Then it was a mad dash up to San Pedro to catch the noon ferry across the 26 miles of open water to Catalina Island. By 3 PM we were checked into our hotel and on our way over to the local dive park ... Casino Point. The town of Avalon on Catalina is very centralized, and everything's within easy walking distance. The park is small, but incredibly beautiful. I had gone there hoping to see a garibaldi ... these little orange fish that look rather like toys. Well, that's like someone coming to Seattle and hoping to spot a coffee shop ... they were everywhere! Boy did I feel like a tourist ... and like a tourist, I took the obligatory 200 or so garibaldi shots ... mostly tails. But the highlight of that dive was being approached by a giant sea bass ... that is one HUGE fish, easily six feet long and two or three times broader than me.
The next day we did three boat dives at various locations on the north side of the island. All of them were basically in the kelp forest (as was the dive park), and there was just a ton of things to see. Vis was between 30 and 50 feet, which gave us plenty of room to see things too. We saw more sea bass, and a few bat rays, as well as moray eels and a ton of lobsters.
On Sunday a couple of our friends came over to dive at the park with us. We did three dives ... one out to a wreck called the Valiant, which you need to get a permit to dive because it's sitting in about 100 feet of water in the mooring area (most of Avalon harbor is mooring area). It ws a spectacular dive, and on the way back we encountered this strange critter called a sea hare ... and it does look strangely like a rabbit (about the same size, too). I took a bunch of pictures, but there was a lot of surge stirring up the bottom, and none of them came out well. On the second dive, Cheng flooded her suit, and at the end of the dive she split her neck seal getting out of it. She was done diving for the trip. I made one more dive with my friends ... and got my first experience on a scooter! Claudette let me take her brand-new X-scooter for a spin through the kelp forest That was an incredible experience.
After the diving, we took the ferry back across to the mainland and drove about 50 miles south to Laguna. The next morning, I hooked up with some buddies to dive a place called Deadman's Reef. That was a fun dive. We had a surf entry, a 20-minute surface swim, surge, current, and a long surface swim back to the beack ... then we got to walk up about 100 stairs back to the road. Man, these guys are TOUGH ... it about wore me out! But we saw a lot, and got buzzed by a few sea lions ... the dive was a hoot! After the dive, Cheng and I drove up to Pasadena to spend a few hours with Tobin George, of Deep Sea Supply. He's got a fascinating tool shop, and I was surprised to learn how hand-built his gear really is ... no wonder it's such high-quality stuff ... it's all pretty much custom-made.
Flew home this morning ... and after five hectic days and nine dives, I'm feelin' a bit beat. So, since a picture's worth a thousand words ... here's about fifty-thousand words worth of photo show ... this is what you see in So Cal ...
http://photoshow.comcast.net/watch/Nk4MV3cN
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
