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Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 7:40 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2020 9:18 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:09 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2020 7:04 am
by Jan K
It has been over six months since I dived Holmes Harbor as with every dive there offered less and less opportunities to see marine life. Years ago, there was always something to see, but lately even the the hermit crabs and sea slugs vanished and my desire to swim a long way out to deeper water and rather poor visibility overall made me seek other Whidbey locations instead. Then I heard from my fellow Whidbey divers Joe and Tabitha that they found Sunflower stars there. So on Sunday I geared up and made the swim to the moored sailboat, descended through murky water down to the sandy bottom and indeed, there they were, juvenile Pycnopodia, using the concrete mooring block as they home. Welcome sight indeed. Here in twenty six feet, the visibility improved to about twelve feet, but as I swim back towards shore, it becomes a miso soup again, down to five feet visibility. And here I come across more of the juvenile Sunflower stars. I spent more time searching around and find few more. So maybe, just maybe, there are more of them around the area.
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:05 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2020 9:43 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:39 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2020 9:32 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:28 am
by Jan K
correction:
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 6:42 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2020 7:46 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:19 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:18 pm
by Gdog
I love the naming of those anenomes, fitting! Great shots!
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri May 01, 2020 6:33 am
by Scubak
Wow! Those MoonGlow are very interesting. Not sure if I have ever seen them. Thanks for sharing.
Kirsten
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri May 01, 2020 10:27 am
by oldsalt
Jan: I really admire your ability to find interesting things in what many of us would consider ho-hum dive sites, such as Holmes Harbor or the Driftwood ponds. I've heard that an intelligent man is never bored. -Curt
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat May 02, 2020 8:11 am
by Jan K
Thank you guys for your kind words
Looking at the two flooded gravel pits along the highway near Keystone, their shores littered with driftwood piled up there by the storm in December 2018, one could easily dismiss them as just another place for water birds to land and rest. Being very shallow, with muddy bottom, slimy algae lining its shores, it certainly doesn't present itself as a desirable place to dive. But they present slightly different picture below the surface. In spite of being so close to each other, they are quite different. Before the storm deposited all that driftwood, lot of it waterlogged littering the bottom, there were Cockscomb fish in one of them, but none in the other. Also one used to have clusters of Dead Man's Finger algae, the other had none. This pattern of diversity persists to this day. Cockscomb fish are gone, but small jellies and Japanese wireweed now demonstrate the curious phenomena of two worlds separated by few dozen feet and yet so different. And the dead zone in one pond has closer resemblance to Angelita Cenote in Yucatan, Mexico than anything in the neighboring pond ...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun May 03, 2020 9:50 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue May 05, 2020 7:09 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 4:33 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Fri May 08, 2020 6:29 am
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 1:10 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 2:19 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sat May 16, 2020 10:05 pm
by Jan K
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Sun May 17, 2020 4:53 pm
by Jan K
In case you wonder what are the almost transparent pieces drifting by in the current on your dive - they are exoskeletons casted off by barnacles...
Re: Whidbey Island Critters
Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 7:35 am
by Jan K