Have you ever had one of those night dives when the visibility is so bad, your light barely penetrates the water? Merry and I had one of those. Unfortunately, it was at 9:00 this morning.

We've been watching the swell models all week, hoping for a day without getting beaten up on the way to the dive site. They all showed a nice week ahead. The National Weather Service predicted 1.6' swells today. The buoy data kept telling us it was between three and four feet, but we trusted the swell models. We were fooled again. I almost turned around as we passed the Avalon wreck, site of our last horrible dive, but held out hope that it would be better on the south side of the peninsula. It wasn't. We decided to make a dive at Marineland since we were already there.

As we dropped through the dark green soup that has plagued Southern California for months, the visibility actually got worse. We reached the rocky bottom to find slightly better than three feet vis. Merry and I each had our wide angle lenses on our cameras, so it was going to be a challenge. Merry was smart. She aborted the dive after a few minutes. I stuck it out trying to get close focus wide angle shots in a blizzard with the lights off.

I think we'll take some time off from diving until we hear about how clear blue the water is.