Brian and I splashed our first dive at 11:00 am. No current and we anchored right at the edge of the wall. As planned we attached a line to the anchor and proceeded over the rocks as they cascaded down. The rock formations are perfect for marine life. Plenty of cracks for sheltering fish. Daylight was filtered out below 80 and it was more like a night dive below this depth. Some interesting sponge and lots of Lemon Nudibranch. There were several good size Lings hiding in the rocks. There were lots of Decorator Crab and Kelp Crab on the rocks. Got a nice picture of a Red Irish Lord and lots of Dorid.
We dropped our marker line due North of the boat and worked our way along the wall for several minutes at a maximum depth of 130. After a couple of minutes at depth we worked our way up the wall ledges to a depth of 80 feet.
About 10 minutes into the dive Brian signals the OOF sign,
pointing to his left foot where he had no dive fin. This was the first OOF experience I have had with a diver in over 30 years of diving. Perhaps not as funny as a beaver tail but we did find his fin without too much effort.We spent our second half of the dive in the shallow water to keep our Deco time to a minimum. The viz was very poor in the shallows. Things we did not see were GPO's and Wolf Eels on this dive. Our second dive was a maximum depth of 80 feet and we spent most of our dive in 60 feet. Current was still very minimal and we passed over our marker line several times as we worked back and forth on the wall at shallower depths each pass. We used the marker rope to assend to our safty stops and did a mid water Deco stop holding on to our safty line which was attached to the boat anchor. When we surfaced the boat was right next to us and we had no surface swim. Had some cold post dive brew and enjoyed the sunshine for the rest of the afternoon.
Port Orchard has a good boat launch and there is no charge for the first day of parking.
I think you can view some pictures at this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/ScubaDiverS ... ermansWall#