Whoever had, June 1, 2023 in the “When will Joe Sharp finally go diving in cold water again?” sweepstakes, you’re the winner. If two of you are tied, the tiebreaker is that Ed Gullekson and I hit the water at about 9:40 AM on a gorgeous day at Redondo.
This was my first time diving at Redondo, and Ed was my tour guide for a great pair of dives and my wife Benita provided shore support. The weather was perfect and the water was calm, with a zero tide, when we entered the water for the first dive. We descended just in front of the MAST building on the pier, and followed the thick rope line towards the deep boat. Almost immediately, Ed found a lemon nudibranch. As we went further, Ed paused to take a picture of some of the local wildlife at about 40′ and I saw something scuttle near my left hand. It was a cute little red octopus; my first. I’ve seen GPOs before but never a red. I got Ed’s attention and he filmed him for a while. He (the octopus) seemed completely unbothered by our presence and posed as long as we wanted to stay. Heading further down we found a young wolf-eel and the visibility improved until we had at least 30′. We could see clearly from one end of the boat to the other. We continued on and hit the other highlights of the deep trail such as the Black Pearl
Dive #2 was excellent as well. I’d ditched my behemoth LP steel 120 for an AL-80, which was far more comfortable, so my buoyancy and movement were easier. Of course after a long layoff, there are bound to be equipment issues and mine was a leaky inflator that constantly inflated my BCD. At the end of the first dive I struggled with buoyancy as we ascended but I thought it was just rust on my drysuit diving skills. Once I figured out that was what was happening I could stay ahead of it and things were much smoother. The highlight of the second dive was a beautiful horned nudibranch on a strand of kelp. Ed was able to gently move the kelp to get multiple angles and lighting.
This day checked all the boxes for a special day diving in the northwest: great weather, excellent dive buddy and shore support, nearly all the creatures you look for plus a few special treats, like the horned nudi and the unusual sight of a sculpin eating a smaller sculpin, and tremendous visibility, especially for a dive in late spring. You can bet it won’t be years before my next cold water outing.
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