Red Diving HoodMay 2016 - Red Diving Hood

What a beautiful day for diving it was on Saturday. A few days in a row the wind was coming from southish direction, allowing sediments to settle down, providing us a nice visibility and a flat calm seas. So we went to Folly Cove.

Sure enough the nudis were still there. We started the dive on the right reef, up to the big stone wheel then crossed over to the left wall. The nudi of the day was the doto. A saw quite a few of them, though still could not get a decent photos, since there were so tiny and white!

There were other kinds of nudis as well, but I didn’t see as much variety as I saw last time in Halibut Point. However, I managed to see another “new to me” species, Cuthona gymnota. That was cool. I love that even though I dive so often, I still see something new almost in every dive!

After the dive itself, obviously my favorite part of the whole process is to go through my photos and edit them. I like to zoom into 100% and look into details that I am not able to see under water, and damn, how much I miss due to lack of magnification in my eyes. There are so much hidden in the details. It is fun to open the photos and realize other creatures photo bombing without me realizing. This week a shrimp next to the seavase was the surprise. Funny enough, I was looking for those shrimps and couldn’t see any during the dive. I had to come home to see one 😀

I don’t know the details of the dive, since I left my computer at the Folly Cove. Thanks to Cape Ann Divers (Mary and Dave), I will get too see it again 😀

Dive buddies: Jason Feick and Dan Hedrick

Halibut Point always provides a beautiful dive. Though it comes with a price, all body pain for the the following few days! I don’t think it is easy for anyone to haul all those things we put on ourselves during the dives for 300 meters, then put those on and get to the water hopping on the big boulders while trying not to slip.

But it must worth it, since we do it as often as the weather allows.

The dive in Halibut Point starts with big boulders with a lot to look around but my favorite part is the atmosphere below 60 ft. It gets quite monochromatic, big smooth boulders everywhere but everything looks quite flat. There is something that makes it quite eerie. It feels like another planet. It feels like you may encounter something really cool any moment now.

We had a single dive and it was quite awesome. There were many different kinds of nudibranchs, including one I have seen for the first time, Aeolidia papollosa. Currently this is my favorite nudi. It looks really pretty and it is pretty cool, as in it has a slightly different defense mechanism. It secretes some mucus to protect itself form the sting of the anemone it is munching on. While this mucus is specific to that anemone.

Other nudis I saw were O. bilamellata, F. verrucosa, E. exigus, D. coronata, C. concinna, O. muricata, F. bontoniensis, F. gracilis (?). That’s quite a bit, huh?

Again during this dive we saw many skeleton shrimps all over the place. However, it looked like the shrimps with eggs were populated together. I wonder if this behavior is an adaptation to increase the probability of fertilization.

Oh, also butt loads of S. psolus. everywhere, eating!

And a northern red anemone in the middle of nothingness 🙂

New nudis, new observations. Another successful dive at Halibut Point. Until next time…

72 Mins, 62ft, 36-42F, 20-30ft viz

Dive buddy: Bert