14-june-2020: sunrise beach
Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2020 8:43 pm
Tides looked promising for a current-sensitive dive so the buddy/wife and I decided to head to sunrise beach. It was our first time at the site and after reading reports on the internet about the walk to the beach we were nearly shaking with terror as we parked. It's really not that bad, even in drysuits. The walk back up is much more comfortable if your drysuit leaks a bit during the dive too!
We got in 1hr45min before slack at the narrows and totally lucked out with the current - slack for the first 30 minutes and then a weak northbound current developing after that.
This is a fantastic dive site and I'm kicking myself for waiting this long to check it out. Great rocky wall structure and every square inch was seemingly covered with urchins, scallops, and buffalo sculpins. Other highlights include a handful of wolf eels, a mosshead warbonnet, and a grunt sculpin the size of a lima bean that the wife/buddy described as "the highlight of my life". A giant school of some kind of bait fish followed us for about an hour too although they were hard to identify more precisely than Little Silvery Buggers.
Near the end of the dive I spotted a jellyfish with some hitchhikers on it and got a quick video but unfortunately it's pretty washed out from my light. Anyone happen to know what the passengers are? My copy of Crabs and Shrimps of the Pacific Coast (Jensen) mentions that some crab larvae use jellyfish as a convenient and edible form of transportation so that was my only guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJF8VoiMaDc
We got in 1hr45min before slack at the narrows and totally lucked out with the current - slack for the first 30 minutes and then a weak northbound current developing after that.
This is a fantastic dive site and I'm kicking myself for waiting this long to check it out. Great rocky wall structure and every square inch was seemingly covered with urchins, scallops, and buffalo sculpins. Other highlights include a handful of wolf eels, a mosshead warbonnet, and a grunt sculpin the size of a lima bean that the wife/buddy described as "the highlight of my life". A giant school of some kind of bait fish followed us for about an hour too although they were hard to identify more precisely than Little Silvery Buggers.
- scallops, sculpins, and urchins
- photogenic scallop
- wolf eel
- bait fish school
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJF8VoiMaDc
but I think that's later