January 20 - 21, 2007

Story and Photos Elaine Jobin, may not be reproduced in part or whole without advanced written permission.

On this warm and sunny weekend in January, I went on the Sea Sons trip to Talcott Schoal. Due to some rough ocean conditions, we didn't make any dives at Talcott. Instead, we were dropped off at some Santa Rosa dive sites that had beautiful conditions.

The Sea Sons, founded in 1955, are one of the oldest, and perhaps the oldest, dive club in Southern California. That makes this dive club older than the "Sea Hunt" (1958) television series episodes that were playing in the galley.

At times, the reflections on the screen almost made it feel like ghosts from the past were swimming through the galley.

What photos of this dive club looked like in 1955 I can only imagine. I'm sure they were not in color.

However, this is what they look like in 2007.

Primarily a dive club oriented toward hunting, dive sites were chosen accordingly.

It was an opportunity to dive in some areas that I normally don't "hunt" with a camera. Some dive sites were shallow and surgy. These are a few of my macro photos. I used this trip to test some 100 speed films. One of the ones I was trying was Kodak E100G - an extremely fine grain slide film. I don't know, I think the G in E100G stands for Green - I noticed a definite green tint.

One of the interesting and unusual things that I saw were critters jumping around on the ocean floor that looked like, and acted like, sand fleas. They were identified from the photo as amphipods, Chromopleustes lineatus, by Leslie Harris from the LA Natural History Museum.

Topside, we were continually enjoying great Peace dive boat food. It was tough on my diet..

I missed the night dive, which was rumored to be very pretty. On the evening dive, I was amused by large kelp balls rolling around the ocean floor and an octopus.

On day two, I found a swell shark in a lobster trap and couldn't quite figure how to get him out. One of the problems that I see with lobster traps is that other animals can get caught in them. I tried what looked like simple solutions to let him out, but none of them worked.

There were lots of fish.

Some schools of camera shy tube snout

And, some sand dollar beds.

It was another terrific weekend on the Peace with the Sea Sons. Thanks again to the Captains and the crew.

Until next time.....