Posted by seahunt on May 02, 2000 at 13:48:14:
It seems appropriate to put the very beginning of this
story at the end, because that was part of what made the
dive cool.
It wasn't a really special dive, but as they might say
'there's no such thing as a bad dive, just some are better
than others'.
I had wanted to dive Big Rock for some time. It is the
south end of Malibu, before you get to Santa Monica. It's
almost as far south as where Sunset Blvd. comes to an end.
While I have done a great deal of diving at Malibu, I had
never been this far south. It is not what you would call
prime diving, but there were some rocks offshore, including
one 'big' one. Vis looked as good as it gets there, which
doesn't say much, as it is usually pretty soupy in that part
of the bay. A guy at Malibu Divers said he had had some fun
there and had found one of those expensive ScubaPro Titanium
knives there... Interesting.
Anyway, I parked close and geared up. It was a 75 foot walk
through a bit of construction area to the water. Swell was
negligable at one to two feet. Things looked good.
I headed out to the rocks to the south about 30 yards from
shore and went down. Vis was about 15 feet for the whole
dive, which is fine for there. There were about a dozen
washing machine sized rocks with good algae growth and
numerous invertebrates, including small scallops. It was sand
channels between the rocks.
There wasn't a lot more to see, so I compassed across the
sand towards the 'big' rock. Some people don't like the sand,
but actually, there is a lot to see. There were small white
urchins, sea panseys, ornate tube worms, small snails, small
crabs and numerous 3 inch sand dabs. Mostly, there are a lot
of traces of things that went by, but now are well hidden in
the sand. I also came upon a halibut that was about 16 inches.
I guess he knew he was way below size limit, because he was
barely camouflaged in the sand, but had no inclination to
move.
After about 40 yards, I came to the next rocks. Again,
they were typical Malibu with algaes, kelp and large sand
worm colonies. There were lots of other invertebrates
including crabs, scallops and chestnut cowries. Here there
were perch, bass and other small fish amoung the kelp as
well as some senoritas and other small rock dwellers
hanging out low with me. I even saw a few small lobster in
a hole.
I was trying to figure out where I was in relation to
the 'big' rock, but couldn't guess. Since it was only
about 15 feet deep, I finally went up to look. It was right
near by, so I went d