It all began with Steve telling us he had to pick up some piece of metal for the Navy out in the middle of the ocean. That was followed by Jon deciding he couldn't be DM on the boat then dive with us the next day. This was followed by Katie blowing a neck seal and not wanting to wait until 1AM so the suit could dry and she could fix it. Finally, Kari pulled out and I called Lucas to let him know the dive at Skyline Wall wasn't happening on Sunday. All of this occurred by Saturday night when Lucas was already up in Anacortes ready to dive. Sunday morning I was looking at the description of Skyline Wall, obtained permission from the Boss to go at 8:30, spoke to Lucas at 10am from the ferry to let him know the dive was back on and by 11:45 I was standing at the cold, windswept dive site watching the chop in the bay, speaking with Lucas and grinning because I was diving once again.
The original plan was to dive at 12 o'clock then head into town for lunch and catch the slack tide at 4 o'clock for a second dive. This site is highly dependent on slack tide with a minimal current flow on either side so that we can't dive it very often. This didn't go as planned either.
We dropped in and the viz was about 12 feet with lots of silt. This was probably due to the storms moving through the area churning the bay and bringing up the silt from the bottom. The silt covered everything from the pebbles in the shallows to the rock outcroppings making up the wall. We, being Lucas, found GPO's in almost every hole we could find. In one we could only see the eye staring up at us through a small opening and we couldn't figure out how it got in there. Further down the wall I was photographing another octopus that was partially exposed on a wall when Lucas began flashing me with his light. I went down to investigate and found a small Red Pacific Octopus fully exposed on a small boulder at about 40 feet. As I prepared to take a photograph the octopus jumped off the wall, shot down below us then came up and hovered for a few seconds with its tentacles hanging down. It decided we weren't friendlies since it next shot sideways, inked a small plume out his channel and took off into the gloom.
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| Crab on kelp |
The remainder of the dive consisted of looking for more Octopii, trying unsuccessfully to get a picture of a Sail Fin Sculpin hiding on a rock. I saw another Sail Fin on another dive doing the same thing fitting into a small indentation on the rock and blending in so well it could barely be identified from the rock surface. At the end of the wall the current picked up enough that we had to hang on to small outcroppings to stay in place. Of course I only had one hand to do this with, the other was holding my camera, so for me it also consisted of a lot of kicking with my fins to move back along the wall. As we approached the end of the dive we found a beautiful anenome and a small crab hanging on the kelp. This one was difficult to photograph as my buoyancy was off due to the shallow water and a tank low on air. I persevered though and did my best to record its place in history.
Once we were out the question came up of going back in at 4PM for a perfect dive on the slack or having a beer at the local pub before heading back to the ferry. Fish and chips and beer were the winners. The second dive is for another day.
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