The dive started in a rather unusual way ... in fact, I can honestly call this a first ... we're in the water, doing our buddy checks. Sandra ... who is on a rebreather ... is doing a bubble check with Lynne, and I'm waiting my turn. Suddenly I felt something move on my head ... and then again ... it felt like little feet! "Hey guys ... is there a bird on my head"? Sandra and Lynne looked at me and both of them immediately reached for their camera, laughing hysterically. This silly little bird had found a nice perch on top of my hood.
The bird then flew over to Lynne and landed on her hood ... but only stayed long enough to make a deposit, and then flew off. Uh ... Lynne ... I think we'd better get in the water and wash that off.
We scootered out to a kelp bed in about 20 feet of water at the end of the beach and dropped down to the base of the wall. Hmmm ... it appears we got there a bit early ... there was still a bit of current. But the visibility was awesome ... easily the best I've ever seen at this site. Dappled sunlight was filtering down through the kelp fronds above us, and we almost didn't even need our dive lights to bring out the colorful reds and oranges of the creeping pedal sea cucumbers or the spectacular yellows and ivorys of the sponges that filled just about every available space on the wall. So we clipped off the scoots and let the current take us for a ride out along the wall. Problem is, as we got further along the wall, the current only got stronger. Hmmm ... this ain't supposed to happen. Fifteen minutes later, we've been turned every which way but loose, and when we hit a sudden downwelling, the three of us looked at each other and almost simultaneously tossed a thumb skyward ... this wasn't working for us.
Even with scooters the ride up the wall proved interesting, between what was now washing machine current and trying to avoid getting tangled in the bull kelp. But up the wall we went ... Lynne in the lead, me slightly behind, and Sandra behind me. Or at least ... I THOUGHT Sandra was behind me. I could hear her scooter ... but when I turned around, she wasn't there. We surfaced, and a few seconds later she surfaced about 40 feet away. Some fishermen on shore hurriedly reeled in their lines so that we could reconnect without having to worry about hooks and fishing line (thanks guys, that was considerate). Turned out Sandra had an issue with her rebreather that had resulted in her O2 bottle freeflowing into her loop, and she was on her bailout and done for the day. Lynne and I wanted to try again ... convinced that we'd just mistimed the slack, because by now there didn't seen to be any current. We stayed on the surface and watched Sandra scooter back to shore, and when she stood up we went back down to try it again. This time was completely different ... the current had died completely. We had got in about 30 minutes too early. Oh well ... that's why they call 'em "predictions". Our dive was short ... only about 25 minutes on the wall ... but absolutely stunning. We kicked the whole dive ... both ways ... no need for the scooters whatsoever. And with the vis and sunlight, the best views were beyond the ability of our cameras to capture ... but they were memorable. Best Skyline dive ever.
We came back playing in the shallows ... sunlight in the eel grass, which was absolutely covered in what looked to be some kind of eggs (eel grass is always a nursery). Sandra was waiting on the beach when we came in ... and informed us that she was done for the day ... no second dive ... which was disappointing, because we were planning to hit one of my other favorite dives later in the afternoon ... Northwest Island.
After our first dive, I had some reservations about doing Northwest Island because of concerns about current ... we knew we were diving off-slack during a modest ebb ... and so I proposed doing nearby Sharpe Cove as an alternative ... but we decided since we'd only used about 10 minutes of trigger time on the first dive we had plenty of battery left in case we encountered more current than we cared for ... what the hell, let's go for it.
The vis for the ride out wasn't pretty ... maybe 10-12 feet ... which was plenty sufficient, but after the first dive I was hoping for better. We enjoyed the sea pen fields along the bottom on the way over, and after about 10 minutes on the trigger we got to the shallow side of the island, turned the scooters northwest to make our way toward the deeper side, and when we started hitting colorful boulderfields, we clipped off the scoots and broke out the cameras.
Well, the vis cleared nicely and we spent the next hour finding and snapping pictures of some of my favorite and most colorful Puget Sound macro critters ... colorful crabs, shrimp, nudibranchs and other inverterbrates. I found a nice sized cockerell's dorid ... which I find maybe once a year in all my Puget Sound diving ... and Lynne definitely heard me hooting and hollering into my reg when that happened. We had clusters of lovely clown dorids to look at and take pictures of. And more than a dozen candy-striped shrimp, which are always a treat. As you head deeper, the reef turns almost wall-like, and is just covered in sea cucumbers, sponges, hydroids, and anemones ... all of which provide food and shelter for some of the coolest critters in Puget Sound.
By the time we turned the dive, Lynne had shot till her camera battery died. Mine still had some life, but I figured by the time we got to the beach this was gonna be a 70-minute dive ... and with the long drive home, that was enough. Best part was that we got almost none of the current we'd been expecting.
We came out of the water very pleased with ourselves ... it had been an awesome day. And to think ... it all started with a bird on my head ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
by Unknown
