Saturday, we went out on the Sea Bass to dive at the oil rig Eureka, several miles off San Pedro. Eureka lies in about 600 feet of water, and is out in the open – which means it tends to be subject to strong swells, wind and currents. There was a bit of a swell running this day, but not too much for the 40-foot Sea Bass to handle. I was a little nervous about how getting on and off might be made tricky by the occasional extra-large rollers that came through, but I never had much trouble. I’m not sure if our timing was just good on all our entries and exits, or if I’ve just improved in the last year of diving (last time we dove the oil rigs, everything about it seemed hard).

Because the boat can’t anchor or tie off to the rig, they have to drop off the divers “live” – that is, the boat keeps running. They’re required to approach from the windward side, to avoid conflicts with the rig work boats, which means that they can wind up being blown towards the rig by wind and current. So the idea is to get the divers off the boat as quickly as possible. Everyone gears up at the same time, sitting on the two benches that line either side of the deck. When everyone looks ready, they’re instructed to put on their fins and masks, and then the boat heads over to the rig. Once the boat stops moving, everyone stands up and giant strides off the back of the boat, one after another (picture paratroopers leaping out of a plane, with someone yelling “go, go, go!” and shoving each one out in turn). The first entry went totally smoothly, I’m sure due to the fact that most of the divers were extremely experienced (8 out of twelve were diving drysuits; 7 with double tanks and stage bottles; 1 with a rebreather).

Exiting the boat:

Once we were in, I was amazed by the clear visibility at the surface. Our first trip to the rigs was during the summer, and there was a 30-foot layer of plankton soup that reduced the visibility to a couple of feet until you got below it (and blocked out most of the sun once you were down). Yesterday, as soon as I stuck my face in the water I could see the oil rig pylons stretching out at least a hundred feet below, and huge schools of topsmelt (thin silver fish) were everywhere. For the most part, they drifted about slowly and aimlessly, scattering every once in a while when one of the resident sea lions would drop down for a snack.

Our first order of business was to find some giant white-plumed anemones (metridium giganteum) for Jeff to photograph. They’re quite common in the pacific northwest, but here they only grow where it’s pretty cold and deep. On the rigs, they first start to appear in ones and twos at about 110 feet. If you look down, you can see larger aggregations 30-40 feet blow, and they completely swamp the rig struts at greater depths (which, frankly, I hope never to see).

Metridium Giganteum:

Jeff shot a couple of metridiums from various angles, while I puttered around and kept an eye on our nitrogen loading. It’s great fun just to be under the oil rig, even if you don’t see anything special. It’s just so amazing to be surrounded by such a feat of engineering – these huge pipes disappearing down in the abyss. It’s also such a weird synthesis of man and nature: every inch of metal is completely encrusted with tiny strawberry anemones, molluscs, and algae, and is home to all kinds of fish that hide in the clutter. I spotted a few rockfish, some greenlings, and a california scorpionfish – and of course, the ever-present schools of topsmelt swirling around the outside of the rig and occasionally through the center. Looking up, you see the sun shining down through the rig’s struts, and silhouettes of sea lions on the surface (and frequently diving down). Looking down, I could see the lights and rising bubbles of the 4 divers working on their required-decompression class, who spent 13 minutes at 145 feet.

My favorite sight on that dive was a sea lion who dived down to about 80 feet, and then slowly worked his way up. He turned somersaults and blew bubbles, then poked at them with his nose, slowly spiraling up towards the surface. Very cool visual. There was also a young sea lion who was quite curious about the camera.

Look at those big brown eyes:

We decided to stay at Eureka for the second dive, since conditions were so nice, even though the swell was picking up a bit. On our second dive, Jeff and I found two baby garibaldis in about 20 feet of water. In their early juvenile stage, they’re frequently more fluorescent blue than orange, and dart around spastically. Of course, the camera chose this moment to give its intermittent “Err 99” message and crash. Argh.

Last pic of the day: an out-of-focus baby garibaldi

We tooled around between 40 and 60 feet of water, drifting into the large schools of fish and just taking in the view. Jeff spotted two cormorants (diving birds) swimming around down there – I missed it! Eventually I had to admit that I was freezing, and Jeff wasn’t able to take pictures anyway, so we called the dive a bit early and headed back onto the boat.

We did a little troubleshooting back on board, and tracked the camera problem down to the sync cable between the strobe and the housing. It looks like the connector at one end had some leakage through the seal, and it must be shorting out or something: it always works for the first part of the day, then starts acting up and eventually dies completely. Luckily, we still have time to replace it before Bonaire!

I was really freezing by this point (the sun never stayed out for long, and it was windy), and feeling seasick to boot, so I decided to sit out the third dive at the Ellie/Ellen oil rigs. Jeff opted to remain behind with me, and we passed the time chatting up the crew.

There was a bit of an incident on the last boat entry of the day. One of the guys wearing doubles was among the first people out of the water, and unfortunately he was about halfway up the ladder when a pretty good-sized swell lifted the boat up and dropped it. The ladder, which isn’t permanently attached but sits on some metal hooks and is held in place by two crew members, lifted up just high enough to hop out of the hooks – and ladder and diver tipped sideways and back off the boat, where other divers were waiting their turns. For a few seconds ,I was positive we’d be ending the day with a call to the coast guard – but amazingly, the guy that was landed on managed to duck underwater, and he escaped with only a tiny scratch on his head. The diver who did the falling was completely confused when he finally did make it on board, and was glad to hear that it had been the ladder that let go, and not him that lost his grip!

The nice thing about diving the oil rigs is that you make it back to harbor so early – we rolled in around 3pm, and were all unpacked and crashing in bed by 5.

Oil platforms Ellie and Ellen, with Eureka in the distance:

More pics here: http://gallery.laityphoto.com/v/underwater/uw-20041120_oilrigs.