Two months ago, I dove the oil rigs and loved it. Visibility was fantastic and the experience was quite unforgettable.

Today, the South Orange County Dive Club had chartered the Magician to go to the rigs again and I had signed up as soon as the trip opened, shortly after that first trip.

We left Orange County way before dawn and were loading our gear on the Magician, way before dawn...

Shortly after the sun came up, the boat started motoring towards Catalina Island and one hour later we were at the dive site. The first rig we stopped at was Ellen. These rigs are live and you have to be careful to stay under the superstructure because workers are known to drop stuff in the water, stuff that can maim a diver, stuff like hammers, wrenches or a 20ft steel beam...

As soon as I jumped in the water, I noticed that the viz was not really on par with what I had experienced back in January. It was not completely pea soup like the first time I ever dove these rigs two years ago, but it was pretty close... As it was not enough bad conditions, the current was pretty strong and the surf was about 5ft. And the sun was probably there but well hidden behind a thick layer of clouds... Oh well...

That did not prevent me from going all the way down to 110ft (33m) to snap a shot of the metridums. This time I stayed longer to get the perfect individual, big white mushroom. I was told that they grow way bigger in the Pacific Northwest, so next time I end up in Mukilteo, I'll make sure to bring my dive gear. There was a lot of fish on this rig, big sardine bait balls in the shallows, tons of rockfish past 120ft and cabazons everywhere in between!

Visibility at our second stop, Eureka, was slightly better but only by a hair. Once again we dove to 125ft (38m) to get a good shot of the metridums. Very cool on Eureka. Not much fish compared to Ellen, but the strawberry anemones are for some reason nicer there...

We had planned to stay on Eureka for our third and last dive of the day but as mentioned earlier, these rigs are live and there were ROV boats coming to work, so they asked us to leave. We ended up at Elly, right next to Ellen. Same viz, same fish. Plus a few sea lions that came check us out close. Very cool.

Photowise, I had my presets set to Tv 1/125s, flash, AWB, Macro. I had to increase it to 1/80s for a few shot as they came out pretty red... Other than that, nothing special, still good to be in the water, now I wish my wobbliness would cease...