Conditions around Palos Verdes finally sucked just enough to allow us to travel to San Pedro to fill our gas tanks. After five weeks out of the water I was ready to kill everyone I met. We stopped at the Caissons for our planned first dive. Blue surface water was a warm 66° with a little wind and current. We pulled ourselves down the line to a thermocline at sixty-five feet that not only dropped the visibility, but dropped the temperature fourteen degrees. The dirty layer was so thick that we had a night dive at 9:30 in the morning.

The Caissons were covered with Speckled Rockfish Sebastes ovalis. Because of the poor visibility, they stayed pretty close to the top of the structure. There were also Blue rockfish, Vermilions, Sheephead and Blacksmiths.

After a short dive and a run to the filling station we headed back around the peninsula looking for a second dive site. The south side was getting rough, so we headed for the Redondo Beach Artificial Reef. The surface water here was brown, so we headed back in. I hope I won't have to wait another five weeks for my next dive.

• http://ub88.org/researchprojects/thecaissons/the-caissons.html

• Re: First dive in five weeks Kevlar 19:32:56 06/08/13 (0)