Opposed wind and swell drove the dive boat Raptor into the sheltered anchorage of Potato Harbor on Saturday. It was 52 F, with quite a bit of sure even in this sheltered anchorage. Sand, urchin-covered rocks and a few patches of kelp were about all there was to see. And, abundant sunlight.
Physics must set the shape of air bubbles speeding upward from below. These bubbles were from a scuba diver 30 feet below, who was photographing some macro scene. The bubble shapes aren't stable: big bubbles break up (and rejoin) repeatedly on the way to the surface. The big bubbles look like the north-polar cap of of a sphere, with a flat bottom and vortices trailing behind. Calculations anyone?
Refugio Beach is the most entertaining and accessible cove along the Gaviota Coast -- for both scuba divers and ocean creatures. I learned to beach dive there, but after more than 200 dives at Refugio, I still see something new on every dive. Every day the ocean presents a new episode of its eternal serial drama, in which each scene quickly gives way to another, introducing new actors to meet with the old ones.
As I learned to dive, I began to recognize the players on California's ocean stage: sea slugs with electric blue margins and orange tufts, fractal-mouthed burrowing clams, anemones of all sizes and colors, all amidst forests of kelp and meadows of eelgrass. I noticed changes from year to year. A dozen angel sharks assembled beyond the rocky reef, the next year swell sharks gathered, and the next jellyfish flowed through. One year the gray whales migrated near shore, and one surprised me with its blasted exhalation when I surfaced. Lizardfish were common early on; they reappeared only years later. Cormorants zipped past me underwater. A wolf eel moved in for awhile, far south of his typical range. Refugio Beach contains an ever-changing variety of sea life.
Over 12 years, I've noticed trends within the many fluctuations: an erosion in the amount of kelp, increases in the area of completely bare reef, and a decline in sizes and numbers of fish. Lobsters-large and common on my first dives-are gone. Urchins are more plentiful, the kelp thinner. Indeed, records and photos from a half-century ago show that kelp is much thinner, and that many fish once plentiful, such as sheepshead, are now gone from Refugio; although they still thrive in the marine reserves in the Channel Islands.
We are affecting the ocean -- as we have been for generations -- and we have the power to change it more. We can't ensure the survival of individual ocean creatures, and some species may be beyond recovery; but the ocean has tremendous powers of regeneration. We can set free those powers.
This description of Refugio Beach was written for Marc Shargel's upcoming book, "Wonders of the Sea: The Southern California Coast".
On Sunday, 10 May, the visibility was about 20 ft, and the ocean was a chilly 50F off Anacapa. After 30 min at 50 ft, where my 6 mm wetsuit was compressed to 3 mm thickness, my face was stinging and my hands were clumsy. The same high winds that fed the Jesusita Fire have turned the ocean over, bringing cold water laden with nutrients from the deeper ocean up to diveable depths. And the same cool fog that damped the fires made for cool conditions above water and less light below. Nevertheless the dive boats were full, and stacked up next to one another in the Marine Reserve off Anacapa. As we prepared for our 4th dive of the day from the Peace, divers began to drop off the Spectre. The few relaxing atop the Spectre's deckhouse had probably gotten enough May diving for one day.
Before being fitted as a dive boat, the Spectre was an oil platform crew boat, called (I believe) the John Brown. It's been through a number of refits since then, most lately to get less-polluting, more efficient engines.
Waiting for divers to return to the Vision, at Wycoff Ledge south of San Miguel Island. The back side of San Miguel is to the left, and Santa Rosa is straight ahead.
A good stretch helps get a scuba dive off to a great start! The Vision was anchored above Wycoff Ledge, off the south side of San Miguel Island, on a cool March day with a breaking overcast. The water was 51F, and vis was 40ft. Surge was nearly absent despite a forecast of stormy weather. Underwater, thick kelp grew from the rocky reef, covered with clones of strawberry anemones and bryozoans between the holdfasts. Streams of krill wound through the kelp, segregated by size, and schools of hundreds of blue rockfish hovered above. We were on the South edge of Wycoff Ledge, where the reef drops from about 30ft under the boat to 85ft on the sand. Rain and high winds hit Santa Barbara before we returned, but our return passage was smooth.
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