So it's now official. I had suspected it on my dives in Cress three weeks ago, and in Divers Cove last week, but now there is now doubt in my mind: the South Orange County Dive Club, in order to help its members look good on the beach right on time for the arriving Summer, has declared that all dives of said dive club must now take place at least 750 yards from the shore, leading to an average surface swim of about half an hour, probably burning 10,000 calories in the process. Oh, and you have to fight kelp on the way in (that we knew already) AND on the way back (this is new).

OK. I promise it's the last time, I think the health club thing has now been overabused (new word, deal with it).

We decided to go diving Crescent Bay this gloomy Saturday morning of mid-June and had a blast. We had a group of fifteen-something avid divers, ready for adventure, ready for the giant bat rays, the kinky sheep-crabs, the snapping Garibaldis, the massive kelp forests, the yellow tail tunas, the playful sea lions... We even saw a pod of dolphin when we went up the stairs to the beach to check out the conditions, so expectations ran pretty high! We were READY for everything!

And everything we got. At least a few of us.

The group split in two at the beach. Crescent Bay is sort of a dive hub from which you can access several reef structures. I decided to join the group that was going to the "Bermuda Triangle", a little off Seal Rock while most of the others decided to dive Deadman's Reef. I had dove DeadMan's before and although I was visited by a fun sea lion, there was really nothing extraordinaire about it...

That was a good choice.

The conditions were unbelievable. We had a moderate surge, but despite that the visibility was in the 20-30ft. Even at depth!

We started the dive in an urchin barren where I spotted a few lobster of legal size and took a few shot of an octopus. The Garibaldis were out and snapping at anything within a 15ft radius of their nest! Difficult to can piss them off as most of these nests where vertical...

I also decided to shoot video on this dive because the viz was so great, but also because it seems to have become the thing to do now, with all those GoPros around. The results are posted below. I don't think it qualifies for the SDUFEX because it's rather short and does not have a mantis shrimp in it anyway.

Past the urchin barrens, we hit the main reef structure and found a horn shark in a crack. Couldn't get a head shot though. We found a small octopus that was building its home with mussel shells, a horde of Garibaldis that were devouring an urchin, a big moray hiding in its cave, a midsheepman (the fish, not the cadet, we were not diving Deadman's remember), a few sculpins and a big bat ray. All of this in a nice dense kelp forest that starts looking more and more like the dive park in Catalina! Too bad the sun was not out (it's June after all), that would have made some killer sunburst pictures. Since there was not much light, I shot Tv 1/60s no flash and got some decent results. Macro setting as usual for close-ups: Tv 1/80s and forced flash. Color correction and backscatter filtering in post-prod. A few selective tonal contrast filter applications and voilà...

As we hit the end of the kelp forest at around 35ft, I realized I did not follow the advice of the Enlightened Diver who spoke at our club meeting last Wednesday to reduce my air consumption underwater (and above), because I was halfway through my tank and it was time to head back to the beach. Apparently, two other divers in our group did not listen either because they also decided to turn around. As I had absolutely no clue where I was relative to the beach, I found it smart to follow them. Until they try to go over a rock formation at 6ft, in the surge, and the whiteout, and in the kelp which blinded me... I usually dive rather light and I was almost sure I was gonna shoot to the surface in no time if I followed these guys. So I backed the hell out of the whirlpool and salad bowl and retrace my "footsteps" to where the depth gave some protection against the surge. Of course, I was by myself, the other group (the one that *had* listen to the Enlightened Diver) were long gone... Time for plan B. Swim back to shore. Must be that direction, right? OK, let's go. I started kicking in the direction I felt was the right one. I was sure. Yeah right. At 700PSI, I surfaced in the kelp to realize I was way past Seal Rock, on my way to Emerald Bay... So I took my compass out of my pocket *again*, took the right bearing and went back down to 15ft and started swimming back. When I hit around 100PSI (hard to tell with my gauge in bars), I surfaced again and found myself pretty close to the Deadman's group of divers who saw no bat ray, no midshipman and no kinky crab. Exiting the surf zone, I ducked under a rogue 3 footer with my reg in my mouth, just to realize that I had sucked my tank dry... It's not like I need compressed air on the beach anyway.

So once again, a pretty cool dive, in a pretty cool dive spot with a pretty nice group of people... If only I didn't have to swim in and back... Hopefully the climate skeptics will be proven wrong in the near future and California's waters will be just cozy enough so that I can re-join the warm water lovers of Laguna Sea Dwellers to dive Shaw's Cove again... Ahhh...

And now, the VIDEO!

You can watch it in 720p...