With a full moon out and yesterday’s diving conditions reported as being good to excellent, Instructor John, Instructor Ron and I, took the mighty zodiac out to try another secret lobster hunting location.

We left King Harbor around 8:30 PM and took an extremely bumpy ride out; if I wasn’t so damn macho, I would have been sea sick and throwing up.

We anchored in 35 feet of water.

The lobsters, I’m thinking, are deeper now.

Ron and I went in our separate directions and swam deeper; John was still at the boat when I submerged.

Logged SCUBA Dive #361

SECRET LOCATION: 4f 66 66 20 74 68 65 20 67 61 74 65 73 20 6f 66 20 4d 61 72 2c 20 6e 65 61 72 20 74 68 72 65 65 20 63 68 69 6d 6e 65 79 73 2c 20 74 68 65 72 65 20 69 73 20 61 20 68 6f 75 73 65 20 77 69 74 68 20 74 68 72 65 65 20 61 72 63 68 65 64 20 77 69 6e 64 6f 77 73 2e, Palos Verdes, CA

Solo Diving, SoCal Buddy Diving

In With: 3000 psi
Out With: 300 psi
Max depth: 55 feet
Waves: Wind chop on the surface, fairly calm under
Visibility: 15 to 20 feet
Water Temperature: About 60 degrees
Total Bottom Time: About 40 minutes

Visibility was rather good – not too much silt and the water was extremely calm compared to the surface.

I saw a few shorts on my way to 50 feet and pinned a couple of obviously looking legal bugs – that is until I measured them.

As Maxwell Smart says, “Missed it by that much.”

I came across some really interesting reef structure – it looked like a wall of boulders that someone had dropped in 50 feet of water.

Antennae after antennae were sticking out of the holes and crevices, but the lobsters were out of reach; once my light hit them, they fled deeper.

When they’re hiding in the rocks, it’s really impossible to grab the lobster’s carapace without first touching the protruding and constantly probing antennas, and once touched, they take off deeper into the hole.

The lobsters tonight were generally spooked; even the ones crawling around on the ground immediately fled backwards as soon as my light hit them.

I have heard, that a full moon is a bad night to lobster hunt as the lunar reflection keeps the bugs in their holes.

Having caught six monster bugs on Opening Night, which was also a full moon, I thought that was just a myth; now, I think there’s some truth to the saying.

I tried my hand at digging some bugs out, but I had no success.

Yes, there’s some big ones in 50 feet, but they stayed home tonight.

I made it back to the boat where I tried to take my weight belt off and throw it on the deck.

My weight belt was caught on something – it was snagged somehow on my BC jacket.

Ron had just climbed aboard and I asked him for assistance; he lifted my BC, tank and weight belt into the boat.

With a little difficulty, I followed.

Somehow, one of the clips that holds my weights in place got hooked onto a D-ring on my jacket – I’m glad that I didn’t have to ditch my weight belt in an emergency!

Ron had one bug and demonstrated the “official DFG way the measure lobsters.”

I have been taking the gauge, hooking the front near the eyes and lowering the other end over the back.

The DFG does it the opposite way – they start at the back and lower the gauge to the head.

“If you can make the eyes move, it’s a short bug,” Ron said.

No matter how long you’ve been diving or hunting, you can learn something new every day.

John made it back shortly thereafter with one bug that he caught in 20 feet.

John reported that he almost got stung by a Pacific Electric Ray.

“There was some dark disk following me on the side, I stopped and almost grabbed it until I saw what it was and thought ‘Holy Shit,'” he said.

I pose with my catch for the night.

One of my neighbors, who is on my lobster ration list, asked me, “Your two buddies got one each, why didn’t you get any?”

I answered a question with another question, “Um, every been to Las Vegas?”

I’m so glad I don’t have to clean any lobsters tonight!

On the way to Terranea Resort, the water looked flat and dark – a good sign for great diving.

About six divers went off the Point; we had an extremely easy entrance today.

Professional Debriefer Paul still had my camera to download the underwater video from yesterday’s underwater pumpkin carving event, so I was camera-less on this dive.

I buddied up with the famous Melvin Pasley.

Logged Dive #360
Terranea Resort
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Dove with Melvin Pasley, founder of the Disabled Veterans SCUBA Project.

In With: 2900 psi
Out With: 300 psi
Max depth: 60 feet
Waves: Pretty flat
Visibility: 25 feet
Water Temperature: About 56 degrees, I think
Total Bottom Time: About 55 minutes

The water felt colder than yesterday.

Our group swam out to where Reverend Al believed the statue to be and submerged.

We hung around that area for about 10 minutes; I didn’t think we found the statue, but Al told me later, “We were right on it, you must have seen it.”

Well, I didn’t.

All throughout my dive, my mask kept leaking and I kept clearing it – sort of annoying.

I’m not bad on air, but nobody would classify me as a fish; Melvin was diving with 20 more cubic feet of air than I had, so I worried about cutting his time short.

We started to head for the cove when I had 2500 psi left.

Visibility was really good – 25 feet, maybe more in some areas.

We traveled through the kelp at a zero heading to 35 feet, then took a 30 degree heading to the cove.

We came across a huge bat ray, large sun stars and a few potentially legal lobsters that were hiding in a reef, out of reach.

After peaking once, to reaffirm my bearings home, I surface just outside the Cove with 300 psi; Melvin had over 1200 psi left.

I probably should have been paired up with someone who had an 80 cubic foot tank.

Professional Debriefer Paul was on shore to document our easy exit.

The debriefing was interesting with Melvin, Military Bob and Not New Chris – all of whom were either active or retired military.

Melvin got back from a tour in Iraq, maybe a year ago or so, and said, “If you are one of the ones that go out on patrol, it isn’t if you are going to get blown up, but when.”

“I saw a suicide bomber and a cement truck blow up… the guy that replaced me when I went home was killed two weeks later… some soldiers were blown up six times, all to get sent back on patrol.”

“A lot of soldiers can’t drive from here to Las Vegas because once you get past Barstow, the terrain looks just like Iraq and brings back memories…”

Veteran’s Day is coming and word has it that Not So New Chris will be deploying soon.

Not to cheat anyone out of a visual for today, here is a video that Not So New Chris made of today’s dive…

To watch the video on YouTube, click here.