Sweet! Now I have a place to post my report.
So sometimes I let Joe plan my dives. He tells me the plan, I decide if I like it, and I ride the wave. The first couple parts of the plan I didn't like, be at his house at 7am and drive for several hours to the site. I woke up feeling a little bitchy to say the least. So I arrive about 10 minutes late, and find that I’m going on a couple’s day of diving with Joe, his GF, H20Doctor and his GF, and general merriness that I just wasn't into. Great. All morning I kept hearing, "cheer up dude" and bladdity blah.
Fast forward about 4 cups of coffee later, some decent tunes and I'm starting to feel like having some fun. We had heard that Octopus Hole was really not much better than Sund Rock, and I had also heard reports that there really weren't many Octo's there anymore, although there were some from time to time. Great. We arrive at the dive site, which isn't much more than a couple of turnouts along the Highway. Everyone is there already, Shell (Oregondiver), Mike (MZ53480) and some other divers. We meet and greet and gear up.
I’m definitely feeling better now that I’m in the water. We assign teams and begin our descent. Apparently Shell is in a hurry, or her Force fins are just too fast for the rest of us
, but as soon as I see the sea whips at around 82fsw, I know we’ve missed the wall. Mike get's her attention and turns the group upslope towards the wall. Joe and I stop to take a picture of some Squid eggs, and as we continue, we realized we’re alone, I can just see the "Death light" in the distance. We continue in the general direction of the other team, catch one or two light signals and then they’re gone. We find the wall, which is barren. Void of life completely. We are now at about 45 fsw, and there is nothing to see to the right, left, above or below. I stow the camera, and just enjoy the feeling of being in the water. Out of boredom, I pull out my wetnotes and jot down a little sarcasm for Joe.
I get the finger. Now who has the bad attitude?
Then things start to look up. A small Ling is sitting on eggs. He’s not really aggressive but he just casually swims straight at my mask, and I put my hands up in defense. So for about 2 minutes, this ling does circles around me, first to the right, then the left as I helicopter around keeping him in view.
We leave the ling, and I spot the unmistakable sign of an occupied Octopus den…….Middens! There are crab shells everywhere, all in the same location from an opening underneath a huge rock. Inside is an average sized GPO. This would be the first of 8 Giant Pacific Octopus’ we would encounter on two dives at Octopus hole.
Apparently Joe is now bored, so he makes a game of shining his light on my subject whenever I try to take a picture. I pull back, the light goes away, I try to line up the shot, and the light comes back. Sometimes I want a new dive buddy. One of these days I’m going to lie during our bubble checks, “Uh, dude, you better sit this one out, there’s a LOT of bubbles” (Purge, Purge).
Dive two was pretty much the same, missed the wall, found it again and split up to find a “lost” team member. Mike had his video cam and we should have stuck close to him. Joe and I split up, He went with Shell, I went with H20Doc and we went in opposite directions along the wall. Joe and Shell quickly found Mike, while Chris and I went back to the beginning, turned and made our way back towards the rest of the group. I was uneasy the whole rest of the dive. I knew that Joe, Shell and Mike were together because Chris and I saw all three of them, exchanged a couple of Okays and didn't see them again until we ended our dive. For some reason, once I get that feeling, it's hard for me to relax.
During that dive, we saw all eight GPO’s, One Wolfeel, One Giant Red Dendronotid, and a large school of Striped Perch. It was good to see Shell again, meet Mike and dive a new site. I've never seen so many GPO's in one spot and I wonder where they are getting their crab from. It turned out to be a GREAT day of diving.
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Keep then coming in the future.
Anyone know the temps at depth?
