We made two more dives today to pad our logbooks for 2012. I finished the year at 117 dives. This was an interesting year of diving for me.

We found several octopus nests and even got to witness some hatching. Last February we made a trip to Morro Bay where Kevin Lee found a couple of nudibranchs we hadn't seen before. We spotted an otter right off Redondo Beach. I found a couple of nudibranchs on the Redondo Barge that were previously missing from my collection.

In May, I finally published the book I had been planning for twenty years, Diving the Palos Verdes Peninsula. It has sold over two hundred copies, about 190 more than I expected.

In June, I flooded my housing, toasting my camera and lens. DAN insurance was painless to work with and I was soon back in the water with a new camera and housing. It came just in time for our first warm water trip. Merry and I went to Cozumel to experience drift diving. It was not what I expected, but I got a few decent photos from the trip.

Merry made her 500th dive this year. She was a newbie when I met her. She is now a self-sufficient solo diver who gets better photos than I do.

Earlier in the year, I laid lines between all of the pilings near the Topaz Jetty in Redondo Beach. By August, sand and plastic debris began to be dumped on the site. Volunteers have been cleaning up the area for the past month, but it will take years before the life returns.

In September, we were able to photograph a wolf eel at the Redondo Beach artificial reef. Ian Uhalt recently found a juvenile wolf eel off Palos Verdes. It's good to see a variety of marine life in our little neck of the woods.

October brought blue water nearshore throughout California. It was amazing to see the surface from eighty feet below. We're not used to seeing more than eight feet!

This month we took Kevin Lee to Catalina where we photographed our first Hypselodoris californiensis. I think Kevin's collection is somewhere around ten thousand nudibranchs by now.

We ended the year by diving the Marineland Platform and Redondo Barge today. We had the same conditions we've had for several weeks. Decent visibility in mid-water gave way to dirty muck on the bottom. Kevin found an Acanthodoris brunnea, only the second time I've seen one. On the barge, I found a few nudibranchs and a single simnia. I guess it is the wrong time of the year to dive close to home.

I don't know if 2013 will top this year for us, but I'm looking forward to more great adventures under the sea.