We left Orange County on Friday night and spent the night in Oxnard. I don't like sleeping on dive boats, especially only one night. The rest of our group of 15 divers from the Laguna Sea Dwellers spent the night on the Peace anchored at the Ventura Harbor. I didn't hear anything about pyjama parties so I assume they all slept. We met them on Saturday morning. It was chilly (for SoCal) and not too foggy (for June). We motored to Anacapa in about one hour and a half and moored at "Fish Bowl" for our first dive. The weather was not really cooperative and the sky was rather overcast. I had planned on shooting kelp to make some stitched panoramas but I soon as I entered the water I knew right away that it was not going to happen. Green. Thick green. Just like pea soup. But thicker. I will not say that the viz was to be measured in inches but on the way down, we probably had something like 10 feet.
  

We hit a kelp bed, but there was no light to play with. I shot a couple of pictures, most at 1/60s and they all came out very dark. I did not go lower than that because with the strong surge, there was no way I and any subject would be stable enough to avoid the big green blur.

So what to do in these conditions? Well, simply shoot close-ups! Bad visibility = opportunity for macro!

We start looking around and found dozens of spanish shawls. Using both the automatic macro mode at 1/125s with forced flash on and the manual focus multiple shot approach, I was able to get some decent detailed shots. The surge was strong and the darn animals were not particularily cooperative so shooting them "in the face" was tricky.

Swimming around we encountered a medium size spider crab. I tried to compose a picture with the crab in the foreground and a fellow diver in the background but I did not have enough angle to get the full diver. Plus the poor visibility messed up the background details pretty bad.

On the way back we found hundreds of another species of nudibranch: Hermissenda. I shot like crazy only to realize after a dozen shots that my camera was set to 1/20s and -1 exposure. No need to say that all of these shots came out pretty blur! The main issue with point and shoots and cold water is the deadly combination of thick gloves and small buttons cramed into a small area. So while I was fighting to set my Manual Focus, my darn camera was actually changing its shutter speed and exposure level! Anyway, I swam back and re-shot most of the nudis with the right settings... Hopefully I didn't miss a whale shark shot or something!

The next dive we moved to "Rat Rock" at the tip of the island. Current was mild, visibility was poor and there was less action underwater. Top side, a sea lion was fighting for its breakfast with a bunch of seagulls. We saw entrails being tossed around and snatched up by birds! Great White shark technique!

For the third and fourth dive, we moved to "Cathedral Gardens" and shoot more giant spanish shawls and a few octopus. I took a cool shot of a Mexichromis piggy backing on a sea cucumber!

On the last dive, the current had picked up and while we were chasing around a giant sheephead in even thicker waters we did not realize how far from the boat we were taken! Just before surfacing, we encountered a midshipman fish and I took a couple of head shots. Viz was so bad that I had to clean a heavy backscatter out of all of them... At the surface, I had to swim for what seemed like three and a half miles to get back to the boat. I guess I need to get back into shape... Maybe I'll buy a Wii fit...

In case anybody cares, temperature was reported to be 52°F. I did not even check my Suunto, it always tells me I'm diving the Caribbean... Time to get that dry suit training started!

On the way around the island and back, I shot a series of views of the island and the aft of the boat which I stitched together to make some cool panoramas... I must admit that I cheat a little topside: I use my trusty DSLR. A Canon (what else?) EOS 350D, one of the first Rebel.