Edmonds March 24

iotium · Post by **iotium** » Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:06 pm

Arrived around 1:30 after some delicious chicken fried steak at Claire's restaurant. The parking lot was full and we started unloading our gear when none other than Bruce Higgins called to us, said he was about to leave, and offered us his spot. "Don't worry about the sign [reserved for underwater park maintenance] - it's for me!".

Tide was quite low and we were able to walk all the way out to the buoy marking the start of Cathedral Way. We headed out on Cathedral, veered over to Jetty and continued out to the Lopez Pontoon, then headed back along Centennial Way. 87 minutes dive time which is close to my record and I think the low tide helped us get more time out of our tanks.

Visibility was good/great at 20-30', even though another diver in the parking lot had warned us that it was quite murky. We decided this must have been his first time diving the Puget Sound. There was a decently strong current heading S or SW the entire dive. In places like the Cathedrals it would get funneled between the structures and get quite difficult to swim against, but all that swimming helped keep me warm so I'm not complaining.

Lots of the normal big Edmonds critters were out like rockfish, cabezon, and lingcod. There were dozens of very large lingcod (>3') by the Lopez Pontoon and a big ugly cabezon tried to scare off my buddy at the Cathedrals by swimming right at her.