Six SeaHorses met at 9 AM for an after Christmas dive at Saltwater.  Mike McGrady, Bill Senn, Dave Wakeley, Chuck Barrett, Pieter Booth and Ed Gullekson braved the cold morning.  There was frost everywhere, on the roads, on the grass, on the sand of the beach.  A bit of sunlight hitting the water revealed mist rising from the much warmer water.  We jumped into our suits and got wet.  The tide was high so it was a long swim (rather than a long walk and a medium swim).

 

The six of us hit the middle reef on our first try.  While the sunstars continuously sweep the rocks and concrete pilings eating the barnacles, the overall life is on a steady rise.  Large numbers of rockfish now inhabit the reef.  We saw black, copper quillback and brown rockfish.  We saw at least 6 ling cod of various sizes from 18 inch babies to one big female that was an easy 40 inches.  The surfperch are also numerous.  Lots of striped and kelp surfperch and a few pile or barred surfperch.  The shrimp are around in huge numbers too.  They are probably one of the major fish foods right now.  I shot video of a rockfish acting strangely, shaking its head.  Later looking at the video I realized the fish had a shrimp in its mouth and was positioning the shrimp to swallow it.  We saw lots of crab and signs of octopus meals, but did not find the octopus.

 

Water temperature hit 45 on my computer and visibility was about 20 feet.  Now that is half of what we had here for late summer diving.  We shared hot chocolate and soup after the first dive.

 

Dave, Pieter and Ed did a second dive.  We got a bit of a workout coming in from the dive.  The current was negligible on the reef, but was moving fast north-bound on the swim back in to shore.