My dive buddy from Sunday emailed me a few of the pics he took. I figure some of you might be amused by my favorite position....
Dave (dscuba) and I, after a flurry of PM's, ended up getting together down at Mukilteo yesterday. The ferry ride was beautiful, with lovely sunset colors to look at, but it made me sad that fall is upon us, and is getting dark sooner. Nonetheless, Look at how nice it was at Mukilteo yesterday!
I guess we were there not long after another set of divers, since there were two trails of wet footprints in the parking lot. What time were you here, Calvin? Those might have been yours.
So we get in the water, and I try to find the geodome in the dark. Aside from being distracted by pretty fishies, I wound up being pretty sure it was "over there somewhere". Luckily, my buddy is a mind-reader, and was able to take us there. Whoever works on the Geodome did a good job of fixing it! I was expecting it to yet be in pieces, but aside from one buckled beam, it looked pretty complete to me. While checking to see if the wolf eel was home (no), a curious visitor wandered by. This little guy ended up following us around for a surprising amount of time.
This dive really turned out to be Night of the Sailfin Sculpins. Everywhere we looked there were more of them. After the dive, Dave said he wasn't sure whether to even both pointing them out anymore. They ranged from a weeee itty bitty one, to a bigass 12 or 14 incher who hid from us in the pipe.
I was pretty tickled with this fish. It's been my experience the the sailfins tend to head away from me, but apparently I was not very scary, or he was lots more curious. We played peekaboo around a rock for a little bit, then he ended up approaching me!
While taking pictures of a tiny sailfin and this crab, Dave swam over and hit me on the arm to get my attention. Err, wait, that was my left arm and last I saw, he was on my right. Not to mention, why didn't he use his 5000megakilojuleswatted sunimitator to get my attention? I looked up and sure enough, there was Dave ahead of me on the right, about ten feet away. gulp. What hit me??
Then whatever it was left me, and I saw it swim across and bite at Dave's legs, tap tap tap, before vanishing into the night like a Silver Bullet. The only visual I got was a silver streak, probably about 15 inches long, who swam like a speed demon.
We found a few nudibranchs, white-lined dirona free-swimming, and, uhm, a slug creature which has a long name...
With my ever-increasing artistic aspirations, I've decided to call this, Composition in Green. :queenliz:
And finally.. Nudist Crabs!!
Mukilteo was lovely tonight. There was a little more current than usual but nothing extreme. This is the first time I've encounted a visible thermocline here, and it's amazing how much difference two degrees makes to one's face! I came up into the warmer water, then headed back into the cold to take a picture, and my whole body was crying out against the loss of warmth
Thanks, Dave, for such a great dive!
The student was ready.
it's nice to have low expectations, sometimes - lcf
I said keep going, not start whining -airsix
