at Madrona, it was even better. I joked with Jim that we would see 8 octopus and 6 wolf eels. He was definitely skeptical.
We scootered out to the big wall, and right at the start, came across a juvenile wolf eel in a crack. I was super excited! Jim signaled me if I would take some video, and I signaled back yes. When I reached into my pocket, no camera. With a sinking feeling, I pulled everything out to double check. Nothing. I got Jim's attention and signaled that I lost my camera, and to go back and search. I hoped I had just not clipped it off properly and that it had slipped out onto the sand. While looking, I replayed gearing down at Tyee. I then remembered that for some reason I had put my camera back into its case and put it into my dive bag. Certain that I knew it was not lost, I called off the search. Good that I didn't lose it, bad that we kept seeing so many great things!
In the end, we saw 6 octopus, 3 wolf eels (a juvenile and a new mated pair). Scores of opalescent nudibranchs, 1 big sunflower star and 5 smaller sunflower stars, a bright red gunnel, and a juvenile yellow-eye rockfish. There were a few pretty lion's mane jellyfish to round things out.
It was a truly epic dive. Madrona never seemed to disappoint!
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