While the rest of the country is fighting sub-zero temperatures, here in Southern California, balmy 70F (20°C) greeted us over the week end. Surf was down to 1-2ft, only one low tide, reports from 25-40ft visibility, in one word, ideal conditions to go diving.

I wanted to dive solo at Mountain, but the recent reports of bigger sharks kind of freaked me out. They're there, and we could be food. If you bring a buddy your chance of being bitten suddenly dropped 50%... So anyway, I decided to dive with the SOCDC peeps because they're cool, and with the usual group size of 5-10 divers, that's a 80-90% reduction of my chances of being eaten by a tope shark, recently sighted in our waters.

The original plan was to dive South Laguna, Montage or Mountain (all time favorite). The plan was scratched right away as a quick survey of the wave patterns showed conditions that we, expert divers, scientifically qualified as "crappy". We hence decided to dive Heisler Park (aka Picnic Beach).

Off we went.

When I started diving in Laguna Beach, I would always park in non-metered areas. Paying for parking as a "local" was for me heresy. Over the years, I changed my mind (getting wiser with old age?) and I'm now OK putting a few coins in the meters. After all, a couple of bucks to experience some of the best diving around is not the end of the world... I was however shocked by the sudden jump in price at Heisler: from $1.25 an hour last year, it suddenly jumped to $2.25 this year! That's an 80% increase! Way more than inflation, way more than my salary. What's up with that Laguna Beach? Have to pay for the next Pageant of the freaking Masters or what?

Anyway, parking was wide open (at this rate, I understand why) and we got the spot next to the stairs, no long walk for us this time!

After a short surface swim, we dropped at the first kelp forest and headed South until everybody was mid-tank and then back North. Easy peasy.

The conditions were SPECTACULAR. The water was cristal clear, with visibility ranging from 20 to 35ft. The kelp forest was amazing and I lost the group a couple of times shooting sunbursts, lost in awe at the beauty of our coasts. I don't want to dive Catalina anymore... Laguna is getting awesome!

The light was so intense that I had to increase my shutter speed to 1/400s and 1/640s to capture the kelp forest in all its splendor. I liked the result so much, I even submitted one pix for the Laguna Blue Belt photo contest...

The next day, the weather did not cooperate. It was cold and foggy. June gloom in January. Go figure.

We decided to dive Shaw's Cove because parking was an issue at Crescent. Just like the day before, we figured out the South coves would be messy.

Shaw's was not great but not bad at all. Viz had dropped to 15-20ft which is quite good for the area. I bailed out on the crevice as the surge was so freaking strong that it felt more like horizontal rock climbing than scuba. The rest of the reef was surgy too, but nothing like the crevice. Usual critters in lesser quantity.

All in all, two nice dives in the middle of winter.