Saturday on Matt’s Reef, Pt. Loma

Date: Saturday, April 12 2008/Two Dives

Time: 11:49 AM/2:50 PM

Surface conditions: warm, sunny and flat.

Location: Matt’s Reef Point Loma and at far South end of Point Loma

The water temperature: an ass-freezing 46-48° F depending on whose computer you believe

Visibility: 5 – 8 feet in the top 20, due to a greenish dynoflagellate layer [Green Tide], and about 20-25 ft. below 30 feet—not too bad!

Max depth: 100 feet/98 feet

Critters seen: blacksmith fish, senioritas, rockfish, juvenile and adult, tree fish, black surf perch, Spanish shawls, San Diego Dorids, Cucumaria piperata [a type of sea cucumber—see notes below], warty sea cucumbers, California Sea cucumbers, bat stars, red volcano sponges, cobalt sponges, orange puff balls, red Gorgonians, Spanish Shawls, blood stars, ochre stars, fragile stars, leather stars, rainbow stars.

Dive buddies: Merrianne and the Scooter Twins: NOAA Jim and Charlie.

Remarks:

We motored out under sunny blue skies and a flat open ocean, with the Scuba-Do humming along at 25 knots, until we reached Matt’s reef, at the far end of point Loma.

Upon arrival it was decided that the Scooter Twins would splash in first to test the conditions and report back, followed by me and Merrianne.

About 50 minutes later, they returned, reporting unusually cold but clear conditions, with a green-ish layer of dynoflagellates between 20 feet and the surface, but excellent visibility down below.

They emphasized the fact that both their dive computers had shown 48°, so Merrianne and I’d took that as fair warning that it would be butt-freezing cold down there and we jumped in.

For the first dive, we decided to head south along the reef structure that resembles four fingers facing southward, ending at the sandy bottom at around 100 feet, which I assume continues all the way out to the Coronado Islands.

Sure enough, as we dropped we passed through the thick layer of green-ish murk, before visibility opened up rather nicely below 50 feet.

Dropping down onto the reef, we followed one ‘finger’ the South, as it dropped down to towards 100 feet, with the biting cold surrounding us like a giant vice, causing an instant ‘ice cream headache.’

The rocky finger was teaming with marine life: blacksmith fish, senioritas, rockfish, juvenile and adult, tree fish, black surf perch, Spanish shawls, San Diego Dorids, Cucumaria piperata [a type of sea cucumber—see notes below], warty sea cucumbers, California Sea cucumbers, bat stars, red volcano sponges, cobalt sponges, orange puff balls, red Gorgonians, blood stars, ochre stars, fragile stars, leather stars, rainbow stars, you name it.

Oddly, due to the thick green tide above us, it was pretty dark and monochrome [green] down below, until we shown our lights on to something, and then our visual field exploded in a riot of color, now restored in our light beams. Volcano, Cobalt, and orange and yellow sponges provided most of the Technicolor, along with the occasional Spanish Shawl pulsing with neon brilliance.

Upon arrival at the sandy bottom of 100 feet, we knew it was time to turn around and head back, back up the steep rocky structures at around 70 feet, where things didn’t seem any warmer than they had a 100 feet. My hands were on fire with the cold despite 5 mm gloves and my gauge showed 48° F: little did I know that only a few feet away, Marianne’s gauge was reading 46° F, and her hands were cold too, even in dry gloves.

We passed over a huge old anchor that must’ve been there for decades completely encrusted with barnacles and growth, providing a home for tiny marine life.

30 minutes in 48° water was about all we could take, so when I gave the signal to go up, there was definitely no disagreement from Merrianne.

Dive #2:

After a leisurely lunch and waiting for the Scooter Twins to complete their second dive, Merrianne and I jumped in once again and this time decided to head East, in the direction of the thicker kelp beds.

Here, the terrain was very different from the fingers further south, with giant pinnacles extending 10 to 15 feet upwards, topped by a giant fronds of Macrocystis, and large overhangs that resemble small caves going back 5 to 8 feet, providing shelter for dozens of varieties of fish such as Blacksmith fish, Surf Perch and Sheephead, as well as many varieties of rockfish both juvenile and adult.

It was here under one of the large overhangs, that we saw a strange creature I had never noticed before, looking like a cross the between the tube-dwelling anemone and an odd-looking hydroid, reaching out with its arms to grasp food and bring it back into its mouth and the center.

After the dive, I racked my brain trying to figure out what this odd-looking creature could’ve been.

Finally, at my wits’ end, I drew a rough approximation on a piece of paper and sent it to our invertebrates expert Kevin Lee, who just happened to be in Korea at the time, and he kindly replied with one of his superb macro photos of it, which are then sent to our marine biology instructor, who was able to identify it for us.

It was a Cucumaria piperata, an unusual variety of Sea Cucumber which has arms or bucolic tentacles with which it feeds.

Phylum: Echinodermata; class Holothuroidea; order Dendrochiratida; family Cucumariidae

See here for Kevin’s superb photo of it, next to my poorly drawn rendition:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scubapro.bear/CucumariaPiperata [click to enlarge]

Thanks, Kevin [and Bert Kobayashi, our marine biology professor]—now, I’ll know a Holothuroid when I see one!

It’s so great to have access to such tremendously talented marine resources on this list…….we’re really fortunate.

So, we spent the remainder of our dive exploring the beautiful and colorful overhangs and pinnacles, until I realized that I was on 21% and not Nitrox, and glancing down at my dive computer, I realized I was about to go into deco and we still had to get back to the boat.

Since the bottom dropped away from us to toward 100 feet as we swam towards the boat, and I was out of bottom time, I realized we would have to do a blue water swim, so I pointed my compass on a 180 course from the direction we had come and we began slowly swimming and ascending along a gradual path towards the surface, except that , due to the green tide, it was a green water swim rather than a blue water swim.

We popped to the surface not far from the boat, and congratulated ourselves on a not too bad job of navigation, as well as having completed an extremely successful day in a stunningly beautiful dive site, despite the green tide on the surface and bone-numbingly cold water.

Dive safe everyone……. Get out there while the conditions are good: tides, green or red, may soon be upon us.

Mikey

Note: this dive report was dictated into voice recognition software.