I was sure we’d used up all our bad luck yesterday. And at first, that seemed to be the case. We made it to our first choice of dive site, a sailboat wreck called the Naked Lady. Dave helped me shoot a bunch of topside segments I need for my video, and they all went well. Jeff and I had a perfectly nice, though not extraordinary, dive on the wreck.

We were the last ones in the water, so we were a bit surprised not to be the last ones back out. After a few minutes, it became apparent that one buddy pair in particular should have surfaced already. News slowly trickled to the surface with Dave and Tee, who’d been right behind us on the ascent line – one of the divers ran out of air on the wreck. In 100 feet of water.

Luckily for her, the divemaster Elaine was just a few feet away at the time, and apparently handled the situation perfectly (though I later discovered it’s the first time she’s had an out-of-air situation, even though she’s been a dive instructor and guide for years). It was a scary experience, though, and not just for the diver involved. I think we were all aware that it really could happen to anyone; it’s so easy to be distracted, especially when you’re taking pictures (and probably alitle narc’ed, down that deep). Apparently she was keeping an eye on her remaining bottom time (nitrogen absorption), which she assumed would run out before her air – usually that’s true. But not this time.

She’s fine, although she didn’t dive again that day.

Bow of the Naked Lady:

But our bad luck still hadn’t run out. The same guy who wound up taking a ride to the hospital yesterday surfaced from the Naked Lady with a flooded camera.

Doh.

I’m happy to report that the rest of the day went quite smoothly, at last. We even had a little dolphin encounter (minus the Man o’ Wars) on the way to the second dive site, a favorite of mine. My footage from today is less than spectacular, but I still enjoyed the diving. I got inked by an octopus for the first time, saw a purple frilly nudibranch, and had another turtle fly-by. Interesting story on that – Dave pointed the turtle out to us, and Jeff then inadvertently whacked Dave in the face with a fin while he got the shot. (He later apologized, and honestly, I think it looked worse from my angle than it actually was!)

We kicked off our Kona Classic dives with a trip to Turtle Pinnacles, site of Jeff’s award-winning shot from last year. The turtles were out in modest numbers (that is, two), but it was still a nice way to start the morning. The weather was beautiful without a cloud in sight, the sea was as flat as we could have asked for; all in all, things were looking good. We even saw a little Kommerson’s frogfish at the end of our dive, hiding out under a ledge and pointed out by a divemaster. Unfortunately, the awkward positioning of said frogfish caused Jeff to contort himself into odd positions trying to get a photo – and he managed to get a kneeful of urchin!

Kommerson’s Frogfish (image flipped upside down!)

It looked pretty bad at first – at least a dozen spines sticking out of his knee. Luckily for Jeff, it turned out that only one had completely broken the skin and left its little purple bit in the flesh, to slowly dissolve away over the next day. And he wasn’t the only diver to surface injured; Marcia came up with about a dozen urchin spines actually stuck in her skin. Ouch.

Things got even more exciting while we motored around offshore during lunch. A pod of bottlenose dolphins appeared off the bow, and half of us jumped in to try to get some shots – most of us without our wetsuits, since we were in such a hurry not to miss the dolphins.

BIG MISTAKE.

When I heard David Fleetham yell “watch out for Man O’ War,” i thought he was just covering a remote possibility, or perhaps even being facetious. But he was actually saying “Watch out, there are Man o’ Wars.” People started yelping as various body parts got stung, and we started for the boat – only to wind up in an even thicker patch. I felt a sting on my hand, and then a truly unpleasant batch of stings along the inside of my left thigh. David swam by towing Taylor, who’d apparently taken a nasty hit to his back and appeared to be in serious pain. My thigh burned worse by the second, and I have to admit I began to completely freak out – not so much from the pain I was actually in at the moment (though it did hurt a lot), but for fear of what was to come. I had my HydroOptix mask on, which meant I could see clearly – but only if my face was in the water. Not wanting to get stung in the face meant not being able to see anything clearly, which made it even creepier.

By the time the boat backed up to us, Jim (right in front of me) had a whole jellyfish hanging off his shoulder, with tentacles dripping down his back. David got Taylor up the ladder (depositing a second jellyfish on the ladder rail), and towed me in next (I should mention David, smart man, was in a wetsuit). Then David himself got a jellyfish to the ear.

So there we were, all huddling on the boat with various amounts of Man o’ War stings. Pretty sorry lot. As the welts began to swell and redden, we all compared wounds. Mine hurt a lot worse than they looked like they hurt – Jim and Taylor’s backs were both far worse than the few red streaks across the back of my leg!

Taylor turned out to have a known allergy to bee stings, so we kept an eye on him for signs of an allergic reaction. He started to experience SEVERE pain and muscle spasms, and then hyperventilation. The crew put him on oxygen to help him breathe easier, and we headed into the harbor to meet an ambulence.

Jim, who’s a scuba instructor back home, accompanied Taylor in the ambulance – but the rest of us, with the stings subsiding, opted to go on to a second dive in the hopes that we’d used up all our bad mojo for the week.

Lesson learned, by the way – you will NEVER see this body jump into open ocean without at least a dive skin.

It felt unbelievably good to pull on a cold, clammy wetsuit over the stings. Our second dive site, Suck ’em Up, sported some fantastic lava tube formations, including one cave that was home to a sleeping white-tipped reef shark. Pretty little fish were out in force, as well as a few hunting eels.

Posing for Jeff:

But then Dave had to go and stab himself in the knee with an urchin. So apparently, we’re still jinxed.

More details and pictures to come, but:

I won 1st place in the Kona Classic video competition!!

There was some stiff competition this year: 7 videographers competing against each other, instead of split into “open” and “locals-only.” Dave Husted, my mentor and camera-housing-loaner, took 2nd place after 3 years of winning 1st place in the open category. Jeff Leicher, the owner of Jack’s Diving Locker, walked away with an honorable mention instead of his usual locals-only 1st place – I suspect he sort of phoned it in this year, not wanting to compete against his customers. But I’m in some pretty amazing company; I still have a lot to learn from those guys!

I’ll make a DVD with a full-res version of my three-minute video, and hopefully some of the other winners as well. And of course, it’ll include a slideshow from Jeff – who took an honorable mention in macro, 3rd place in wide angle, and 1st place in the new photojournalism category! He’ll be published in Sport Diver later this year.

For those of you who just can’t wait, a web-sized version of my video is here:

Dive Buddies

On a lighter, jury-duty-free note: Jeff and I went to our second Avalon Harbor Underwater Cleanup last Saturday, out on Catalina. Our first one was two years ago, and it was cold and pouring rain all day. This time around, we had excellent weather – and drysuits, to help us stay extra toasty.

We crawled out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4am so we could make the 6:15am ferry to Avalon. Mornings like this really make me wonder why I ever took up diving. It’s a bit of a hassle to get over to the island on cleanup day, since you’re one of about 500 divers – most of whom don’t want to shell out to spend the weekend on the island. The ferry crew must be absolutely sick of us already by the time we’re all on board with all our gear bags, tanks, drysuit bags, weights, and camera equipment. That’s right, Jeff refused to go diving without his camera, even if we were basically just going to go pick up trash. Not that I’m really complaining all that much, since I love having photos. I just don’t love transporting a zillion pounds of gear around, especially when you have to get it all loaded onto the ferry in ONE TRIP. At least when we go on boat dives, we can be leisurely about getting the gear on and off!

There were about 10 Sole Searchers on the ferry with us this year, and the original plan was to all go get breakfast while our gear was transported by truck to Casino Point. Between a shortage of luggage tags and a shortage of gear trucks, a few of us decided it would be easier to just grab a cab. Jeff and I, along with John Marin, gave our extra tags to the rest of the crew and headed on over to the point to grab a spot.

45 minutes later, with not nearly enough time remaining to go get a real breakfast, we were all set up by the Point. The rest of the crew showed up just in time to hear the pre-dive briefing, and before we knew it, the dive was on!

Doing the Avalon Harbor Cleanup is popular with divers because you get to dive in areas that are normally restricted to boat traffic. Our group dived from Casino Landing, which is opposite the Casino Point Dive Park. In other words, we were on the side that did NOT have stairs into the water. Two years ago, I just about aborted the dive when I realized I was expected to clamber down the slimy jumble of cement and boulders that makes up the jetty, instead of being allowed to utilize those oh-so-lovely stairs. With plenty of help, I managed to make it in and out without incident.

This time around, I was a more confident diver in general – however, I had one new disadvantage. Jeff and I, as always, went with our HydroOptix masks for good underwater vision. But on the surface, that means I’m walking around without my contacts in. On slimy, uneven concrete and boulders. In a drysuit that’s too tight since I gained the last 10 pounds.

A random person helped me over the waist-high wall (I can’t quite manage to straddle it, so I have to kind of hop up into a sitting position and then swivel, without letting the weight of my tank pull me over). Then two volunteers had to each grab an arm and walk me slowly down the incline. And if I didn’t feel like enough of a sissy after all that, once I was seated at the water’s edge to put on fins I discovered I no longer had enough slack in my drysuit to bend over far enough to put on my own fins. So someone had to do it for me.

The nice people help me into the water:

So I was an awkward, helpless klutz – but at least I wasn’t terrified out my mind this time around. Let’s say we call that progress.

There wasn’t nearly as much trash this year as the last time we went. I guess 25 years of educating the public and cleaning out the harbor has finally started to have an effect. We picked up a few pieces of bottles, a brass fitting from some bit of boat plumbing, and one side of a metal window frame with shards of glass still attached. That was a bit unnerving to swim around with; I kept worrying that I’d accidentally whack Jeff in the face with it or something.

Don’t mess with me:

We skipped the raffle and award ceremony in favor of lunch, followed by a second dive at Casino Point. This time we got to use my beloved stairs – but it was low tide. LOW, low tide. The stairs ended well short of deep water, so there was boulder-scrambling involved again. I took it slowly, and made it over the rocks without incident, largely because there was zero surf. When the waves are rolling in, you have to worry about where you put your feet – you don’t want to get your foot wedged in a crack and then get knocked over sideways!

We had an uneventful but pleasant dive around the park, and I even found some more trash. First I discovered an empty beer can (and posed for pictures “drinking” from it). By the next time Jeff glanced back at me, I had picked up someone’s mesh bag that must have blown off the point into the water.

Casino Point is always popular with classes and with new divers, which can get a bit awkward if you wind up in the middle of them (or stuck behind them on the steps). On this dive, we were treated to the sight of a new diver literally WALKING on the bottom, kicking up gobs of sand behind him and no doubt smooshing a few sea cucumbers. I’m sure he wasn’t in a class, because no instructor would let a diver get away with that!

We had a few hours left on the island after our dive, so we hung out with some of our Sole Searchers buddies and treated ourselves to ice cream. Lars and Ceci had their baby Max along (only Lars was diving), and I have to say: it is SCARY how well-behaved and cheerful that kid is. I’d say my odds of ever giving birth to such an accommodating creature are pretty much nil, unless we can somehow remove all my DNA and leave only Jeff’s. He was probably a perfect baby.

All in all, we had a great day – but I find myself wishing there’ll be more exciting trash to pick up next year!

More pics are here.

I just added a movie with lots of sea lions to the Underwater Videos page.

Just a quick heads-up for those who are interested; you can now get Quicktime videos of my underwater movies here:

www.thelaitys.com/uwvideo.html

After two long months with no diving, Jeff and I were itching to get back in the water. We picked a free weekend at random and called up the Spectre in Ventura, a favorite boat of ours for the short ride (little over an hour to Anacapa), the good food, and the hot tub. Unfortunately we don’t enjoy the hot tub like we used to; now that we’re dry suit divers, I don’t usually even have a bathing suit with me. But the food was still good, and the dive site selection was outstanding as always.

Our first stop was at Underwater Island, around the backside of Anacapa. It’s basically exactly what the name says: a big rocky hill with plenty of walls and drop-offs all around, and a crevice-filled plateau up top. We plopped into the water and discovered zero current and 40 foot visibility; excellent conditions for this site.

I was unpleasantly surprised at what a difference two dry months made in my comfort level. (And also what a difference 5 Christmas ponds made to getting in and out of my drysuit – ouch!) I spent most of the first dive just remembering how to deal with my drysuit and my video camera. I finally just gave up on getting any decent footage and enjoyed the view: lots of fish, plenty of spanish shawls all over the place, and a couple of fighting lingcod near the end of my dive added a little bit of excitement.

Dive number two was near Underwater Arch. Incidentally, Jeff and I have never actually found the arch for which this site was named – we tend to get distracted en route. This time we didn’t even try to find the arch, thanks to the swarms of sea lions in the neighborhood. The captain turned on the underwater recall for a few minutes prior to opening the gates, and the noise attracted dozens of sea lions eager for some diver company. By the time we hit the water, we were totally surrounded.

We spent 40 minutes pretty much camped out on the sand, occasionally wandering off if we followed a particularly interesting batch of pinnipeds. Other divers came and went from our field of view, and we often found ourselves totally alone in the middle of a sandy plain, in what would have been the world’s most boring dive if not for being surrounded by 30 sea lions at play.

And there was no shortage of play! Sea lions nipped and nuzzled at each other, scrounged in the sand for food or toys, picked up rocks or kelp bulbs in their mouths to chew on and eventually spit out, stuck their noses in the cameras, nibbled on strobes, blew bubbles in mimicry of divers, and generally kept us (and themselves) entertained. We were sorry to leave!

Our last dive was a mostly unremarkable cruise around the rocky reefs of Cathedral Cove. I say “mostly” because I was hugely entertained by an enormous lobster that was out and about. I’ve never seen a lobster crawling around outside of its hole in broad daylight, but here on the “no-take” side of the island, I guess he’d grown old and bold. I chased him around with my video camera as he trundled across rocks, over sand, and through schools of fish. Halfway through his journey, he suddenly got annoyed at all the fish and started jumping at them – and then squirting away if they fought back.

Of course, as I followed Mr. Lobster, I managed to lose Mr. Photographer (my husband and buddy) off in the murk behind me. By the time he caught up, a class of students had descended on the sand in front of the monster lobster and scared it off, so he missed all the excitement. But at least he found his buddy… We have this problem more and more often since I got my video rig; it’s probably time we bought ourselves some pony bottles and quit even pretending to pay attention to each other!

After three dives, we were wiped out and getting pretty chilly. Yes, we felt like big sissies – I mean, we were in drysuits! How did we ever do four dives in a day wearing WETSUITS? (Well, we didn’t; at least, not in the winter months.) We decided to go easy on ourselves and do dive #4 down in the bunk room.

More pictures are posted here.

We couldn’t have picked a better weekend to dive the Northern Channel Islands. The weather was sunny and beautiful, the swell cooperated, the sea lions were in a playful mood, and we had a great bunch of people signed up for the limited load trip on the Vision. 14 out of the 21 divers were with Ken Ashman of California Digital Diving, and of those, 6 of us were from the Sole Searchers dive club. The Vision, an enormous boat to start with, normally takes 40 divers. For about an extra $100 apiece, we got so much room to spread out as to make it completely worth it; empty bunks to store extra bags, two galley tables devoted entirely to camera rigs, and plenty of room on the dive deck for everyone to gear up.

Basically, we were on the ideal dive trip.

Sunday dawned flat and beautiful at San Miguel, the channel island farthest to the west and most susceptible to high swell and rough weather. We knew it was going to be an outstanding trip when we heard the first dive site was at Wilson’s Rock, a favorite of ours from previous trips, and a tricky site to dive unless conditions are perfect. As the boat slowed down and approached the dive site, sea lions started leaping out of the water to greet us, as if to ask why on earth we were taking so long to come amuse them.

Visibility at most sites we hit was anywhere from decent to outstanding, and there was little or no current. There actually was some surface swell, but extremely long-wavelength, making it easy to get in and out of the boat – but creating some pretty deep surge, which made the photographers’ jobs harder.

Still, we really can’t complain. We got dives in at some of the most amazing and hard-to-reach sites around San Miguel. On Sunday we hung out at Wilson’s before moving over to Castle Rock, where I spotted our first ever wolf eel.

My wolf eel!

Monday morning we headed out to Richardson’s Rock, a pinnacle that comes up to about 30 feet, with most of the dive site around 60. The top layer of water was a bit murky, but as we descended down the anchor line the entire dive site suddenly popped into view. We could see the entire topography of Richardson’s clearly; a wide plateau of rock with craters and crevices carving out most of its inside. Every surface was crawling with decorator crabs and anemones; we even saw one crab dragging away an octopus for lunch. There were strangely no fish in sight, but their absence was soon explained when a dozen sea lions popped into view, searching for breakfast. Instead, they found their second-favorite thing: divers! We did two dives at Richardson’s, and the sea lions performed on both, twirling around and blowing bubbles in imitation of the divers.

This really shows off the psychotic side of sea lions:

In fact, we saw sea lions on 9 of the 10 dives we did at San Miguel, including a night dive (it’s a bit alarming to have a sea lion pop up in front of your face in the dark). In between dives, they amused us with antics on the surface, jumping and splashing as if it was all choreographed, until anyone tried to get some video or a photo. Then they became suddenly camera-shy.

That wasn’t the case underwater at all. On our last dive at San Miguel, Jeff and I attracted the attention of a young sea lion towards the end of our dive, as we puttered around in 30 feet of water. This guy couldn’t get enough of us, dipping down to stare and blow bubbles, and coming closer and closer. He bumped his nose into the glass front of my video housing, and poked at my video lights. Then he went to check out Jeff’s camera rig, mouthing Jeff’s strobes as if to see if they were edible (he didn’t actually bite down, so no harm was done). I was laughing so hard my video is unwatchable from all the shaking – doh!

On Monday night, I opted out of the night dive (it would have been dive #6 that day, and I’d attempted a night dive the previous night only to be disappointed by lousy vis and terrible surge). Jeff buddied up with Carol and Ray, and I joined the other holdouts on deck to keep an eye out for returning divers. We were about a half mile off the coast of Santa Rosa, but every time the waves crashed into the rocks there you could see the glow of bioluminescence. Sometimes you’d see a flash in the water closer to the boat as some large fish made a fast move. Every now and then, the divers would aim their lights in the right direction, and the water would light up in a halo around their location. It was a pretty surreal way to spend an evening, and beautiful.

Random prettiness:

Tuesday, we stayed at Santa Rosa in the morning, visiting some of the pinnacles off shore to the east. The boat metered some reef structure they hadn’t dived before a bit to the west, and we headed back that way to check it out and see if it was a decent dive site. It turned out to be pretty cool; a rock plataeu in about 60 feet of water, dropping off to about 80 feet with a ledge-like overhang that you could poke around under in search of critters. I imagine they’ll visit it again.

Our last dives of the trip were over at Santa Cruz, an island we sometimes visit on the Spectre – but not usually the west end. At first it looked like a fairly mediocre dive site; shallow, so-so visibility, and lots of the ubiquitous surge. But near the end of our last dive, it suddenly turned into one of those nifty, memorable dives when I spotted a Hilton’s Aeolid on a little wall. We’d only ever seen one of these guys before, and they’re one of my favorite nudis. Then I spotted another. And two more after that. There was a whole village of Hiltons! Of course, Jeff didn’t have the macro lens on. After we tore ourselves away from Nudi Central, I found myself accosted by a very curious sheephead. Now, these guys are popular food for spearfishermen, and tend to be at least a little skittish. Not so this dude: he kept drifting right up into my mask as if he wanted to come inside.

Checking out his reflection?

In some ways, I wished it was a longer trip – I didn’t want to stop diving! On the other hand, three days is about all my body can take, at least when I’m cramming in 5 dives a day. I loved diving San Miguel in a dry suit (water in the low 50s, so it made a HUGE difference), but there were a few drawbacks. Less neoprene padding means it’s more painful to hit the water in a giant stride, and WAY more painful to crawl around on the metal swim step on your knees. I have an interesting array of bruises up my shins and knees, and on the last dive I barely managed to haul myself up the swim step stairs.

Even the ride back to Santa Barbara was fun; the captain slowed the boat down so we could all check out a school of grampus, which look like a cross between pilot whales and dolphins.

I hope we don’t wait a whole year before doing one of these trips again; it’s the best way to do California diving. Check out the rest of our underwater and topside pics, and hopefully I’ll have some watchable video snippets soon as well. If you’re really bored, my dive logs are here.

Lots of nice scenery from the boat:

As promised….

My poorly-fitting, super-stylish drysuit:

About halfway poofed-up with air:

Jeff gets in on the poofing fun:

Last night, Jeff and I went to Hollywood Divers for the classroom part of our drysuit class – the highlight of which was actually trying on rental drysuits to use for our checkout dives.

I guess compared to my first wetsuit experience, it went extremely well. My knuckles aren’t bleeding, and I only had to try on three suits instead of five or six. However, there was the same basic problem: all the rental suits are designed for men. Men that are straight up and down, and no curves. By the time you get a suit big enough to go over my more-than-manly hips and thighs, the darn thing is usually sized for a giant.

So while Jeff got to look all hot and sexy in a perfectly-fitted off-the-rack black drysuit (his first try), I wound up with the “Spiderman” suit, a blue and red concoction with several extra feet of fabric hanging around my waist, neck and arms. But still tight across the hips.

Ditto the fleece underwear (a one-piece jumpsuit). Jeff and I both wound up in the same size undies; his fit perfectly, while mine was stretched to the max at my hips and hanging in folds above my waist.

We’ll have to take pictures when we take them diving next week, so you can drool over Jeff in his manly-looking drysuit and mock my clown outfit.

On the up side, the latex neck and wrist seals were oodles more comfy than I imagined; I really barely even felt them. (Insert condom joke here.) On the down side, it is JUST AS HOT inside a sealed drysuit as it is inside a hot, dry wetsuit. Only you’re not allowed to pull on the neck and let water in to cool you off. And the pool portion of the class takes place at an indoor, heated pool. I’m tempted to skip the fleece underwear, but I discovered last night that wearing the drysuit over any bare skin makes for very uncomfortable sweaty-skin/drysuit adhesion, rendering it almost impossible to move around or get back out of the drysuit.

Now the trick will be to avoid the temptation of buying my own custom-fit suit long enough to pay off those credit cards we keep thinking we’ll get down to zero. We always use the “oh, but we’ll really use this ____” excuse to justify big purchases; too bad that doesn’t actually reduce the cost. There’d be no poverty on the planet.