Northwest Dive Club

Winter is over! New crop of seaweeds is covering the shallows of Keystone, the forest of Bull kelp is climbing up toward the surface.

From the world of creeping or burrowing invertebrates with long, slender, soft bodies and no limbs.
The unusual reproductive way of the Necklace worms.

The forecast for Thursday called for sunshine. (Finally). Instead, a tornado touched down at Monroe, and plenty of clouds over Whidbey, with some sun-breaks. In short, diving weather. Lately I am trying to to show not only the critters I come across during my dive, but also a wide angle shot showing the environment in which I found them. And tomorrow, instead of diving, I am going to visit the Scuba & H2O Adventures show in Tacoma. Hope to see some of you there.

Muck dive at Lagoon Point produced slugs which I don't encounter anywhere else in Whidbey Island waters. All very small and I had hard time to tell what is head and what is tail on the Diomedes' aglaja. I found quite a number of them floating in mid-water. Strange behavior for a slug living under the mud...

Update on Whidbey sea stars, end of March.

Langley Harbor slugs. Large and small.

At Langley. many female Red Rock Crabs carrying eggs.
And a Poacher. Not a pan for cooking eggs or a person who hunts game or fish illegally. Pygmy Poacher - a fish

Return to the Pass. Of course, the undisputed Lord of the Pass Jack was there too.
Nobody has more dives in these waters, I think he dove the Pass before the bridge was even built.

Before the wind storm hits later today -
here are few more scenes of critters and their habitat from Tuesday and Wednesday dives at Deception Pass.

Cucumbers. The ones under the sea.

Most sea stars in Whidbey Island water release their gametes into the water column as their way to reproduce. However two species
of small sea stars brood their babies until they crawl out from the safety of their mother's underside ...

The Skyline is one place where the Six-rayed stars thrive. So it is where one can see Six-rayed with more and less rays (arms) quite frequently. And now is the time of year when the babies are going away to live without mama to care of them

Northern Kelp Crabs rivalry on the rocks of Keystone Jetty.
Three males and one female. It is all pincers and legs, pinching and jousting while the female hangs upside down beneath her suitor.

The skies above Whidbey Island are still stormy.
The world beneath the waves still provides escape from the drudgery above.

Two from the seemingly unremarkable realm of muck.
They too have a place in the ecosystem. The shipworm not so welcome in our marine oriented construction.
Also known as the "Worm that Sunk Thousand Ships".

Scuba Fashion Police ?
Looks like my friend Jack got little surprise when he came out this afternoon at Keystone.
I took his picture on Tuesday and he looked just fine to me

Winkled dogwinkle snails at Keystone. In January, hundreds of them congregated on the jetty rocks.
Four months later, baby snails are crawling out from the field of capsules they left behind.

With more daylight, the seaweeds and Bull kelp are growing fast in the shallows of Keystone.
It will not take long before we get our kelp forest back.

Very small crabs, parasitic snails, three siphon clam, all on one dive.

The Coupeville wharf is located near the Penn Cove Shellfish Farm.
So it should not be a surprise, that mussels are plentiful here, much to the delight of sea stars and some small Graceful cancer crabs.

Langley Harbor. I am seeing more and more of these "exotic" tunicates.
So far, they are just little islands of color on pilings...

Skyline wall revisited. The sea cucumbers are feeding, the colors are back.

Thursday April 20. Deception Pass. The low tide is just a hair higher than the high tide !
Tide Deception Pass St. Park, Bowman Bay, Fidalgo I.
April 20, 2017 48.4150° N, 122.6517° W
07:36 PDT 5.26 feet Low Tide
10:41 PDT 5.25 feet High Tide
Loooong slack = easy dive

At Deception Pass, Friday was even more beautiful, weather-wise. Little more current than yesterday., but not bad at all.
The sun was shining, it finally really felt like Spring. Here are some of the slugs from the dive.