Review #9
Scott Van Hoosen (octopus at vanhoosen dot net) |
October 22, 2002 |
| Location: Tacoma, WA USA |
|
|
Dive Type: Salt Water |
Facilities: Phone Changing Rooms Parking |
|
| Hazards: Lots of new divers, depth, visibility |
|
Entry: moderate shore |
Surface Swim: medium |
|
|
Difficulty: novice |
Typical depth: 50 |
|
|
Dive site rating: 5 |
Max depth: 100+ |
|
Dive site description:
We could not dive under the pier, as a cop was telling other les_davis_pier.jpg (37359 bytes) divers to stay away from it, so we just headed out to see what we could find. At the surface, the visibility was one to two feet, but opened up to around 15 feet as soon as we started to descend. As we worked our way out to around 85', we explored a number of concrete sections with holes, making a decent artificial reef. I saw a large 18" bright maroon gunnel, only the second like I'd ever seen. I swam to Clyde to show it to him, but could not find it when we went back. We also found a couple of really huge lingcod. I noticed some interesting small life, like one clown nudibranch and a small hermit crab with a barnacle on its small shell. When I picked him up by the shell, he fell out of it (second time I've seen this happen now)! The naked little hermy scampered around, looking pretty scared. I was able to coax him back into his shell eventually, which seemed to make him trust me. He hung on to the thumb of my glove as I swam around for the next couple of minutes, until I finally had to remove him. Ah, the special friendships that develop in the sea! :^) We worked our way back up to the shallows, then practiced some buoyancy with a free-water safety stop and checked out a lions mane jellyfish. I was very happy with my new drysuit on its maiden voyage. I was surprised that I was cold on this dive when I had been warm on the first dive, but discovered after the dive that I had mistakenly put on my thin jacket rather than my thick one, which I'd worn on my first dive. No wonder I was cold! |
Directions:
Just North of Les Davis fishing pier. Note that you cannot dive under the pier. |
|
