November in Southern California is usually the best time to go diving. Water is not too cold yet (although readers from Florida will probably object) and the weather is often fantastic. Although off-shore options on a dive boat do have a better success at unbelievable visibility and awesome critters, I opted to go diving solo at Shaw's Cove, the only site in Laguna Beach where I feel comfortable by myself and Divers Cove with the peeps of South Orange County Divers.

That was great.

At Shaw's at first, I thought I had entered the water somewhere else; wrong cove? Too many Margaritas? Not at all, just a healthy reef with numerous new patches of kelp, due most certainly of a combination of MLPA, kelp reforestation effort, me picking up 15,000 urchins with 25 fellow scientist divers and a good dose of Mother Nature feeling rewarding these days.

On that Shaw's dive, being by myself, I took a tripod with me. I know, crazy eh? That guy told us to dive light and he took a freaking tripod underwater? WTF? Well first, thanks for remembering our motto. Then, I re-assure you dear fellow dive-light-point-and-shooters, the tripod I took was very compact and very light. A $9.99 piece of engineering made of aluminum and plastic, easily clipped on the front of my BC, easily snapped in place under the camera case, and voilà, a nice setup to at last stable videos... Or so I thought.

First, unclipping the whole thing, deploying the feet, setting it up on an uneven sea bed, fighting the surge and trying to look into the viewfinder while still pointing in the right direction is not a walk (swim?) in the (dive) park... I very quickly found out that there was a good reason real tripods stand in the hundreds of dollars and this one was less than 10 bucks... As my camera was wobbling from its seat creating a less-than-desirable shaker effect, I realized life underwater is not as easy as it seemed above water when I practiced the days before. Oh well. I eventually managed to get a few good almost-stable" scenes, the avid video-lover will directly jump at the end of this article to see the amazing results. Awesome visibility (although my friends from the Caribbean will probably object here too that 40ft does not qualify for awesome. Screw them) helps shoot stills at high speed (Tv/200+) to capture the rays of sunlight in the kelp and manual white balance in the sand made the video colors vibrant and real. Enjoy!

The dive at Divers Cove the week of Thanksgiving was less technical as I decided not to use the tripod this time. Visibility was a little less awesome than Shaw's but still in the 20-30ft that qualifies for pretty darn good by my book. We dove the north reef and here too the kelp was very nice. Not many purple urchins, a few sheepheads, cabazons, morays, and halibuts. The Thanksgiving barbecue back on shore was yummy and welcome after the dive!