Yueng's Birthday Shark Hunt Dive: MarineRoom, 10 Feb 07

Since it was Yueng's birthday and since the instructor for our drysuit course called in sick we decided to head out into the briney blue anyway and to go and hunt some sharks. It was a typical San Diego winter's day: warm and sunny. The wave forecast had predicted some sizable swells which could have made the diving less pleasant by tossing us about under the water and stirring up all the sand so that you couldn't see your own hands. Thankfully there was no such swell and the water was unprecidentadly clear! We donned our gear at the car and took 15 mins to swim out to water deep enough for interesting things to live in.
skeleton shrimp	halibut	halibut
I think we got bored swimming on the surface some way before the edge of the canyon. So, we dropped down into 25 feet of water and saw some pretty interesting stuff. Firstly the vis was excellent and there was very little particulate matter in the water which meant I could use the flash on my camera w/o too much annoying bright reflective spotting getting in the pictures. The bottom is flat and sandy out there, almost imperceptibly deepening towards the open ocean. There in a clump of lone sea weed I spotted a skeleton shrimp that looks much like a stick insect. I think it is about an inch long. There was some significant tooing and frooing at this point by the waves but I managed to hold still enough to get a good look. (The deeper you go the less the swell waves toss you about). Swimming on Yueng spotted a Huge halibut. It was eyeing us all the while as I tried to sneak closer and get a good snap. 3 feet long and probably very tasty it headed off before we had a chance to find out...
sheep crab	sheep crab	nudibranch
Onwards and downwards to went to around 40 feet depth. There the canyon starts. In practise the sandy bottom turns siltier and drops off much more steeply (approx 2 feet along for 1 foot down). At the edge of the drop off there is a patch off thick green eel grass and out of the blue a big lumbering sheep crab marched up towards us. The shell is around 6" wide. He seemed to be eating the grass and minding his own business until we came along. These are quite stupid creatures often picking fights with the wrong sized animal. So it is often that you see them with legs or claws missing. In fact it is probably rarer to see one fully legged. Swimming down the slope there was all sort of short pieces of sea weed and grass scudding around on the bottom. At around 60 feet Yueng found an engine block which had all sorts hiding inside. She saw an actopus tenticle with its suckers, lots of tiny hiding shrimp and a navanax (an inch long blue slug with yellow and black stripes along its back). Meanwhile I found a slug of my own, a nudibranch, though I was only able to get a terrible picture as it was so hard to see through the camera and focus on, owing to its sandy colour. These sorts of creatures are a big part of the diving round here. There are all sorts, shapes and colours of these slugs around these parts. Here you can vaguely make out the to antennae and a brighter line down its back. They are far more attractive than the common variety of garden slug!
juvenile horned shark	horned shark	mystery crab
Suddenly I spotted underneath me a tiny little horned shark. It was about 6 inches long, motionless and perfectly camoflagued. These must be the cutest sharks in the world and look like the sort of thing one might buy as a cuddly toy. I think it particulary liked me as it let me take lots of pictures. You can see it's name sake in front of the dorsal fin. We also found a tiny furry looking crab which I can't figure out the name for.
sarcastic fringehead	horned shark	horned shark
It gets cold hanging around so we carried on another few meters and Yueng spotted a Sarcastic Fringehead. These fish usually live in holes and grab anything that swims by in their huge jaws. Out of a hole it was a bit skittish and didn't really want to pose for us. By now we were down to half our air and were absolutely frozen so we turned around and headed back. I wanted to take some more pictures of the nice shark and Yueng found another one but a few meters from the first.
california armina	sand dollars	isopod
Back on the flat sand we headed back to shore at a quicker pace, trying to warm up, spotting all sorts of exciting things on the way.
turbot	turbot	juvenile giant black sea bass
One of the highlights was a juvenile Giant Black Sea Bass. Yueng found it in a clump of sea weed cleverly hiding. When these fish grow up they get to be five feet long and a couple of hundred pounds. Perhaps one of its parents was one of the witnesses when Yueng and I got engaged under the water about 0.5 mile west from here.
juvenile giant black sea bass	purple globe crab
57 minutes after going down we resurfaced shivering but delighted by all that we saw.