Sund Rock - 5/11/12 - A New Adventure

Scubie Doo · Post by **Scubie Doo** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:29 am

Sorry for the late trip report, but I had a pretty busy weekend. Penders, Dane, and I wanted to go on a little adventure Friday night. Our goal was to avoid currents and hit a site that we normally do not dive. The choice was Sound Rock. All three of us had been there on several occasions. However, this would be special because we would be doing a dusk and night dive. We had never dove Sund at night.

For the first dive we decided to hit the deep "Fish Pen Wall" at about 100' (http://www.pnwscuba.com/sitemaps/sund.gif). We swam out to the bout and dropped at about 7:15PM. The water on the surface seemed pretty warm 48 degrees. As we looked down, viz looked great. We preceded to descend. At about 15' viz turned to 6" or so. I knew it was about 6" because I could not see my dive computer. I could not even make out a large orange anemone that I almost ran into. After about 20 seconds, I decided to ascend to find Mike and Dane. To my surprise their bubbles were about 3 feet away, that's how bad the viz was. They surfaced and we decided to swim out deeper in the hopes that things would open up. We defended the 2nd time and at about 35-40' things opened up to about 15'-20' of viz. We proceed to the deep wall and found it right away. We had never been to that wall. There was tons of life there. Mostly nudibranchs, squat lobsters, and rockfish (see pics). We headed to the south wall and conducted our safety stop in zero viz. The water down below the crud was about 43 degrees and felt considerably colder. Our max depth on this dive was 89' and we were down for about 56 minutes.

After an hour 20 minute SI, we decided to conduct the same type of dive to the deep center wall. This time we hit about 95' and were down for 48 minutes before we got cold. On the second dive we found a playful wolf eel and stuck its head out for a few pictures (which Mike got) and a bed of Red Flabellina's (or Red-Gilled Nudis). The bed of nudibranchs was beautiful, there were dozens of them perched up on twigs. If you are a fan of nudis, this was a great dive. We also saw a couple Vermilion Rockfish. When all was said and done we wrapped up the night at about 11:30PM and headed back to Puyallup. My head hit the pillow about 1:00am and my alarm went off at 8:30am to go surfing at Westport :-)

If you have never done a Sound Rock night dive, it is worth the adventure! Have a good week ya'll!

Tom Nic · Post by **Tom Nic** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:26 am

The Flabellina triophina are definitely blooming in the Hood right now. There were more of them than I have ever seen at Jorstad Creek - a huge bloom between 50fsw and the top of the deep wall.

Night dives at Sund are cool!

Of course with the layer of crud any dive in Hood Canal below 20fsw or so is a night dive.

Scubie Doo · Post by **Scubie Doo** » Mon May 14, 2012 7:02 pm

Yeah Tom, it was dark on the first dive. There was a little ambient light. Diving at night there was pretty cool though. Sure makes for a late night.

You going diving this Thursday?

Dusty2 · Post by **Dusty2** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:07 pm

Great photos Jesse, The white strands are a paraeites eggs and are very comon on those nudies. The parasite lives inside the nudie but extrudes it's eggs outside so they can find new hosts when they hatch.

doublesunder · Post by **doublesunder** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:12 pm

Great post and pics, Sund Rock is always a fun dive. I dont remember being to that wall at 160' on your map, has anyone been out there ? The 160' ish wall I have been to there, wasn't in that location.

Scubie Doo · Post by **Scubie Doo** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:18 pm

doublesunder wrote:Great post and pics, Sund Rock is always a fun dive. I dont remember being to that wall at 160' on your map, has anyone been out there ? The 160' ish wall I have been to there, wasn't in that location.

We went to the fish pen wall at 100'. I have never been to the one at 160'. I pulled the map from pnwscuba's website. I posted the URL, it has a ton of great maps and write-ups.

Tom Nic · Post by **Tom Nic** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:29 pm

Scubie Doo wrote:Yeah Tom, it was dark on the first dive. There was a little ambient light. Diving at night there was pretty cool though. Sure makes for a late night.

You going diving this Thursday?

No Thursday for me this week, but will be hitting Jorstad on Friday.

Scubie Doo · Post by **Scubie Doo** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:46 pm

Tom Nic wrote:
Scubie Doo wrote:Yeah Tom, it was dark on the first dive. There was a little ambient light. Diving at night there was pretty cool though. Sure makes for a late night.

You going diving this Thursday?
No Thursday for me this week, but will be hitting Jorstad on Friday.

Okay, look forward to the report. Have fun out there.

Northwest Dive Club