Five of us showed up for this rainy afternoon dive, but the big thanks goes to Bill Senn who actually found one of the elusive little lumpsuckers.  The rest of us, Pieter, PJ, Randy and Ed, all are in debt to Bill because of this accomplishment.

 

The plan was to search the area at Redondo that we had been told the lumpsuckers used as habitat.  Basically, its the shallow eelgrass.  The five of us spread oout and searched all across the beds from shallow, 11 feet, to deep, 20 feet.  The tide was high so the 11 foot areas are probably 2 to 3 feet at low tide.  At one point PJ and I had gone way north so I surfaced (it was only 12 feet deep at that point) and spotted bubbles south of us.  Back down and PJ and I motored towards the bubbles.  What we found was Bill and Pieter huddled together and pieter shooting away with his camera.  Wow, was I glad I had gone over to them.

 

It was then our turn to shoot like crazy, and I did.  Getting the focus right was a bit of a challenge with the eelgrass all around.  I got about 3 shots that were pretty good.  I have enlarged and posted two of them.  I also posted a quicktime video clip.

 

This one fish provided us with success.  Randy and I talked about "developing the eye" for lumpsuckers.  Some of the small creatures take developing "the eye" to see.  Critters that fall in this category include pipefish, lumpsuckers, horned shrimp, stubby squid and sea spiders.  Bill led the way for us to start to develop our own "lumpsucker eyes".