Another Thursday night dive on Wednesday. The summer light is turning in earlier and we almost turned this one into a night dive. Lucas set the dive up for Wednesday since Steve was out of town and Lyanne was staying at Lucas and Shannon's overnight so the obvious thing was to go diving. We met at 6:30 instead of 6pm and Kari joined us a short time later. She's only a few minutes away which turned out to be a good thing as we found out later. Of course when we all finally show up there's a lot of chatting and we were all happy to see Lyanne so it took us awhile to get ready and get in the water. Well, all of us except Shannon who had a cold and that was to bad since it was a fun dive to the deep reef.
As I was getting ready Shannon came walking by all dressed but with a tank and BCD heading towards the beach. Lyanne had hurt her knee so Shannon was helping her carry everything down to the beach. Eventually, everyone got into the water and we began putting on our fins. Everyone except Kari who realized she left them at home and which is why it was good she lived close by since we could wait for her to get them. Meanwhile, I was trying out the new neck seal on my drysuit since I had worn out the other one from so many dives. That and I probably wasn't taking care of it properly. I was also trying out new wrist cuffs from Alyssa. The dry gloves are difficult to get on and off so I wanted to find something easier. My hands felt warm at first, and I emphasize only at first, as they felt extremely cold later. I almost exclusively use dry gloves and now I can see why.
Kari was soon back in the water with her fins and off we went to explore the depths of Puget Sound. We headed down the line and quickly came upon clumps of squid casings with holes in the ends of them. When the casings have squid in them they are opaque white, but had turned a slightly brown color by the time we saw them. Once we made it to the main reef we headed along it doing our usual search for creatures. I spotted a Ratfish swimming along the bottom and later noticed more Ratfish around the main and small reefs. About half way down the reef Lucas was wildly signalling me with his dive light to see something. I looked inside the small crevice about half way along the reef and saw why he was flashing me so wildly. There was a juvenile Wolf Eel, reddish-brown with light yellow spots all over its body down inside the crevice. This wasn't the first time in the past month it's been spotted there so possibly it's setting up home.
We made it to the South end of the main reef and looked around for the line. Kari found it for us as we were off a bit on its location. While we followed it down to the deep reef I could feel my hands getting colder and a strange sensation of water around by wrists that I wasn't used to. Unfortunately, I couldn't just change out my gloves so I had to put up with it even if my arms felt as though they were getting wet.
We arrived on the deep reef to find it covered in Rock fish and Dungeness Crab. This would have been a feast for the Octopus that lives in the reef except the Octopus was gone. Perhaps it was off hunting while the crabs played in its den. I never got off the North side of the reef, there were to many fish to look at and I kept looking in the crevices for the Octopus. I couldn't believe it went out hunting when there was so much food near home. I began to feel a bit colder which I thought was strange since I usually didn't get cold in my dry suit and thinsulate undergarment.
At some point we were heading back up the line to the main reef and when I arrived there, I was following Kari, I saw Kari and we went along the South wall of the main reef. We went a short ways and neither I nor Kari could see Lucas and Lyanne so we looked at each other, shrugged and continued along our happy way. Once we made it to the main line and the brick to the small reef we headed North keeping to the contour at 30 feet. I'm getting better at finding it as correctly surmised that at that depth I'd be on my left and I'd be at the lower end of the reef. The water was to murky to see it well but I discerned a dark shape to my left after about 25 kick cycles. The small octopus was gone and crabs infested all parts of the reef and included Dungeness, Red Rock and Kelp crabs. At one point I saw a dogfish to my left but it wasn't in the mood to play fetch. I later found our from Kari that once we were back at the buoy while I was being fascinated by a small Nudibranch the Dogfish showed up and scarred Kari as she'd never seen one before. They are a bit unnerving since they look like JAWS on a miniature scale.
When we arrived back at the beach Lyanne, Lucas and Shannon were waiting for us. It turned out that Lyanne was running low on air so that her and Lucas had to head back in while Kari and I dawdled along. We finished the dive around 8:30 and I had to hurry home to get ready for work the next day. It was good to see Lyanne again and hopefully we'll see Russ in the water soon as well. And so ended another good dive at Rockaway Beach.
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