Thursday, September 1st at Rockaway

We arrived at 5pm to dive today.   The days are getting shorter so it's getting difficult to continue diving at 6PM, get home, clean the gear and get up for work at 5:10am.  We swam out to the buoy and dropped in at 15 feet.  It was easier to follow Steve and Dave tonight since the visibility had cleared to about 15 feet.  The plan was the usual, go to the main reef then head to the deep reef followed by a brief visit to the shallow reef on the way home.  We made it through 2/3 of the plan.

As we headed down to the main reef the Nudibranchs were still populated on the seaweed and the sand.  The seaweed seemed to have changed color though from a lot of green to more purple with a continued decrease in the overall growth.  We arrived at the main reef and a few scattered Ratfish had reappeared along with some Lemon Yellow Nudibranchs and an occasional Sea Cucumber.  The Giant Orange Sea Cucumbers were trolling about as well but none seemed to be giving a ride to the Alabasters tonight.  Once again we didn't have any luck finding the Wolf Eel that we had seen once before.

Before I knew it we had made it to the end of the main reef and were heading down the line to the deep reef.  Similar to previous weeks it was covered in Rockfish with a huge Copper in what was previously the home of the Octopus.  I mourned the fact that the Octopus seemed to have disappeared, as we have such a fascination with him, but that soon dissipated when Steve kept flashing me with his light back up at the main reef.  On the South end tucked away in a hole was a small Octopus.  While Steve was taking pictures I brought my camera to the ready and patiently waited for my turn to blind it.  The Octopus wasn't too thrilled with this prospect and tucked itself deeper in the hole.  I turned my camera on and it flipped through pictures on its screen and wouldn't set itself for picture mode.  This could only mean one thing, the batteries were low so I would rely on Steve for my photos.

As we passed the brick on the way up the line I signaled to Steve to continue back towards the buoy rather than heading to the small reef.  My air was down to 900 psi and we probably could have gone but it felt like it was time to head in.  The water was rough as we made our exit and the wind had picked up considerably.  In Seattle though, this was okay since it was warm and still light out on a summer evening.  All in all another beautiful dive at Rockaway with thoughts of going to Port Hardy fresh on our minds.