What can feel any better than waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go pick trash on an island off the coast of Southern California? Maybe the feeling that we actually did something useful underwater for a change? I don't know, but anyway, two of my buddies and I participated with something like 600 other divers from all around the state, the country and even the world (I heard someone came all the way from Japan this year) for the 31st Annual Avalon Harbor Cleanup.

Just like last year, this fundraiser event aims at collecting monies for the local hyperbaric chamber and also at cleaning up the well used Avalon harbor. We had planned on cleaning up Step Beach this year but we had a last minute change of heart and decided to stick to the Green Pier, just like last year. We kind of know the site now...

At 9:30am, the siren was sounded and all divers were invited to go in the water and collect as much trash as they could. Careful not to mistake these weird egg casings for some kind of rubber this time... After a 40 minute dive, I came back with half a glass bottle of beer, a few pieces of paper and... an iPhone. I was pretty proud of the human race at that time because last year I collected way more crap. However, when I saw what *others* had collected, my hopes that finally ocean users of all types were starting to realize that our seas were not gigantic trashcans were trashed to smithereens: on a giant piece of blue tarp lay hundreds of discarded items including poisonous batteries, plastic containers of all kind, what could have been a folding chair corroded beyond recognition, cans of all sorts and numerous other items that belong to a landfill. At least, now that's where they're going...

The event has a few contests: smallest object, biggest object, most expensive object... etc. They also have a special prize for the best "BS" story behind a find. Last year I think the "Justin Bieber comb" won first place.

As we did not have much trash between the three of us, we combined everything into my bag and I went to the tarp to dispose of it. One of my buddies had collected what he claimed was men's underwear. I entered my iPhone as "best electronic object" or something and what I renamed "a pair of used and dirty men's underwear" as "most perverted object". All that under my name.

Last year we stayed for the raffle and the chubbing (when they throw t-shirts, monkeys or buddy beaters at the crowd, not the urban usage of the term), this time my favorite buddy and I decided to go diving the Casino while the third one stayed to collect the prizes.

The dive at Casino Point was nice, viz was probably in the 30's with some very nice areas in the shallows. Ideal for sunbursts. Oddly enough some of my pictures came out with backscatters so I must have been shooting forced-flash for no reason. Also the G12 most of the time defaulted to 320 or 400 ISO which makes the pictures rather grainy. I need to look at that and see if I can still shoot Priority at lower ISO. 80 or 100 is probably best in these conditions, nothing justified 400. I also shot a couple of videos of sunrays in the kelp, like a peaceful intro to something. Maybe I'll end up with enough footage to make a 5 minute feature for the upcoming SDUFEX. If only I had a mantis shrimp...

Anyway, after the dive, we came back and met with my other buddy left behind.

We learnt that the BS-award was won by one of the BBC/NatGeo crew who was there to document the event, and made up a story about using the spear gun he found to free himself from inside a great white. As far as my buddy was concerned, he won a special package of 3 hotel nights on the island (not bad at all), my other buddy won a diving teddy bear and I won the most perverted award for the underwear!

I kept the iPhone by the way. I'll be trying to resurrect it over the next few days. It already went to two baths of isopropyl alcohol to get rid of the salt water and will end up in rice for de-humidification. I don't have high hopes, but you never know... I'll keep you posted, stay tuned!