Monday night I met up with Kristan and Richard down in Redondo for a quick night dive off of Veteran’s Park. The ocean was calm and there were no waves to battle as we easily walked into the sea. Cruising down the canyon Kristan had a bit of equalization issues, but was able to clear and we swam down to 100ft to settle on the sand. Unzipping a pocket of his BCD Kristan pulled out a pack of water proof cards and began to deal out a hand of black jack! I got my first card, a Queen…so far so good. Next came a 10 and of course when signaled I chose to stay. Everyone turned over their hand and with 20 points I was the big winner! It was smilies all around, then we carefully gave back the cards, I cleared my mask (one of the drawbacks of smiling…you break the mask seal and it floods. I would wager that 90% of my dive time is done with a partially flooded mask, the other 10% is the few minutes after clearing it!)
After the game we started our ascent, exploring the bottom as we slowly swam up out of the canyon. On the way down we had seen a pretty good sized Red Octopus, just out for a night of hunting. On the way back there were the usual crabs, several Mantis Shrimp, a Red Irish Lord and even an itty bitty teeny tiny baby octopus! Overall a great dive, though I will say, beware of that thermocline… it was COLD down at depth, around 50 degrees!! Yikes!
Red Octopus out hunting.
Mantis Shrimp... these guys are a pain to get a picture of...the swim off as soon as you get near.
This little octopus was about the size of a golf ball! So cute!
A Red Irish Lord laying in the sand.
