I went out with Divemaster Bill Powers last Saturday for a refresher. It has been almost a year since I have dived, so it was very helpful. It took a long time to get going, so ended up doing just one dive, off a boat off of N. Point Loma. The dive was to 64 foot, into a rather sparse kelp bed. Even so, I still managed to get hung up on my fins a few times! There were a lot of medium sized calicoes and male and female Sheepsheads. Also, some pretty wrasses and señoritas. There were a lot of Blood sea stars. I did not note other kinds, but may have just been too busy with other functions of diving! We came upon several large spaghetti piles of sea hare eggs ( soccer ball sized!) and then a sea hare love fest where they were piled up upon each other. It appeared to be both the Black (Aplysia vaccaria) and the brown (Aplysia California) together, as there were individuals with various shades of brown and purple. Another highlight was a large rock covered with Strawberry corallimorpharian or club-tipped anemone (Corynactis california) in pink, purple, yellow and white. (According to Wikipedia, they can also be red and brown. Also, there is a true anemone in the Atlantic with the name Strawberry anemone (Actinia fragacea) that is in a different order.)
One obstacle to diving in a popular fishing area is that most boaters did not appear to recognize our diving flag. We would point it out as they zoomed by and they would smile and give up thumbs ups. Diver beware!
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