Northwest Dive Club

Agreed! Those scale crabs are cool!

Thanks Lynne, Eric.
Memorial Day weekend was favorable for diving, even if little bit early in the day and rather gray and gloomy above.
On Sunday only two divers, but today it was different story. Lots of divers, few came armed with spearguns to get their Lingcod,
more of us were shooting with cameras

On Sunday there was guy fishing from rocky perch right over the kelp bed, casting into the choppy waters below.
The Kelp greenling I found was not his doing, but the many lost lures tangled on the kelp along with strung out descarted fishing lines attest that he is not alone who is trying to catch fish in that kind of environment... :(



Catching fish,invertebrates and even occasional diver with a camera is always rewarding ...

wrapping up the Memorial Day weekend photo shoot:

Adding a small and transparent critter to my list.

Wow super cool! I love Jellys!

Another first for me - Scalyhead sculpin eggs, guarded by the male inside an empty barnacle shell ...

Signs of the returning disease at Langley Harbor

small school of new fish fry at Keystone:

Snails scavengers on dead Buffalo sculpin

Decorating is part of crab's life. At least there is a lot to choose from

A decorator crab was the catalyst that made me fall in love with Puget Sound diving. On my 4th OW class dive, the instructor picked up a small one and let it crawl on his glove, and then handed it to me. I watched the graceful animal and was amazed . . . I haven't stopped feeling that way in the 10 years I've been diving here, and I still love decorator crabs.

Plankton soup = mostly bad visibility.
For the Red sea cucumbers:
Plankton soup = good eating ...

I love watching them feed. It enlivens low viz dives

So far, all well at Coupeville among the sea stars there ...

Can survive out of water, but so far I found them only underwater.
I never thought of looking for Cockscombs walking along the beach ...

Cool! I've seen lots of gunnels (crescent gunnels) under rocks when tide pooling at Alki Lighthouse. In fact they're so common, it seems there are way more under rocks than you ever see diving!

The statistics from Seattle Times are quite unsettling ...

Hi Jan,

Great post & terrific photos as always!

For those interested, here are some background links:
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new ... get-sound/ (The recent Times article)
http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps_oa/m525p153.pdf (The research paper on which the article is based)
http://www.int-res.com/articles/suppl/m525p153_supp.pdf (Data supplement to the research paper)

Ecologically yours,
Alex

Thank you Alex for providing the links...
So much work went into the study from which I used only a small graphic table.

Monday morning dive at the Pass ...

Time to tend the eggs, the courtship is over, no more black fin displays, no more serenading ...

baby Oregonians entering the world at Keystone Jetty :

So cool, Jan! We Washingtonians need to claim a few sea creature names to play catch up, soon.

Thanks Calvin. Somewhere I read that gooye duck was a candidate

Little color from Keystone rocks: