Northwest Dive Club

Drove up to Pt Townsend yesterday with Lynne and Peter, and met my friend Mark up there. We had one lovely dive, in excellent vis and building current. This is turning into one of my favorite dive sites ... and yesterday was a great dive. And we had the whole reef to ourselves.

Anyway ... some pictures ...

The nudis were busy making newdies ...





... lots of different types of crabs, including a butterfly crab that Lynne tried desperately to point out to me, and I completely missed anyway. But here's some I did manage to take pics of ...







... and then there were the sculpins ...





Overall a great dive ... can't wait to go back ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Nice! No Dusty?!? Shocking!

I love those big, fat, frog-faced male Scaleyheads.

And very cool pose on the Grunt 'swinging' from the sea vine!

Yes it's a nice dive site because you can always find something interesting to see either at the Barge or shallower in the eel grass bed. It can be a reef or muck dive. There are other sites in Port Townsend that I would like to explore: the pilings and artificial reef at Fort Warden Science Center and the Point Wilson Reef but I would rather do the latter from a boat.

It was a great dive -- I have yet to have a dive there that was unsatisfying.

One of the things that fascinated me on this one can be seen in the first of Bob's crab photographs. There were entire large boulders thickly coated with nudibranch eggs -- big, thick ribbons of white eggs, the kind I normally associated with clowns or the larger dorids -- but I did not see any nudibranchs that looked like they could have been the source of them. There were quite a few of the barnacle-eating nudis, but I believe their eggs are more of the lacy spirals. Does anybody know whose eggs the ones in Bob's picture are?

LCF wrote:It was a great dive -- I have yet to have a dive there that was unsatisfying.

One of the things that fascinated me on this one can be seen in the first of Bob's crab photographs. There were entire large boulders thickly coated with nudibranch eggs -- big, thick ribbons of white eggs, the kind I normally associated with clowns or the larger dorids -- but I did not see any nudibranchs that looked like they could have been the source of them. There were quite a few of the barnacle-eating nudis, but I believe their eggs are more of the lacy spirals. Does anybody know whose eggs the ones in Bob's picture are?

It looks like that barnacle nudibranchs have laied those eggs. Here is a picture of the same ribbons of white eggs that covers the wreck of the Ranger in Port Townsend:

Lynn, Those were indeed barnacle eating nudibranch eggs. If you'll notice they are made up of hundreds of little rosettes. Each one is the contribution one one nudibranch. They are huge because literally hundreds of them contribute to these huge masses. It's a survival strategy and it must work because there are literally thousands of the nudies at PT now. That crab was getting his share but they lay so many the predators can't make a dent. There numbers have skyrocketed over the last few years. They used to be a fairly rare sighting until the pulled the pier at Fort Flagler which is were we used to go to see them.

Tubesnout23 wrote:Yes it's a nice dive site because you can always find something interesting to see either at the Barge or shallower in the eel grass bed. It can be a reef or muck dive. There are other sites in Port Townsend that I would like to explore: the pilings and artificial reef at Fort Warden Science Center and the Point Wilson Reef but I would rather do the latter from a boat.

I liked Fort Worden better that PT. Go dive under the marine center, its awesome.

Grateful Diver wrote:Drove up to Pt Townsend yesterday with Lynne and Peter, and met my friend Mark up there. We had one lovely dive, in excellent vis and building current. This is turning into one of my favorite dive sites ... and yesterday was a great dive. And we had the whole reef to ourselves.

The nudis were busy making newdies ...

... lots of different types of crabs, including a butterfly crab that Lynne tried desperately to point out to me, and I completely missed anyway. But here's some I did manage to take pics of ...

Overall a great dive ... can't wait to go back ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

And you didn't even tell me.

Don't worry Dusty ... now that you've got me hooked on this site, I'm planning on getting up there with some regularity.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I love it when a good plan comes together

What was the viz yesterday and what time did you dive? Was that Marl Peel you met?

Dusty2 wrote:I love it when a good plan comes together

What was the viz yesterday and what time did you dive? Was that Marl Peel you met?

We splashed around 10. Vis was great ... easily 25-30 feet.

Marl Peel?

Dunno ... but after the dive we found a cafe that makes a wonderful carnitas burrito. Don't remember the name of the place, but we'll be going there again too ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

What was the location was it down by the ferry terminal?

Owl Spirit Cafe. The pork carnitas burrito was FABULOUS, although ridiculously huge.

Interesting that those are, in fact, Onchidoris eggs. I remember a year or so ago in Monterey, they had a huge infestation of small white barnacles that grew all over everything -- and shortly thereafter, they had an explosion of Onchidoris nudis. But I don't remember whole rocks covered in eggs like this. It was very good to see, and I wish Bob had taken a photo of the decorator crab who had covered himself with the eggs.

LCF wrote:Owl Spirit Cafe. The pork carnitas burrito was FABULOUS, although ridiculously huge.

Interesting that those are, in fact, Onchidoris eggs. I remember a year or so ago in Monterey, they had a huge infestation of small white barnacles that grew all over everything -- and shortly thereafter, they had an explosion of Onchidoris nudis. But I don't remember whole rocks covered in eggs like this. It was very good to see, and I wish Bob had taken a photo of the decorator crab who had covered himself with the eggs.

I have read somewhere that they lay eggs while eating barnacles...It sounds something out of an Italian-French movie titled La Grande Abbuffata (La Grande Bouffe in French and The Grande Bouffe in English) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Bouffe)

Port Townsend is not just a good place to go diving but also to warm up and eat decent food in the various cafes and restaurants. I like Better Living Through Coffee because it has a view over the water, organic food and it is affordable !

Don't go to PT looking for fancy dinning or fast food restaurants. Most of the places are small and pretty folksy and strangely don't look for a teriyaki joint either which seems very un Washingtonian! The only 2 chain restaurants are McDonald's and subway. The town still has a rather large hippie population so places with vegan and organic foods are available.

Clearwater Cafe was really nice.

Jeff Pack wrote:

Tubesnout23 wrote:Yes it's a nice dive site because you can always find something interesting to see either at the Barge or shallower in the eel grass bed. It can be a reef or muck dive. There are other sites in Port Townsend that I would like to explore: the pilings and artificial reef at Fort Warden Science Center and the Point Wilson Reef but I would rather do the latter from a boat.

I liked Fort Worden better that PT. Go dive under the marine center, its awesome.

I also highly recommend FW. I've seen everything from baby lumpies to silverspotted sculpins to huge GPOs there - it's a highly underrated site! Point Wilson you definitely need to plan out carefully, and dive from a live boat. Even a few inches of exchange is huge at that point I've heard. I always wanted to drift Point Wilson to the marine center too...but that was way more planning than I could handle at the time!

No lumpies though, Bob? Or warbonnets? I always had good luck with those at Hudson!

Lumpies are rare but warbonnets are all over down there and tons of grunts also.

With 30 foot viz I'd have been out looking for my Candy stripes

Well, they didn't call me "lumpsucker" at the shop for nothing :P I even found them on the Ranger...more than once!

And yes...there were definitely lots of grunts! Good luck on the candy stripes - I don't think I ever had the chance to see one while I was there.

I'm so jealous. I must get up and dive this site. I have to steel myself to the 4 plus hour drive. Ah we'll. I'm getting to know I5 north very intimately, where the Starbucks are, the Costco gas station I like, etc!

Plan carefully, It is very current sensitive and it's good to go with someone who knows the site. Watch for my posts. I usually post when there is a good current series. Hell I'm usually there if there is a good run of days with low exchanges. This weekend is not too bad. About as good as you will get for another month. Best deal is to come up on friday and camp friday and Saturday nights at Fort Worden.

How current-sensitive is FW? I'd like to figure out a way we can come up for two days and do a series of dives. We have a place to stay in PT, which makes that really attractive.

we had alittle current there(minor), but never planned for slack and just dove it. I suspect the bay hides any current unless you get up around the point/lighthouse.

It is less current sensitive than Hudson, but you still want to look at the tide tables. I've seen those pilings throw a wake, had collection pots wrap completely around poles, and been caught in one really weird current. You can dive it on most slack tides, and on small exchanges, but I would not say it's diveable at all times.

good to know,thx!