The weather has been decent in the area this season, with only few heavy snow storms first half of February. However the winds have been hitting quite hard and have been scaring the creatures away. While it is the time of the nudis in the water, last time I dove at Folly, late January, I barely saw any nudibranchs. And the fish I saw were all piled up, hiding, in the crevices.
This weekend on Sunday the weather provided a lovely spring like day and plenty of us went for a dive. We were again at Folly Cove, because nudibranchs loves Folly so we love Folly. The water was calm and the viz appeared to be decent from the surface (fake news!!).
In two separate groups of three we entered the water. Obviously the water temperature did not warm up immediately with the news of good weather so it gave its customary crazy headache upon descending. The viz was not great, I should stop getting excited based on the view from top. It was around 10 ft, which is around average for here.
We had around 50 min of dive with max depth of 17 ft. Due to the cold we did not get too far on the left wall but we saw plenty. I cannot say the nudibranchs are back in full force but we did saw good of variety, most of them very tiny. I have been quite uncomfortable with my new drysuit, so I couldn’t focus and contribute to finding creatures under water, mainly I was just taking photos of the cool nudis Bert and Dan were pointing at me. There were plenty of frilled anemones around, open for feeding, and variety of shrimps swimming in the water column or trying to bury themselves under the sand. I did not see a single fish during the dive.
The kind of nudis we saw today were P. dubia, F. verrucosa, A. papillosa, D. frondosus, D. fragilis, O. muricata, O. bilamellata. that a good variety for a short dive!
50 min, 34 F, 17 ft, 10 ft viz
Buddies: Bert and Dan.
