Posted by DougD on October 20, 2002 at 15:45:04:
I did 3 dives off the Island Diver out of Redondo this morning (8AM). The boat is an old Navy River Patrol boat like the one in Apocolypse Now (civilianized and painted white, of course), and was once used for smuggling drugs. Anyway, it's perfect for diving off PV.
Generally, it was pretty flat out there but there was no sun and that made it dark below.
The first dive was at Malaga Cove, but vis sucked and nothing was to be seen. Well, actually there was a **middle-layer** where the vis was about 30 feet. We hung out in that **layer** for a while, floating above the green fog blanketing the last 4 or 5 feet to the bottom, and watched small fish swim around in the kelp. temps. 63 on top and 55 below.
The second dive was THE dive of the day. Vis varied between 15' and 30' for the whole dive. Unfortunaley, I'm not sure of the correct site name, but the skipper says the surfers call it the Annihilator.
We anchored in about 50' of water that went quickly up to a reef system that ranged from 16' to 30'. It was really surgy. Water would blast you through a pass in the reef and try to suck you right back if you weren't careful. Once we got inside it there were huge fish everywhere. Seriously, this was my best dive along the coast yet. I saw some big tuna looking fish, THE biggest Calico I have seen outside of Casino Point, everything there was really big.
On the outside of the reef there were tons of lobsters hiding in holes and under shelves but they were too smart to come out and get caught. I didn't try too hard though.
Today would have been the day for a speargun...we were having too much fun on this dive to worry about the temps.
The third dive was at the Avalon wreck. It was noticably colder here. 63 on top but 53 below. Not much to see and kind of a let down after the dive before it.
We were back at the dock by 12:45 PM.
The colder it gets the better it gets.