Less than 12 hours after the wind and swell excitement of Saturday, Sunday morning turned out to be a remarkably nice day to be out on the water.

On the drive from Pasadena to Redondo we conducted some recon in the form of a drive around Palos Verdes from San Pedro to Malaga Cove. This established that conditions looked flatter to the south and east of Pt. Vicente; it wasn't really bad northward of that, just a little more swell and a little chop. Once we got to Redondo, we therefore set out for Marineland. Conditions weren't pancake flat, but fairly easy to get through, and it seemed nearly windless.

At Marineland we anchored at Ted's Pinnacle on the outer/deeper end of the reef. We noticed a couple of divers coming out from the point, as well as some bubbles nearly directly below us. Jon deployed his recently purchased Harbor Freight Underwater Camera, and lowered it down its cable to the reef. Almost immediately we saw divers in the scene, one of whom swam over to look at the tethered camera. If anyone dived Marineland today and thought they were visited by a UFO probe, now you know the truth. Conditions were nice with 15-20-ft vis -- some cool bait schools came by -- lots of kelp -- it seemed kind of chilly at 54 F.

After a surface interval we headed north and anchored on the shallow reef midway between Christmas Tree Cove and Neptune's Cove. Here there was also a lot of kelp, with temperature about the same. Vis ranged widely from 30 ft or better in the best spots, to under 10 in other places. Highlights included a large, seemingly sleeping bat ray, and lots of sunflower stars. At both spots it was sunny topside. A nice day to be out there.

• pinnacle cam Divebum Don 05:51:16 10/13/08 (0)
• Re: Palos Verdes 10/12/08 Max Bottomtime 21:09:18 10/12/08 (0)