Northwest Dive Club

Met stphnmartin, vjw, and ScubaJess at Skyline on Sunday morning. The weather was great to the point where the 46 degree water didn't really bother me. The current was much stronger than expected, blowing us away from the entry point (west?). Made focusing the camera very difficult. Was shooting some orange zoanthids and completely missed the mosshead warbonnet hanging out amongst them. And all the particulate blowing through really diffused the light from the strobes. No candystripe shrimp. Several large, healthy striped sun stars. Found a baby wolf eel swimming out in the open at 30-ish feet. Still a fun dive and looking forward to getting back out there when the currents are better.

No one pinched me for not wearing green.

Beautiful shots from what sounds like a beautiful dive day!

Nice surprise in the zoanthids!

Hydroids are particularly nice.
May I ask your splash time? Always looking for Skyline data. It's a challenging site to predict.
I'm gonna guess ~12, the current was outgoing, and never switched?

Fantastic pics Derek! It was great fun diving with you guys! The weather was perfect! Just wish the current was a bit less & my focus light didn't flake out.

So cool about the wolf eel, war bonnett & was so great to see the healthy stars! I also love that pmh shot! Great job.

Sounds like an fun adventure even with the goofy currents. That warbonnet in the zoanthids is awesome!

Low exchange days at Skyline are weird. Kelly at Anacortes Diving told me that you want to look for exchanges at or over 1 knot to get the flow to switch. We usually get in the water about 45 min before slack on days with an ebb between 1 and 2.5 knots (and with a similar flood) and it is pretty much spot on most of the time. Full disclosure, we plan for drifting out deep in the crimson anemone zone, and then at slack we head shallower and leisurely drift back on the upper reaches checking out the zoanthid patches. I don’t bother planning for a slack period to play around in, but it happens sometimes. I’m sure Jan K or others (H20 doc?) probably have some better info since I’ve only been exploring out there infrequently for a couple years. Also I usually look at the deep zoom current station between Allen and Burrows Island (or at Green Point) to guess slack and seems to work close enough.

If anyone ever wants to go for a dive out that way then hit me up on the messaging. It’s always fun for us lonely divers up in the far north to meet the active south sound crew

Skyline is best done on a larger exchange... You want to do skyline at the top of the incoming tide... When you do skyline on very low exchanges it has a tendency not to switch at all... In other words the current is always flowing the same direction... The problem with this is you're going to expect it to switch and then it doesn't and then you're on the site diving it and the current begins to build and build and build and then next thing you know you're walking in on the rocks... LoL..
Slack on Saturday March 16th was between 11:30 and 11:51....
Great Pics !! Thanks for sharing