Red Diving Hood

Wow, it has been almost 3 months since I entered cold waters of New England. In between I enjoyed decently cool waters of North Aegean Sea in Turkey, in 14 dives, with my sister, that was amazing time. Since I do not have a drysuit, I was hesitant to get in the water this time of the year. But Saturday was quite warm, so wanted to take a chance, glad that we did.

To make sure to be warm enough we hit the site around noon, there were quite a few divers, all excited to see the new nudibranch we have in our waters, which is recently seen in Folly Cove. I was one of them, actually that was the reason I wanted to dive. We had a mission.

We did a surface swim to the left wall and just before decent I realized that I dropped my light, so spent ~half hour tracking back to find my light. During this time, surprisingly I was feeling quite warm (in my 7+7 wetsuit). At some point I gave up and told Bert that we should continue with our mission. As I had started to lose some body heat we had a relatively short dive, ~38min. But, the “hawkeyes” Bert found the nudi we were looking for, pulled me from my fins and allowed me to immortalize the moment with a few snapshots. It was just time, because I was feeling cold and was about to ask him to turn back. I needed some more body heat to continue looking for my light.

Had a nice swim back, caught some hermit crabs in action. Saw some tiny red gilled nudis along with regular critters like northern crabs, sand dollars, etc. Again, just when I gave up the search “hawkeye” Bert grabbed my attention with my light in his hand. He was definitely the hero of the dive <3

Overall we had way more than one hour time in the water, most of it I was feeling quite warm. The toes always freeze and lose sensation after winter dives, I know one day the little one won’t gain the feeling back. That will be a sad day, but not this time 🙂

Even though we didn’t have a usual dive we got to see a rock gunnel, two searavens, a few tiny nudis, the new lemon nudi. I would call it a success, anytime.

17ft, 38min, 45F, 10-15ft viz

Dive buddy: Bert

Moon snail - juve lemon nudi acadian hermit crabs acadian hermit crabs searaven

I am so glad that I decided to dive on this Labor Day, despite the predicted heavy wind and rain conditions for Sunday. Technically that kind of weather should mess up all sites, but I guess the winds were not as bad, I had a great dive with pretty good visibility (at the shores especially).

Our alternative sites had some swells and little waves crashing into the entry ways, so we headed to the beloved backup site, Folly Cove. The divers who just finished their first dive on the right side of the cove told us that the viz was quite horrible, much better on the sand than rocky areas, I thought left side is our best option, while also thinking I should have just stayed home and rest the soreness from Norman’s Woe.

Very early in the dive I had BCD malfunction, had to go back to shore to figure it out. Finally when I did figure out my buddies were way into their dives so I decided to go in by myself. I would eventually see them on the left wall, I thought.

Yeah, I may get crucified for this but I enjoy diving by myself way too much. However, it has nothing to do with how often I lose my dive buddies; that’s a photographer thing. 🙂 But good thing is I still enjoy myself even though I lose my buddies. And no, I cannot go up after 3 mins, meet them and continue. Once I am up my ears won’t let me come down.

Anyway, had a great dive! You know some dives are so good that you want to dance? Or maybe just let loose and just dart away towards a random direction because you have just too much joy? Yeah, it was one of those. I don’t know what are the parameters for such dives, some dives are just like that. Everything just lines up.

So the dive started with nice swim over the sand towards the wall. That was my favorite part. I came across a bunch of pipefish, stopped to take photos of every single one of them from every possible angle. They were all such beautiful pipefish and they all had different features. When do pipefish mate? I want to see a pregnant one! But I wonder even if I see one could my eyes realize that it was pregnant? I see most of the details at home on my computer!

The cool sighting of the day was the fourspot flounder. As I was swimming I saw this little flounder with funny face, funnier then usual. I was taking photos, like most fish, it turned its ass to me and shook off some sand and then I saw two spots on its tail! That was so cool, I thought it was a tropical because I have never seen one around, but, apparently, it was a local flounder. Funny thing is my buddies also found one during their dive! How things work out so awesome sometimes!

Rest of the dive was full of cunners, lobsters, crabs, more flounders, both winter and windowpane. I found the northern red of Folly, paid my respects and fed it a little sea urchin, sort of keeping a tradition Andy Martinez had mentioned to me just the day before. Just below the Red, I found Anna’s tablet, cleaned it a bit and paid my respects to her, as well. Oh, I also found a nudibranch in the same area, rare in September!

As I got deeper, cold water suddenly started to rush in and the visibility reduced significantly, since I was almost half tank I just turned around. At the shallows of the folly I got caught in the middle of school of stripers. They are always so beautiful but it is a bitch to get photo of them.

Another cool encounter I had was with a ocellate lady crab, which had serious attitude issues! As I got closer it got so worked up it wide opened its claws and started swimming in zigzag in front of my mask. Seriously, chill dude, I will just do few clicks and leave you alone!

I ended my dive at 80 mins with a happy face.

34 ft, 80 mins, 52 F, 10-15 ft viz

Land support: Bert Perry

Land buddies: dan Hedrick, Jason Feick, Suzanne Rose

pipefish skate eye skate fourspot flounder grubby nudibranch decorator crab "Red" ocellate lady crab stripers

I was doubtful about getting in at Bass Rocks this weekend, though that was the plan. As we were driving to the site, I saw the brown colored waves rolling in and decided that it was going to be another Folly Cove day today. Well, with an alternative site like Folly Cove you cannot get disappointed. 🙂

Because of all the change in plans and forgetting stuff in the car, etc, we ended up getting in after 10AM, in a perfect high tide, which also meant really cold water. The visibility was not greatest but still decent enough to keep the group more or less together. We had a nice long dive with plenty pipefish encounters. I chose one as my model and did some practice of macro shoots. Even with the most docile pipefish it is not easy to get a good shot of them. I really have hard time focusing on these guys with really slender body. I was trying to imitate some of the portrait photos of the pipefish I have seen online recently. I wasn’t very successful but cannot say I failed completely. Still need practice or maybe a better camera. 🙂

Other than the pipefish we saw regular stuff, crabs, lobsters, a skate, few flounders, two hake. We also saw a bundle of squid eggs. I hear this year was not great for squid viewing. For some reason they don’t seem to come in, so seeing the eggs is a good sign for people who are dying to see some squid.

Another nice long dive, however still feeling cold well into the summer. The water just does not warm up this year. Where the hell is Gulf Stream :/

32ft, 92min, 46F, 10-15ft viz

Buddies: Bert, Dan, Todd

The surface at Folly Cove is always deceiving. This time, again, hearing about the awesome viz at Back Beach, and seeing the reefs through the surface I was damn excited about getting in. The weather was perfect with very calm water. The viz was pretty good but nothing like 30 ft, which was reported for Back Beach. It was maybe around 15ft with some fuzz.

We entered at the peak low tide. It is a huge challenge to get to the water at low tide, but once you get to the water it is a breeze to get to the left wall, you just walk to it. I am not sure if I ever dove this low tide, because we just couldn’t get deep. Even at the Folly Point the depth was around 35ft. The water was warm enough, did not freeze to death. However, at the point a very cold water was rushing in, it was crystal clear but very cold.

We had regular critters, crabs, sand dollars, cunner, a few flounders and a pipefish. Towards the end of the dive I saw a snailfish resting on a kelp. This was third this year in Folly Cove. This must be the year of snailfish for me. 🙂 It is interesting, because all the info online suggests what these fish live “inside the mantle cavity” of scallops. But I never see scallops around.

One thing I noticed, similar to Fort Wetherill, the shallows were covered with a green seaweed, which looks like a messy dreadlock hair. It feels like this is new, but I might be mistaken.

It was a nice long dive. I was planning for two dives but one dive was long enough to be two dives. It is always a great dive at Folly, that’s why we keep diving there.

35ft, 54F, 103min, ~15ft viz

Buddis: Bert, Todd, Dan, Jason

pipefish snailfish

And the night dives begin as the official summer joins us. Already somebody reported seeing a squid. It is time for the squid dives!

The weather was spectacular for the long weekend. The reports all around said the viz has been really good near the shore and out at the boat dive sites. It is high tide so it is no brainer, we would dive at Folly Cove.

The days are long, we entered at almost 9 pm, planned to hit the middle reef (~30 degree bearing), then depending on out mood down there maybe head to left cove. We got under, amazing visibility, swimming over the clear sand dunes. Only thing we see for a long time is pregnant ocellate lady crabs and bunch of hermit crabs. I look up once in a while hoping to see a/few squid but there is none.

After a long swim we look at each other with question marks on our masks, then decide to hit the left wall. There was life and death near the left wall. With Cisco (a young male great white which has been patrolling the area) in my mind, I was quite skittish. Whenever I lost track of my buddies lights I would cover mine to clearly locate where they were and I would book it. A half eaten flounder swimming in front of me got my imagination going, as well as the dead one on the sand getting eaten by the mudsnails and a hermit crab.

As for life, there were lots of skate gliding on the sand, lobsters with bunch of missing legs still acting all macho, cods of all sizes hunting, winter and windowpane flounders doing whatever they do. At some point one of my buddies point frantically at a direction, where the other buddy was annoying the hell out of a beautiful red searaven. I join him :).

It was a great dive but I think the high point was when I saw a tiny little fish, which looked very unfamiliar, sitting on a rock full of weed. It was extended but startled with my lights, it moved a little forward and curled up and then I knew it was a snailfish. This little cute thing just came out from one of Connie Bishops photos and just sat in front of me :). I quaked a few times for my buddies, took a bunch of photos, they are not hearing me. I quaked the hell out, frantically waving my light, finally they show up. Jason and I, two cameramen, go crazy taking photos of this little fella. We don’t see these guys very often, the same group saw another one last year at Loblolly, but that one was much bigger and uglier. So it is a treat to see one and surprisingly later in the dive Jason points out another one to me. What are the chances!

One thing I noticed during the dive at the left side of the cove was a fecal matter kind of thing which covered everything from sand to the reef and wall. Some places it was a thin layer and at some it was a thick pile. Curious to figure out what that might be.

So, it was a great dive lasting 112 mins, full of sand, preggers, many windowpane flounders, lobsters, many many cod, some pollock, snailfish and a searaven. Could we ask for more??

112 min, 27 ft, 25 ft vis

Buddies: Jason and Dan

hermit crab

In mid-May I dared to dive with my wetsuit as my drysuit (I hate it!) is very uncomfortable for me and my dive buddies. The weather took a colder turn after the ridiculous hot days few days back, unfortunately. It has been a while since I dove, I needed to dive. And also it is good to know your limits. A test is always useful.

At the end the weather turned out to be better than I expected it to be. I think by the time we were getting ready the air temperature was around 60 F. There was a little wind but that was to be the problem of future Asli when she was done with the dive 🙂

I mean, I should not act like I am a courageous hero facing the cold winter weather with all my might. I am essentially wearing 16 mm wet suit, 7 mm wetsuit, 7 mm shorty vest with hood, long sleeve lavacore top, additional lavacore top and additional lavacore socks inside the boots :).  My suit was ready to protect me from the cold water and on top of that, following suggestions from fellow divers, I poured some lukewarm water inside my wetsuit before getting in the water, which really helped. At the end I could keep up with my drysuited buddies, had a nice dive for 79 mins. The water temperature was actually 50F, which is not too bad either way.

We decided to dive Folly Cove. The water looked a bit funky form the surface, it had a weird brown hue to it. Once we got under it was brownish green color through out. The visibility was not too bad, around 10 ft. There were many nudibranchs all over and many clusters of nudi eggs everywhere. The fish were back, we saw many flounders and skates. There were plenty baby grubbies and I saw a rock gunnel. As usual the other critters, skeleton shrimp, hermit crabs, regular crabs, etc, were all around.

At the end, even though the conditions from the surface was not very inviting, it turned out to be a great dive. Next week, hopefully will have more nice dives like this with improved weather.

18ft, 79 min, 50F, 5-10ft viz

Dive buddies: Dan Hedrick, Jason Feick

nudi eggs

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.

A. papillosa

Wow, it has been a while since I soaked myself in the ocean. The winter is here in full force, but the good news is it brings nudis in. Personally, if nudis were not around in the winter time I would never get in the water. It is so freaking cold and I hate, HATE!, diving with drysuit. Especially in the cold.

Yeah, I crib and complain, but it wasn’t too bad. It was a rainy Xmas eve, but at least we were observing above freezing temperatures. As I wanted to see nudis of all different kinds, we headed one of our and their favorite sites, Folly Cove. Our friends in MetroWest Dive Club had the same intensions as they were getting ready to get in the water as we pulled in the parking lot.

The water felt cold after long break, and looks like I forgot how to do cold water diving, so I felt the brain freeze and the cold all around the moment we entered the water. But cold is subjective. One moment you are cold, next moment you see something cool and you completely forget about it. So nudis scattered all around really helped us.

We had a relatively short dive, 56 mins, and most of it was near the intertidal zone with max depth of 11ft! We really didn’t need to get to further depths to see interesting creatures. Obviously the stars of the dive were the nudibranch. There were also a lot of siphonophores floating around. Siphonophores usually look like weird looking jelly fish, however they are a colony of different species floating around together. I really enjoy those creatures, however they are hardest to take photos of, being highly dynamic with the surge and transparent. We also saw a lot of creepy crawlies, all kinds of bugs and worms squirming around.

The overall dive was beautiful with great visibility and colorful algae scattered around. It was pain to get in the water, but once you are in it is a different story. And you know what they say, Folly Cove never disappoints.

56 min, 11 ft, 37F, ~20 ft viz.

moon snail

Slightly earlier than regular, we hit Folly Cove for a single tank dive. We were already in the water around the time we normally meet our other buddies. The cove was empty, we had it to ourselves.

We had a really nice dive, the water has been warming up, but the thermocline still hurts. There was plenty of marine life, cunners were around as usual, flounders of all sizes and skates “hiding” under the sand or running around. There was a shorthorn sculpin resting on a rock, until the photographers came to disturb him. On the way back from the wall we swam over the sand land to the shore, due to low amount of air and curiosity of what might be waiting for un on the sand. There were sand dollars :). Towards the end of my dive, after my two buddies finished their dives, I came across one big squid, always a treat to see during the day, and four pipefish. Before I ended my dive I swam back towards the left wall to say “bye!” to the little school of stripers I saw at the beginning of the dive and ended the dive at 82 min.

Another beautiful day and dive at Folly Cove. I am loving the diverse marine life this year!

82 min, 42 ft, ? F, 10-15 ft viz

Buddies: Bert Perry and Mikhail Chekmarev

Pipefish

Pipefish