Netarts Night Dive and BBQ 4/18

[-Aaron-]

Is anyone else planning on going to the Newport Dive Club / South Beach Scuba night dive and BBQ at Netarts Bay this Saturday (4/18)? I am going to drive up from Corvallis and check it out. I haven't had a chance to dive there before, so I'm excited about checking out a new dive site. Also, if anyone is interested in doing an afternoon dive before the BBQ I'd love to come along. Seems a shame to drive all that way and only get one dive in :P.

[selkie]

Last weekend when I was in Newport, South Beach Scuba was asking for RSVPs on the Netarts dive. They want to know how much to bring for the grill. I would love to go but I have other obligations this weekend. Have a fun dive. I am looking forward to the trip report.

[-Aaron-]

Thanks for the heads up Selkie. I dropped them an email yesterday and let them know I was planning on coming.

The weather is looking nice for tomorrow. I will put up a report on the dive when I get back for sure

[Jeauxjo]

How was the Diving?

[no excuses]

How was the Diving?

X2

[-Aaron-]

Sorry about the wait, I didn't get home until late last night and I was out of the house today.

The BBQ and Dive was a great success. Big thanks to Scott and Wendy from South Beach Scuba (http://southbeachscubaonline.com) for putting on the event and providing the bulk of the food. We couldn't have asked for a better day to have a BBQ on the coast, the temperature was in the 60s and it was blue skies all day. There was a bit of a wind blowing, but it was a beautiful Oregon coast day. It was my first dive with the group, so I had to embarrass myself walking up to random people in the parking lot and asking them if they were scuba divers :P. After a few confused looks I came across the group from the club. Scott was nice enough to bring some rental tanks up for me from the shop, so I was all set to go. The planned dive was for 9:00 PM at slack tide, however I had two tanks brought up in the hopes we would have some people that wanted to get in two dives.

Sure enough we had a group that wanted to jump right in the water, so us four walked over to the south of the boat launch and dropped in for a dive on the rocky shoreline of the jetty. Initially the visibility was pretty murky, probably about 5 feet as we started our decent, but as we moved down the wall things opened up a bit and visibility improved to about 10 feet. With the rocky structure of the bottom and variety of small life, the low visibility wasn't too much of a problem. As we entered we had a gentle current pulling us to the south. This allowed me to hover perpendicular to the wall and just let the current slowly carry me to new sights. It was kind of like riding one of those moving walkways at the airport, just a little extra boost to your movement.

I don't have a camera, so my descriptions of what I saw will have to tide you over. The rocks on the jetty are thick with a variety of life. There is a lack of Plumose Anemones so common in the Puget Sound, but there is an amazing variety of sponges and other small filter feeders. I came across a thick covering of Bread Crumb and Encrusting Sponges on many of the rocks and I saw several scallops and crabs that had their shells colonized. It was hard to tell if the decorator crabs had chosen to cover themselves or if the sponges had decided to co-op their shells for an anchor point. Either way the had near perfect camouflage, looking like a rooted piece of sponge, until they decided to break cover and scurry away. There were also several different types of small fingered sponges. I discovered some very interesting red growths with a firm somewhat lobed surface, I think they may have been Red Ascidians, but I can't really be sure. One of the most interesting encrusting creatures were very thick colonies of Zoanthids. There were very small pale anemones that would chose a large boulder and then create a coating completely covering every inch of it. The colonies were very common and each one you would find would make the boulder look like a giant fluffy dandelion head.

Kelp, Decorator, Dungeness, and Red Rock Crabs were plentiful. We came across several White Dorids mixed among the rocks and quite a few Red Flabellia resting on pieces of Kelp. There were also a variety of very large sea cucumbers and starfish. Most of the fish we came across were Sculpins with a few juvenile Kelp Greenlings and perch mixed in. Since we had been drifting with the current I called our turn point a bit early to give us plenty of time to work our way back. To my surprise a few minutes after we turned around the current shifted and we were treated to a gentle ride back the way we came. I motioned us to the surface where I thought we had started and ended up within a few feet of our entry point, plus points for navigation . Since the boat traffic had subsided we decided to skip the rocky exit and dive the last shallow bit around the point to the boat launch.

Perfect timing, we got out of the water just as the BBQ was starting up. I prepped my gear for the night dive and dug in to some delicious food. There were ten of us there total, but we had enough food for many more. We had burgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken, pasta salad, chips, and drinks, plus for desert we had a delicious strawberry shortcake and some great home-made coconut topped cake. Once again thanks go out to Scott and Wendy from South Beach Scuba and everyone who brought food. Warm food after a cold dive really hit the spot. On a side note, last weekend I saw someone at Sund Rock with a very cool tall X folding table that was perfect for gearing up on, unfortunately I never found out the name of the product. Scott had two of them and let me know they were "Husky X-Workhorse" tables from Home Depot for 40 bucks. We will definitely be picking up a few in the future. Also, Scott builds his own canister lights and he offered to let me try out a spare one he had for the night dive.

We hit the water for the second dive right at 9:00 PM and were rewarded with a calm slack tide with no currents. We entered at the boat launch and after a very murky pass through the shallow eel grass where I could barely see my hand in front of my face we crossed over to the rocks and the 10 foot visibility felt like infinity. The canister light was a welcome addition and it gave me a broad and intense beam of light that really cut through the darkness. We dove a similar path to our daytime dive moving out along the jetty wall to the south. The fish were out in much greater abundance at night and we saw a large variety of Greenlings, Perch, and Sculpins nestled in the rock crevices and drifting out in the open. There were also several small eel-like fish that may have been Warbonnets or some similar specie. Darting through our lights were small and slender translucent fish, that were completely see through except for the skull and stomach. We also came across several thumbnail sized translucent Flounder, it was fascinating to watch them wriggle through the water. On the nudibranch side we came across a large White-Lined Dirona, the first I have seen since I started diving again. We encountered several more Red Flabellina including a few there were less than a centimeter long and the highlight of the dive for me, we saw the largest Sea Lemon I have ever encountered, it was at nearly a foot in length. We were down for a little over an hour at a mostly constant depth of 25 feet.

Overall I had a great time. I got a chance to meet a really nice group of people, have a delicious BBQ, and do two dives in a new location. Once I got in to the "macro mindset" I could see that Netarts Bay is a really cool dive site with a great variety of colorful life. Next time I go back I would like to check out the "outer" wall of the boat launch jetty. Driving along the coast road north of the bay on the way in I got an amazing view of Three Arch Rocks and it brought back memories of the boat dive I did there years ago. To this day it is one of the best dives I have done and I hope to get out there again someday. At the end of the night I asked Scott about dive charters for the Oregon coast. He said that they would love to start operating some charters through South Beach Scuba, but right now he is very busy with starting up the new shop and training his dive masters. Down the road it looks like it is something that is very much in the plans, I told him to keep me posted as I know we have a lot of people interested in boat diving the Oregon coast. Scott said the next dive they have planned is a clean up dive for Devil's Lake outside Lincoln City, so if you are in the area and want to help out, or are just looking for a nice shop to support, swing by South Beach Scuba and say hello.

[spatman]

great write-up, aaron! thanks for all the awesome details. i'll definitely be checking out the shop and netarts sometime soon!

[FlyinV]

Great write up!
I hope to check out Netarts someday this summer.
I wanted to go to the BBQ and dive but it conflicted with a photo class dive.

[selkie]

Great write up, the whole thing sounds like a rousing success.

[no excuses]

another great write up, sounds like you had a good time

[-Aaron-]

Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback .

If anyone is planning Oregon dives in the future please keep the board updated and I will do the same. I got an email from a Portland dive shop that said they were doing a chartered spear fishing dive trip out of Garibaldi. I don't spear fish, but interesting to know that there are some dive charters running in Oregon. Has anyone heard of or dove with Andrea K. Charters? They have a website but it seems to be having some issues.

[selkie]

Thunder Reef in Vancouver has used Andrea K. Charters in the past. You can call Thunder Reef and talk to Nicki. I think she can tell you about Andrea K. Charters.

Thunder Reef 360-573-8507

[Diver Doug]

Linda Sue charters out of Garibaldi, does dive trips with one of the Portland shops also. They go spear fishing at Cape Lookout. In the summer they would go once a month. Just call the charter and ask.
Doug

[Biodiversity_Guy]

What an excellent and detailed write-up. Great reading of the current tables! Drifting out and then back. Can't ask for more.

And very fun species descriptions. Makes me want to plan a trip down there!

Thank you for taking the time to post this!