20,000 blogs under the sea

My Birthday Weekend

July 16 NIGHT DIVE
One word Suuuwheeeeet! Ok, one word isn’t enough. Me & my buddies Barry & Murray went for a night dive to Tyee Cove, Vancouver Island, and it was great, awesome, cool, amazing, not enough words to describe it. . . . .
We caught the 7:20 ferry & were in the water just after 10:30 pm. The night was calm, the sky clear, the water flat and the tide high. The first thing we couldn't help but notice, as we were swimming out, were the Bioluminescent lifeforms in the water. Oh man, it was like swimmin’ with sparklers. I’ve read about the glow of divers created by swimming through water & stirring up the light show, but now I finally got to see it. It was intense. I could have stayed there all night waving my hands & fins creating mini underwater fireworks.
The underwater light show was just a taste of the great things to come in this dive.
First let me say that those great little critters that caused the light show also were drawn to our lights, so I’m using that as an excuse for not getting very good pictures. The krill swarmed in front of my camera and made it very hard for it to focus. (I did get a couple of shots of krill though.)
A wonderful array of critters were out on display for us. Some one must have called a sailfin sculpin convention because there were a lot of them… we’d see them 2 or three at a time. I spotted a little northern cling fish in a rock crack in the shallows. Took a couple of shots but the little guy was bouncing around a lot. Barry flashed his light at me to come see something he had found. A little hooded nudibranch on a big kelp leaf. It was yellow with white spots…. I’ve only seen them white & quite large. Maybe this was a youngster.
Another flash of light in my direction & it’s Murray signaling me to come see a giant scale worm. He was moving quite fast, trying to get away from our lights & curiosity. That was only one of many worms we saw including a thick bright red one (that buried itself before I had a chance for a pic) and an amazing blue one…. Still have to look up the name for that one.

Another flash of light my way brings attention to 1 of the 2 octopus we were to see tonight. He was a nice size, stretching out a few feet. He scurried away & we followed him for a minute. Then he stopped & waited. Was he just as curious about us?

We were down around 55fsw when Barry felt a bump against his side….& got a little nervous as he figured out Murray & I were not THAT close to him. Well it was a dogfish that bumped him & now it was swimming around in front of us for a few seconds. . . still bumping into wall… then it swam off into the dark. Can it get any better than this?

More signaling, more “O.K.’ing”, more cool things to share. Two red Irish lords, 2 plainfin midshipmen, a Puget Sound king crab, lots of golf ball crabs & decorators.

It was time to work our way back along the rocky wall, to the shore. As I was passing a deep crevice partially hidden by kelp I caught a flash of colour in my light. In that crack was the fish that looks like a rippling silk red scarf. . . a Red brotula. I frantically got my buddies attention. This elusive & not commonly seen fish had to be shared. Took a few krill filled pictures of it & carried on with our ascent.
Well that topped off a perfect dive. We surfaced & slowly swam back to shore on our backs, looking up at the stars & recapping every exciting thing we saw.

July 17 - Tyee Cove & Wall Beach.
Well, you know you are getting old when a bunch of divers can plan an underwater birthday surprise & slip it right pass ya. It was Murray G's idea to have an plastic banner, a cupcake balloon and masks for everyone to put on underwater. While George distracted me, everyone else set up & I laughed when I turned around to see the birthday bandits. I wonder what the fish thought. Thanks to Murray G, Barry, Dana, Tom, Rick, Wendy, Bruce & George for sharing in my birthday & making it memorable!
On with the dives.... the shallows were thick with algae & krill floating around. Viz got better deeper. It was a totally different dive from the night before, still nice. Saw a couple of heart crabs, a tiger rockfish, ling cod, greenlings, a big school of tube snouts and schools of perch in the kelp. I think the coolest thing was the tiny baby painted greenling I found sitting on a sea cucumber.

We packed up headed over to Wall Beach for our second dive. Had lunch on the beach & relaxed for a while. Unfortunately my ears wouldnt clear on my descent for the second dive so just stayed in the shallow shoreline & snooped around. The others had a great dive searching for & finding big critters.

Afterward we all got together for a BBQ. Great food, great people, a great time. And Wendy made a cake, appropriately decorated. . . with a scuba diver! Thanks all!

Cambell River July 05

Well its been 150 dives since my last confession. . .
Yes I've been diving, travelling, photographing. . . just not blogging. I am ashamed. Good intentions, I'll try to make up for it. Frustratingly I had to take approximately 3 months off to recover from cold/sinus problems in January but I think all is back on track. Here we go yet again. . .

Spent the weekend up at Abyssal Dive Lodge on Quadra Island with a group of divers from Dive & Sea Sports. . . Barry, Muzza, Joey, Mike S., Dana, Mitch, Greig, Cory, Mike J., Cindy, Tim, Andrew, George & me. A couple years back we got into the bad habit of taking Friday off work and getting in the water by noon. This way we can get as many dives in as safely possible. I did 8.

DAY 1
Steep Island (12:00) - known for its huge clusters of feather duster tube worms. Its a nice dive site with sloping walls & scattered bolders covered with the Campbell River signature strawberry anemones. The current scoots you along as you watch the colourful show go by. Plenty of kelp greenlings & rockfish. A few small ling cod.

Grouse Island (3:00) - This dive was not at slack tide. This site is one that you can sneak in on while the current is still running as long as you stay close to the wall. We got dropped in the kelp and had to do a quick descent so as not to get pulled away from the island. A few minutes into this dive Mike S. spotted a small wolfeel tucked in a den. It cooperated nicely for a few pictures. Also saw a nice big cabezon blending in with its surroundings. I'm sure I miss dozens of critters because of their camo. I really enjoyed my safety stop on this dive, relaxing in the kelp & taking photos.

Row and be damned (7:00)- I think this is one of my favourite sites. Tons of rock fish, accepting of us being in their neighbourhood, calmly finned around their territory. I found a decorator warbonnet! He was tucked into a crack surrounded by sponge. Tough to get a pic but I got one, my first worthwhile photo of this critter. Carpets of strawberry anemones & sponge & barnacles cover the boulders & short walls.

Because we met Earl & Bill at the boats on the docks at Campbell River, we headed back there after our last dive. Had a Chinese dinner at Best Wok (really good) and then caught the 10:30 ferry over to Quadra island. Phew, a long & fun day.

DAY 2
Middle of the Road (7:00) - An early dive, and it showed by a lack of alertness as everyone seemed have some minor faux pas of some sort including jumping in without fins! Talk about eager. This dive for me personally was cut a bit short. George had to do an underwater repair on his fin strap, then my light died, camera didnt want to cooperate and my mask had an irritating trickling flood going on and the current was stronger than what I wanted to contend with on these circumstances. Normally this is a fave. . . thankfully we did it again.

Seymour Basin - This was plan B. We were originally at Copper Cliffs but the current didnt seem to relax so we opted for a sheltered area. Past the Seymour Narrows is a small bay. It was mostly a sandy bay that had some interesting short walls. Muzza found a Sailfin sculpin under a rock. I didn't take the camera this dive but wish I had as I saw some different pretty little starry shaped anemones in bright white & some pale purples. Also a type of tube worm with a huge beautiful fan.

Tied up at the wreck of the Columbia, just for lunch, not a dive, then continue back over to Copper Cliffs.

Copper Cliffs - A huge, steep wall is the majority of this dive. Me & my buddy Joey zipped along the wall in the current. This is a great place to see many different types of nudibranchs. Orange peel, cockerllis dorids, opalescent, leopards, & lemons. This site also has a small patch of cloud sponge under a ledge in about 16 ft of water, which is unusually shallow. At the end of the dive we worked our way up a boulder field & explored in the shallows. Saw big abalone with a huge ol' barnacle living on it.

The forth dive of the day I opted out, unfortunately & it was a good one at Row & Be Damned again. Most divers saw a nice big octopus & grunt sculpins.

DAY 3
Middle of the Road - (7:30) A nice dive, timing was great & current carried us up, out to the wall & back to where we dropped in. A beautiful site, lots of colour, red irish lords, anemones, sponges & giant barnacles.

April Point - (2:30) Kept this dive shallow & short as currents were strong. Had to descend along the kelp so we didnt drift off too far. We didnt venture to far & didnt see as much of this site this time.

All in all it was a good weekend, with 14 happy divers. Dana got the record of logging 10 dives this trip! As per usual, everything at Abyssal Dive Lodge, the accomodations, meals, boats & dives were all great. I was under the weather a bit, now have a cold coming on. NOOOOOOOO! I can't get sick & miss more diving again. Will keep posted. . . really!

And there we went...Part 2

Yes, I know, I know, we've been back for a couple of weeks now...I've been busy...here is some more of the Cozumel trip report.

The morning routine started with breakfast at 7am. The hotel restaurant offered a huge variety of breakie foods to choose from and the best papaya around! We were down at the Dive Paradise office for 8am to see which boat we were diving from. Once on board we set up in front of a tank & assembled our gear. Our boat dives were great even though most dives were on the slower boats. I know some people like to take the faster boats or even stay at resorts closer to the reefs but I don’t mind the slower boats and being farther away. Heck! You’re on vacation, what’s the hurry? Some of the sites were an hour away but I enjoyed being out on the water, soaking up the sun and talking with the other divers on the boat. We chatted with divers from Iowa, Texas, Ontario, & Florida as we headed towards the reefs.

Our dive day consisted of 3 dives. Two morning dives, a deep dive (max 90 ft) & a shallower dive (60 ft) and then a shallow afternoon dive.

The deep dives were beautiful. I was awe-struck by towers of coral, swim-throughs, huge sponge formations and colorful fish. The largest and friendliest queen angels I have ever seen swam around in pairs. We saw our first turtles & eagle ray at Palancar Caves. Palancar Gardens, Santa Rosa wall & Columbia Reef were all stunning.

The shallow dives offered tons of life. Wesley & Ryan were great at finding lots of spotted eels. I think we all heard Ryan scream “WOW” through his reg when George showed him a huge green moray under an overhang. There were so many fish it was hard to remember all of the different types.…Queen & French Angels, Parrotfish of every type (including a midnight and a couple of large rainbows), huge Groupers and Permit fish. Quite a few large stealth-like barracuda also cruised by. I think a favourite was Villa Blanca Wall as it’s where we got incredible fly-bys of huge Spotted Eagle Rays. It was really neat to look over at our group of divers suspended in awe. Another fish entertained us with his comedic antics of swimming close to our heads and biting through our bubbles. He was almost like a puppy as he followed along with us for quite a while. (He looked like a brown grouper but we really couldn’t figure out what he was). Tormentos was a wonderful dive site with a twist of having underwater sand dunes. What a sight! On our dives we also saw seahorses, a couple of nurse sharks, huge crab & lobsters. Balones of Chancanab, Los Palmos, Yucab Reef, San Francisco wall, Dahlia and Chancanab Shallows were our other shallow dives.

And there we went.... Part 1

The good news is we all had a blast in Cozumel. The bad news is the camera was not cooperating and I got only a handful of underwater pictures. What a huge bummer (almost as bad as finding out that Rupert got kicked off Survivor). No idea what was up with it. We tried everything we could to get it to work and were wondering if something got fudged when our bags got opened up & checked at the airport. Our final option (that we didn't have with us on the trip) is a bit of lube on the camera housing shutter release. We'll check how that works on the next dive this weekend.... now back to Coz with just a couple of pics.

After a 9:40 pm flight to Seattle, then a 11:45 pm flight to Houston, and then a 6:00 am flight to Cozumel, it seemed to forever before we would get in that warm turqoise water. Everyone seemed to be happy with their rooms at the Magic Sunset (formerly Brisas Cozumel, formerly Costa Club, formerly...). We got settled & after a quick bite geared up for our "welcome dive". What a pleasure donning our Bare Velocity 3mm wetsuits and 1/3 of the weight of what we are used to wearing. We all did a giant stride off the dock (some from higher up than this chicken) and giggled at the warmth & clarity of the water. The life was nothing compared to what was to come but it was still very nice to find a couple of lobster, a sharp-tailed eel, scorpion fish, a yellow stingray and a spotted drum. It was a great primer dive.

It took us all a few minutes & a few tries to organize how we were going to get into a routine for the week. Which gear was going to get washed here & stored there etc. It had been a long couple of days with only a few hours sleep, so we shuffled off to our rooms to prep for dinner. After dinner we forced ourselves to go for a walk into town, afterall we couldn't go to bed at 7pm...that would be 5pm Vancouver time! We hit the pillows at 8:30 already dreaming of the dives to come.

Ok, here we go...

Well, its time to take that giant stride... into the deep blue blog. This is my first attempt at blogging after much prodding from my friend Rick. Thanks to TypePad, it's all seeming pretty easy to do. Now all I can hope is I'll be able to connect & update while enjoying a dive vacation in Cozumel, Mexico. Looking forward to diving in those warm turquoise waters and recording comments & photos online. Wish me luck.