Posted by Andrew Spring on July 20, 2004 at 12:10:57:
Arrived Friday in Avalon at 7:30am to warm and clear skies. Checked our bags at the infamous Hermosa, and headed to Casino pt. It was our first time diving here, so the anticipation to get in the water was awesome. Did a total of three dives, seeing just about the whole park. The highlight was seeing the Sue-Jac lying on its side with the stern disappearing to greater depths. Vis was 20-30ft at the park.
Saturday we hopped on the Scuba Cat at the Green Pier and headed west. Only 7 other divers on the boat for a Saturday 3-tank dive-It made things a lot roomier, and let us dive a spot called USC Marine Preserve near Bird Rock. Ron, the DM was great on communicating to the divers the dive plan for this drift dive. We dropped down to 35ft and headed with the current west till we saw the wall. I never have seen a wall that size before, about 50 ft high. Saw huge sea fans growing like stalactites on the over hangs, and lobsters in the holes along the wall. The group elected to dive the site again, so all of us stayed together for the second dive. All of us dropped down and found a large cave in 60+ ft of water. The cave was 20 ft wide, 10ft high, and 25 ft. deep. All of us could of fit in there, but we played it safe and sent two divers in at a time-Very cool. We boated back east and found ourselves at Italian Gardens in search of GSB. We were not disappointed. Ron put us in the right direction, and depth. Saw around 6 of them in the 50 to 100 lb range. It was a great ending dive to an incredible weekend of Southern Californian diving!
Good Diving,
Andrew