For the last 3 years, we’ve gone out on a 3-day trip with Truth Aquatics, and had fantastic conditions every time, with at least 2 whole days spent at San Miguel.

This was not one of those years.

The lovely swell rolling in from the northwest meant we had a hard time finding dive sites. I have to give major kudos to the captain and crew for effort, but sadly we spent a lot of time cruising around looking for spots with diveable current/surge, so didn’t get in as many dives as in previous years.

We did make it to San Miguel on Friday, which I didn’t expect after seeing those swell models. I was happy to get to spend a day with all the sea lions out there. I love pulling up to the first dive site at San Miguel, and seeing all the sea lions leaping out of the water and racing towards the boat. We dived Cooke Point, Tyler Bight and Wycoff Ledge, and had no shortage of pinnipeds.

Play with me!!

We also had no shortage of surge. The swell on the surface didn’t seem all that bad except for the occasional big roller coming through. But the long wavelength meant those big rollers were REALLY INTERESTING underwater! The first one that hit us took me completely by surprise. We were in about 50 feet of water, in fairly thick kelp and nice vis. All of a sudden I saw the kelp in front of me start whipping around like it was in a washing machine, and then BLAMMO! I went flying backwards in the turbulence; it felt quite a lot like getting caught in a breaking wave on a beach dive! I quickly learned how to hang onto a stalk of bull kelp and “tarzan” my way along to avoid getting slammed into rocks and urchins. One time I had a good hold, but Jeff went flying, and wound up a good 40 feet away. Forty foot surge. That was a unique experience.

That was the worst surge we had all weekend, but the occasional 10’+ surge wasn’t unusual at all the rest of our dive sites!

A rare non-surgy moment:

Still, I had fun. We were on a limited load trip with a bunch of photographers, so there was plenty of room for everyone’s enormous camera rigs. I think I even got some fun footage of the effects of the surge – though it may make me seasick to watch it!

Critter highlights of the trip: a school of what I think were kelp pipefish, high density of rainbow surfperch at Coches Priestos, a cormorant underwater, several super-juvenile sheephead that weren’t too camera-shy, nudis by the dozen, courting snubnose sculpins, enormous abalone, and lots of chestnut cowries.

Juvie sheephead, feeling safe in his gorgonian:

My favorite dive site was actually the last one: 9 o’clock reef, off the east end of Santa Cruz. It’s not always diveable due to current, but when we anchored there it was pretty mild. We dropped down into 50′ vis and an absolutely BEAUTIFUL kelp forest: equal parts bull and giant kelp, with each enormous, healthy plant spaced about a foot away from the next. Absolutely gorgeous. However, the vis started to deteriorate and the surge picked up, which made the beautiful kelp forest a beautiful entanglement hazard – I’ve never had to untangle myself so many times on one dive! Then we couldn’t find the anchor line to go back up (turns out the wind changed and the boat pendulumed away), and surfaced to some serious wind chop and a long swim against-current to the boat. Well, it STARTED as my favorite dive!

The ride back was… bumpy. But again, not as bad as I’d feared from those swell models last week.

The rest of Jeff’s pics are here:

3 Days on the Conception

If any of my surge footage is watchable, I’ll try to put together a few clips for your enjoyment.