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.

We survived the trip, and even got a few dives in.

I did, however, manage to contract one raging ear infection that is currently trying to burrow through my brain. At least, that’s what it feels like.

When the pain stops long enough for me to think straight, I will post a trip report. With pictures! I promise!

In the meantime, go see Jeff’s pick of gallery-worthy photos from the weekend here:

http://gallery.thelaitys.com/v/underwater/uw-20061208_conception

Well, fuck.

This weekend (Fri-Sun) we’re supposed to be on a boat to San Miguel with a bunch of California photography nerds.

But look:

In other news, I’ve been noticing a disturbing pattern on the roads the last few days. On my way to work Friday, I wound up behind someone who was noticeably weaving on the freeway, and also appeared quite confused about the use of his/her blinkers. There were several near misses as people hurried to pass and get out of his way. Today on my way in, I was behind ANOTHER weaver on the freeway. Then on surface streets, someone ran a red light right in front of me (luckily I was going slow enough to avoid a head-on collision). Leaning on my horn didn’t even get the driver to glance my way.

I wonder what traffic nightmares await me tomorrow? It’s like the Twelve Days of Evil Christmas.

Today I was sent a link to pictures from the ten-year high school reunion that I missed. Although the pictures mostly made me glad I missed it, I couldn’t resist digging out the senior yearbook when I got back.

And so I bring you… snippets from the notes written in my senior yearbook:

First, the nail-on-the-head crowd:

• “No one can talk about tampons and brest [sic] like we can”
• “Make it so”
• “I will miss you, your incredibly DIFFERENT (with all respect) ways…”

I sense a theme here:

• “I owe you my life, because without your help, I surely would have failed Latin, and my parents would have killed me!”
• “Thanks for all the help you gave me in our years of Latin! You are the Latin Queen!”
• “Thanks so much for helping me study for the AP Latin Exam. I think you saved my butt!”

Worship me:

• “What do you write to the smartest girl you know?”
• “You’re a lovely intelligent young lady.”
• “I look at you and I see beauty that is unfathomable. I’ve always imagined you as the queen fairy sitting inside of a huge rose.” [ed: that’s one huge rose, all right]

A little alarming:

• “Before you know it, we’ll be walking down the aisle together!”
• “I’ll fondly keep our wonderful memories together in the back of my mind: making up cheerleading dances to Paula Abdul, making earring [sic] out of noodles, traveling to a New Kids concert, and many more.
• “Thanks for being my ‘instruction manual'”
• “This year was really fun. Especially the puppy noises.”

And a little lukewarm:

• “I suppose you will do well in college.”
• “Best of luck at Pomona. You SHOULD be at the Fermi lab, but you’re such a great student I’m sure you’ll do well wherever.”

Tell me if you do this: Google people from your past, secretly hoping that you’ll discover they’ve driven over a cliff or self-destructed in some spectacular fashion.

Do you kind of want to blame Google when it turns out they’re alive and well, and pursuing careers that seem to be more than slightly at odds with their moral fibre (or lack thereof)?

This morning, as per usual, I had a hard time getting out of bed.

I slipped in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of Jeff eventually getting out of bed, hopping in the shower, and getting dressed. He poked fun at my laziness (again, as per usual), and I dozed off again when he left the room. The next thing I was aware of was the sound of the front door slamming closed as he left for the day, usually my signal to wake the hell up already.

Then I felt something move by my foot.

I poked at it, sure I’d just imagined it, or the blankets were shifting or something.

It moved again, clearly on its own this time. I LEAPED out of bed (naked) with a yelp, wondering if Jeff had gone too far down the hallway to hear me or if I was going to have to run (naked) after him to get help removing this rat or whatever from our bed.

Then I heard the alarm going off. “What?” Jeff asked sleepily from his side of the bed, where I’d just poked his foot and then jumped up screaming.

Damn. Usually when I dream about getting up and leaving for work, I dream about ME getting up and leaving, not Jeff…

My career as a shell-collector may be short-lived.

I picked up my first cowrie shell at Old Marineland a few weeks ago. It had no visible inhabitant, and when I picked it up a ton of sand came pouring out – so I assumed it was empty.

It was left to bake in the front seat of my car while I went to an afternoon lecture, and when I returned, I noticed a dried-up something sort of sticking out of one end. Definitely not a snail, it mostly resembled a piece of plant. But with tiny legs and a stringy tail-like end. Ew. I was able to pull the thing out and discard it, and the cowrie went into a bleach/water solution to get rid of any, er, remnants. After I described the critter to another shell collector, they pointed out it was most likely a hermit crab. The part of them you don’t normally get to see is kind of like a tail.

Last weekend, I picked up my second cowrie shell – also appearing empty, and dumping out sand. This one didn’t get the benefit of a sun-baking, however; it went straight into the bleach solution for a day. Then I left it on a paper towel to dry.

The next morning, it stank like dead fish. Not good.

I popped it back in the bleach, figuring I could always resort to digging around there with a paper clip or a needle to pull out whatever was inside.

After work today, I took the shell out of its bleach solution – and saw a tiny little claw hanging out. Attached to a tiny little hermit crab.

Largely deteriorated by two days of soaking in bleach.

YUCK.

A small wooden skewer came in handy for prying the little critter out, and the shell went back into the bleach for what is hopefully the last time.

But I don’t think I can stand to kill any more hermit crabs. It’s not so much the actual killing of them, as the having to look at (and touch!) their slimy little dead bodies. Bleah.

I should take every Wednesday off from work and go diving.

If there was a guarantee that every Wednesday would be like last Wednesday, I’d have a serious discusssion with my boss about such an arrangement!

What was originally a girls’ ditch day (Bonnie, Carol and myself) turned into a slightly larger group when we realized there weren’t enough folks signed up for the boat to go out (they need 10). Carol talked Ray into coming along, as well as two other Sole Searchers and a LAUPS member. I got Walt, one of my ADP instructors to join. And somehow another 8 or 10 folks joined up at the last minute, so we wound up with 16 divers; a very comfortable number for this boat (the Magician).

And conditions were stellar! We passed the breakwater at San Pedro, and you couldn’t tell the difference between water outside and inside – totally flat. The sky was clear and sunny, and the seas remained that flat (glassy, reflectively flat) all the way to Catalina, and all day long. We had no wind, very little current, and 50 foot visibility (or more) on all our dives. Amazing!

Bonnie and I buddied up for the day, and dropped down for our first dive at Blue Cavern. There is actually a cavern at 60 feet, but we opted to stay shallower since she hadn’t been diving in a while (and I never need to be convinced to do a shallow, long dive instead of a deep, short one).

It was a beautiful dive site, but we had an interesting little almost-incident. I was diving about 8 or 10 feet below Bonnie on a slope, when my fin got tangled in kelp. Since I’m not terribly agile when diving in a drysuit, I was having a little difficulty untangling myself. Bonnie noticed and started to come towards me to help – but her tank came loose from her BC.

Now, this was just silly. Either one of us could have fixed the other’s problem easily, if we weren’t having our own!

I wound up able to free myself just in time to see Bonnie heading for the surface – whoops. Anyway, no harm done – I held onto her camera while she headed over to the boat’s swim step for a quick fix, and we continued our dive. But what were the odds of us running into trouble at exactly the same moment? Just goes to show, even when you have a buddy, you have to be able to take care of yourself.

The second dive was at Sea Fan Grotto, a favorite site of mine for the walls of gorgonians. Sadly, we went the wrong way and didn’t see the actual grotto for which the site is named, but it was still gorgeous. Best of all, during our safety stop, we discovered a bunch of super-juvenile garibaldi. And they were NOT SHY. I actually got footage of one swimming at my camera again and again; I’ve never seen such friendly baby garibaldis!

Our last dive of the day was at Bird Rock, a fantastic site for walls, big boulder piles and swim-throughs. Bonnie and I had a relaxing dive, marvelling at the huge schools of baitfish that swirled around. This is one of those dives that’s infinitely more impressive with good visibility, which we certainly had today!

As if three beautiful dives weren’t enough, Captain Jerry put a call into Mother Nature and arranged for two blue whales to visit us on the ride home. Seriously. TWO BLUE WHALES, at least as big as the boat (60′). I managed to get video of a few water spouts and a fluke – it was an incredible encounter. Until I post the video, you’ll have to settle for this picture of a piece of whale:

Back at San Pedro harbor, we swung by where the Black Pearl (for Pirates of the Caribbean 3) is berthed for a peek at the pirate ship. Then we pulled into our slip, where Bobby the resident sea lion was hanging out. A fishing boat returned right next to us, and started offering fish to Bobby. They’d hold a big fish out over the rail, and this enormous bull sea lion LAUNCHED himself 3/4 of the way out of the water for it. He made some great noises, too, and showed us his teeth – impressive!

So tell me again why I ever go to work on Wednesdays?

My Saturday began in the pool, with tryouts for the ADP “Outstanding Graduate” award, which comes with a scholarship to the next LA County instructor program (UICC). The award depends on a lot of factors (academics, diving, overall attitude, etc), but the pool tryouts are definitely an important part. Basically, it’s a chance to try your hand at the skills you’ll have to be able to do really well in UICC.

I’m not sure if the tryouts were fun in a sucky way, or if they sucked in a fun way. There’s something about shared suffering that kept it from being actually unpleasant, but some of the tasks were pretty trying. Only seven of us showed up, including Meca – and she didn’t plan on trying for the scholarship, or even doing the scuba portion of the tryouts.

So our Saturday morning went like this:

Swimming Skills

• 400 yard swim in under 10 minutes. This may actually have been my best moment of the day; I came in at 8:08, behind only David (who plays underwater hockey regularly and is an amazing swimmer and freediver).
• 25 yard underwater swim, then carry a 10 pound weight belt up from the deep end. Extra points if you swim up without pushing off the bottom. I wasn’t worried about this once since I’ve been practicing 25 yard underwater swims, but it was harder than I expected. I guess my adrenaline was going because I was nervous about being judged; that’ll suck up your oxygen pretty quick. I was seriously considering giving up and trying again when I finally saw the weight belt 10 feet away. Well, I couldn’t quit then! I made it, with the bonus points.
• 10 minutes treading water, 30 seconds treading water with your arms up in the air. No problem. We passed the time sharing bad jokes. Meca and I discovered that we have the same favorite stupid joke (you know that one with elephants and sheep?) What were the odds?
• 50 yard buddy tow with no swim aids (ie, fins). No problemo.

Skin Skills

• Skin DNR (ditch and recovery) – I’ve discussed this before ad nauseam on this blog. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, especially when you add a 40 foot underwater swim after doffing your gear, and before donning it. I managed the doff plus swim, but the return the swim-plus-don was too much. Oh well; the 40 feet were for extra points, and I was able to do the DNR going straight down. But I think this is where I started to slip in the rankings!

SCUBA Skills

• Buddy breathe combo. Drop down in the deep end with a buddy. One person takes off their mask, the indicates they are out of air. The other person shares their primary regulator, and then the two swim together to the other end of the pool (50 yards), sharing air the whole way. My incredibly powerful, easily-freeflowing regulator makes this a bit of a pain, but the return trip (on my buddy’s regulator) was perfect.
• Bailout. Jump into the deep end holding all your gear (and the air turned off), and put it on underwater. I did this quite well, despite having very little weight on my weight belt, which makes it hard to stay down before you get the tank and BC on. However, I didn’t want any additional weight – and in fact, could have done with a lot less – because of the next skill.
• 300 yard surface snorkel. In full SCUBA gear. With no air in your BC. AND CARRYING A TEN POUND WEIGHT BELT THE WHOLE WAY. This just completely sucked for everyone. My tank is so ridiculously negative that I actually don’t need any additional weights to sink, so the 6 pounds I took for my belt in the bailout really hurt me here! You wind up swimming at a funny 45 degree angle to keep yourself afloat. We all did ok in the deep end of the pool, but 25 yards of the pool are only 3 feet deep. It’s impossible to get in good fin kicks there, so it was a real struggle to stay off the bottom, while keeping my head high enough that no water got in my snorkel. I did a lot more stopping and resting than I should have, and I think this skill hurt me the most. But seriously. IT SUCKED. I know I wasn’t the only one who started to have serious concerns about drowning.

So that was my morning. After lunch with the gang, I drove around with Meca to do a little shopping (small gifts for our team leaders and safety divers). The shopping didn’t take long, but there was quite a bit of driving involved since I also dropped her back off in Santa Monica. She lives just about spitting distance from where I used to work at the promenade, so it was actually kind of cool to see the neighborhood. And I didn’t actually mind the extra drive, as she and I are never short on things to talk about! If I get nothing else out of ADP, I made a great new friend who’s also a good dive buddy.

I made it home in time to wrap presents, shower and throw on clothes and makeup, along with my new cowrie necklace from Marineland.

Then it was off to the banquet, held at a swanky athletic club in downtown LA with banquet facilities.

It’s always weird to see people that you know from diving (hood hair, mucus on their faces, ratty sweatpants) all dressed up and pretty! the girls in particular clean up quite nicely. You can sort of see my cowrie in this picture:

To end any suspense, I didn’t win the scholarship. I’m pretty bummed, actually, even though I agree with the awards that were given out. Meca won Best Academics, and David took Best Watermanship – neither of those were a surprise (except to Meca, who looked genuinely shocked).

I’d suspected that the Outstanding Graduate would come down to Kelly and myself (and it sounds like that was the case). I was genuinely glad when he won, but at the same time, I have to admit I feel a little rejected. Ray reminded me I should be really proud that I was one of the top contenders for Outstanding Graduate, when I began the course afraid to even go in the water when the surf was up. I guess that is pretty impressive.

ADP 2006 Graduates:

Well, I have until January to decide about UICC. In the meantime, I guess I’d better practice my DNRs.

The night dive was a bit more eventful. We stuck with the same group as the afternoon dive, and a similar plan. We entered a bit further to the south, dropped down at about 15fsw, and kicked straight out to 35fsw: Meca and me in the lead, then Sam and Mike, with Kevin following behind. Once we hit 35fsw, we were going to turn north, spread out in a line of four abreast, and sweep for the pilings.

At 35fsw, I signaled Meca it was time to turn. Sam and Mike kept on swimming, and we flashed our lights at them to get their attention. They slowed down and finned over to us – at which point everything got chaotic. Sand got kicked up, we couldn’t get ourselves into position, and the next thing I knew we were at 45 fsw. How’d that happen?

I navigated out of the melee, re-oriented myself, and started kicking. We basically had to abandon the four-abreast idea – by the time we’d reached 35 fsw again, I was pretty sure we’d already missed the pilings, and in all that confusion it was just easier not to worry about it.

This time I knew about the current, and figured we’d have to do at least 400 kick cycles to reach home. The current was even stronger than we remembered, though, and made it hard to swim shallower as well as hard to swim north. We inched our way up to 30fsw, by which time Sam and Mike were at 500psi.

They indicated they were going to go up, and we communicated that it was ok to split into buddy teams. Meca and I would remain under with Kevin.

Mike and Sam headed off, and Kevin told us he wanted to lead the dive (I guess we weren’t getting shallow fast enough). He took off like a shot, while Meca tried to flash a light in front of him to get his attention and ask him to slow down. He finally noticed we girls weren’t hurrying, and let us catch back up.

We reached 20fsw and kept heading north, while Meca kept me apprised of her air situation – 1000 psi, 900, 800. She finally hit 500psi and indicated she wanted to go up. I tried to communicate that we should do at least another minute where we were (I was only halfway through a safety stop), but she again gave me the thumbs up. This is where things got confusing.

To me, thumbs up means UP. I’ve been in a situation before where I really wanted to ascend, and my dive buddy wasn’t ready – it’s not good. I knew Meca was nervous (this was her second night dive, and she’d kept a hand on my arm the whole time), so when she gave me a thumbs-up even after my “stay here 1 minute” suggestion, I decided half a safety stop wasn’t worth freaking out my dive buddy by trying to make her stay put when she was worried. So I gave her a thumbs-up back and got ready to ascend.

We flashed our lights at Kevin, who turned to look at us. We gave him a thumbs-up. The last thing we saw was him flashing his light in our eyes, which I took to mean “you guys are being silly, why not stay down here and finish that safety stop?”

We’d discussed buddy separation procedures before getting in the water. If you get separated, you look around for a minute and then surface, without a safety stop. So we figured he’d be right behind us, and then if he wanted to go back down on his own, fine (although I can’t say I’m a fan of solo night diving).

Well, he didn’t surface.

We waited a few minutes in case he was just safety stopping. And he still didn’t surface. We couldn’t see his light. We were drifting in the current. Meca started to worry that his flashing his light at us had been a signal that he needed help, rather than trying to get us to stay put.

Another group surfaced nearby and we alerted them that we’d lost Kevin. Ray dropped down to do a quick look for him, while Meca and I headed in towards shore. About halfway there, we saw a diver surfacing just behind the surf zone and exiting – probably Kevin, but we couldn’t be sure. Meca headed on in to confirm that it was him, yelled back to me, and I yelled back to the “search party.”

This was all extremely NOT fun in the afore-mentioned surface chop.

Anyway.

Kevin was fine. He didn’t agree with our decision to surface, and didn’t consider himself part of our buddy team, so he just decided to finish out the dive on his own. We had a rather heated discussion about buddy separation, solo diving, when it’s ok to skip safety stops, and how I could have better gotten his attention. Meca should have felt comfortable finishing a safety stop with 500psi. But she didn’t (or else I misunderstood a thumbs-up), so it was OK to go up. We’d done a relatively shallow dive, and a safety stop is just that – it’s not mandatory. I should have made sure Kevin knew what we were doing – he didn’t see my thumbs-up. I should have grabbed him and waited for him to sign back.

But once we headed up, I maintain that Kevin absolutely should have surfaced as well. Solo diving wasn’t part of the plan. If he was really worried about a safety stop, he could have surfaced, told us so, and gone back down for a few minutes – at least then we would have known where he was.

Yeah. That was a fun walk back to the car.

Anyway, it turns out our group actually had one of the LEAST eventful dives! I’ll share one of the other incidents:

Divemaster A was the safety diver for divers 1, 2 and 3. After they descended, Divemaster B decided to join them. In his mind, he was just following and observing; not really part of the team. But as far as A and 1-3 knew, he was officially part of the group. That was problem #1.

Problem #2 was miscommunication. Diver #1 kept going deeper and deeper in search of the pilings, and didn’t realize that it was ok with the Divemaster if he just gave up at certain point. The current didn’t help, and they all wound up around 70fsw, strung out because some were speedier than others.

Problem #3: diver #3 had a sudden freeflow (when air keeps coming out of your regulator). He kept trying to purge it, but it kept freeflowing. He remained calm – but problem #4: he couldn’t get anyone’s attention. He was flashing his light in front of Divemaster B, who was “just observing” – but diver 3 didn’t know that, so he didn’t try to race on to the other divers. After 5 minutes of being ignored, while the freeflow depleted his air supply (it also makes it really hard to see – bubbles everywhere), diver 3 decided to take his chances on a solo ascent. From 70fsw. In the dark. Where there can be boating traffic.

At this point, Divemaster A notices that diver 3 has disappeared. She writes his name on her slate with a question mark and shows it to the two remaining divers. They shrug and look confused. She turns around and shows it to Divemaster B. He misunderstands the question, and writes on his slate: “No, I’m so-and-so.”

I find this hysterically funny, though obviously it wasn’t funny at the time!

So – now they all do an ascent. In the dark, in boat traffic, from 70fsw. Yikes!

Anyway, everyone made it back ok. But it was definitely a lesson in the importance of communication, taking your time, and sticking together.

That, and it TOTALLY SUCKS to dive with more than 2 or 3 people at a time in limited visibility. It was true at Lake Castaic, and it’s true in the dark. Ugh.

It wasn’t the best way to finish off ADP, but at least it was educational. We left Vets around 11, grabbed dinner at a nearby diner, and I finally made it home at 1am. I didn’t even have the energy to shower, much less rinse my gear; I left it to marinate in the trunk of my car and just collapsed in bed.

Then it was up early Sunday for some last-minute cramming before our final (written) exam. Luckily for me, the exam was given at the Glendale YMCA, an easy 5-minute walk. I think all our classes should have been at the Y!