Favorite Dives

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  2022-07-24 美国 California
  La Jolla Shores

  Dive Buddy: Sebastian Silva Fish Identification dive + first time using Hero 10 with mount. Saw lots of bass, sheephead, rock fish, rock crabs, diving cormorant.

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  2022-11-13 美国 California
  La Jolla Shores

  Dive Buddies: Adam Pierce, Sean Forbes The rains earlier in the week staved us off for a bit, but I was itching to get back in the water. And Adam's back! After his tech dive trip to Cabo, he and Sarah caught COVID and weren't diving for a couple weeks. We did marine room after hearing reports all week of great conditions all around La Jolla. Saw some two-tank rebreather divers with DPVs going out as well. Surface swim was easy, with visibility starting bad and then suddenly opening up to around 25 ft. No signs of life in the shallows, though. We descended right at the edge of the canyon and headed southeast. Not much big life, but lots of little nudibranchs (San Diego dorid, opalescent, Spanish shawl, and lots of navinax), some baby sheepshead, lobsters, and sleeping two-spot octopus in their dens. We turned earlier than normal for Adam (maybe Sean was at turn pressure, he was finning a lot and silting up the water quite a bit) and headed uphill to the edge of the sea grass. Lots of kelp bass swimming around in the grass and a few old buoy heads with strawberry anemones and other life and them. We surfaced with still a little ways to go back to shore, so I veered towards the reef with my snorkel to see if there was any life over there. Sure enough, I heard some other snorkelers sounding ecstatic and found they were observing a large pack of leopard sharks! I counted two groups of about a dozen each. All in all a good dive and great to go out with Adam again.

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  2022-10-22 美国 California
  La Jolla Shores

  Dive Buddy: George Freese I was originally signed up for a Power Scuba meetup tonight, but ended up heeding the call of George from the Two Divers Below group. Turns out I dive with him once a while back at one of Adam's dives, so it was nice to see a familiar face! We geared up by the flagpole and got in the water before the Power group. We swam out from Vallecitos right for the Point. I didn't see much in the way of life on the stage swim out, but I did find a detached surfboard fin in the sand. We dropped a bit short of the canyon and pretty quickly spotted a medium sized horn shark. I was keeping a steady pace videoing it from behind when all of a sudden it turned towards me and swam right under my chest nearly grazing me with the dorsal horns that give it its namesake! Just as we dropped over the canyon, I spotted another surprise - three squid swimming over the sand! I tried signalling George, but they swam off pretty fast. We continued following the wall north towards Vallecitos Point. I spotted lots of octopus, decorator crabs, and rock crabs while George found a handful of fringefish including one out in the open! Shortly after rounding the point, George signaled that he had hit turn pressure, so we started making our way back to the shallows. While working our way to shore, we spotted horn shark after horn shark. I counted at least eight, though some of them might've been the same shark. George motioned to ascend after we'd cleaned our safety stop time, so up we went. I continued to snorkel a bit on the way in and I'm glad I did because I spotted another group of five squid below us! I put my reg back in and descended to snap a quick video and they obliged me for a few seconds, lining up in a neat line side by side before darting off. I resurfaced to continue snorkeling and right before I took my fins off was graced by the presence of a very large leopard shark in the shallows! I wasn't quick enough to get it on camera, but it was a nice treat to end an already fantastic dive. One of the best night dives to date!

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  2022-10-30 美国 California
  La Jolla Cove

  Dive Buddy: Doug Wagner Decided to try cove again after a week or so of hearing decent dive reports from Brian Zach. Unfortunately, we didn't have as much luck. The beach and shallows were absolutely overtaken by sea lions (both adults and pups) sleeping, playing, barking, and wrestling with each other. It was pretty fun to watch while getting in the water! But as soon as I get my mask and snorkel on, I could tell it was going to be a murky dive. We swam out to the buoy and dropped in the kelp per usual, following it west/southwest. We really didn't see much. The usual kelp bass, a few sheepshead, lots of smaller fish, and I spotted an eel of some kind before it slithered into the kelp. Turbidity on the bottom was just frustratingly cloudy. We eventually ran into reef, garibaldi, and a few lobsters, but viz just continued to worsen as we got nearer shore. Eventually we ran into a rope leading up to a small buoy and decided to surface where it appeared we had run into the end of the marine preserve. We swam back most of the way on the surface, popping back down for a few minutes just to break up the monotony. Always good to get in the water, but I hope next time I do cove it lives up to the reports!