Finally, we got in a nice day of diving with decent visibility and warm water (relatively speaking, that is). Jeff and I boarded the Great Escape last Saturday night for a Sunday trip to Catalina. First we dived Eagle Reef, a big pile of boulders offshore that is CRAWLING with lobsters. This year there were more juvenile sheephead than I remember seeing last year, and we also spotted a new nudibranch that we later identified as Flabellina Trilineata:

This was our second time diving Eagle Reef, and I think it’s one of my favorite spots at Catalina. We didn’t see anything too spectacular this time, but it’s got an interesting topography, with lots of crevices to poke around in. There are also two distinct “sides” to the main reef, as well as many little outlier reefs, so it’s easy to stay away from other divers (and especially students, who are still learning how to not bump into things and kick up sand).

The crew decided it was getting a little “snotty” in the water (visibility-wise) out there, and moved us into Isthmus Reef (by Two Harbors) for our next two dives. I’m not sure what they were thinking, since Isthmus was much snottier than Eagle; we saw 30 and then 20 feet of vis, as opposed to Eagle’s 50. But it’s still a fun dive site, with a good wall where you can pretty much pick your depth. Here we saw many, many, MANY gobies. Behold:

Black-eyed Goby:

Blue-banded Goby:

The little blue-banded guys tend to show up unexpectedly in pictures of other subjects. In fact, if you look above the head of the blue-banded goby in the picture above, you’ll see another, blurry blue-banded goby in the background! They are everywhere at Catalina right now.

Isthmus Reef was also covered with abandoned bits of fishing line, so we had to be careful not to get snagged. I’ve never seen so much line at Catalina – there were quite a few lures as well, which could be a bit startling.

All in all, it was a good day of diving. The weather stayed sunny despite a forecast for clouds, the ocean was flat enough that my tummy didn’t rebel, and the camera and housing completely behaved. That’s right: not a single problem with the zoom ring, auto-shutoff, or strobe. It’s a miracle.

More pics here: Catalina, April 24 ’05