Before the tariffs hit and swallowed a chunk the size of Texas off my retirement funds, I had ordered a new wetsuit from China. Yes I know. Crazy right? I had bought a 3mm for warm water diving on Amazon and I'm pretty sure it was a Chinese import. Cost me about 40 bucks. This time, I was looking for a 7mm wetsuit I can don by myself so that I don't have to ask strangers to zip me up every time I solo dive. All the stuff I found through the regular channels were crap and very expensive. So I went on AliExpress and bought a 7mm with a front zipper and an integrated hood for less than $100. I added a 5mm jacket in case I get really cold but I did not wear it today. Maybe I should have, water was 52F (11°C)! I'm not fond of the integrated hood, it's a bit too tight but all in all the wetsuit fit OK. If you want to follow the same route (still have a couple of days before prices go up), make sure you chose the right size. I wear US medium and bought the Large. Sizes in China are all other the place, so you'd better check the sizing charts attentively otherwise you'll be SoL.   

And now, back to the dive. It was chilly. My body was quite OK due to the new wetsuit, but my face and my hands were freezing. I should also have ordered gloves to replace my 20 year old 3mm Scubapro gloves! Viz was OK, not spectacular at all, probably around 15ft. I took the crevice route to the Crescent junction. Star Wars Canyon was very dark so I decided to go down one of the South-Eastern canyons past the whiteout zone instead. I ended up in the middle of the reef and had to go up and down quite a few times before re-joining the main reef at turn-around rock. I found the new plaque dedicated to Daniel Duffield right as I was exiting the inner reef. I went back in a bit further South to check out more canyons and walls. There was a lot of bugs everywhere, some massive. Can't touch them though...  There was also still a lot more sea cucumbers than I remember from previous years. As I continued further through the inner reef, I ended up in kelp. The viz dropped to less than 10ft with a lot of particulates in the water column. No sunbursts today sorry.   

I shot mostly flash/macro/Tv125 and a bit of wide/noflash/Tv400 in the kelp patch. Nothing spectacular to capture, the soupfins still eluded me. Maybe next time...