Arriving on a perfect evening, we got ready for our dive. Vlad had taken his scooter down to the beach, and when I went down, I couldn't see it at all. My first reaction was that it had been carried out by a wave, but then I found it. It was behind a log that made it difficult to see from the path.
The tide was going out, and the visibility looked not too bad. Our plan was to scooter from the bay past the Cut, and then back. The first 15 meters of depth was pretty murky. But beyond that it opened up fairly nicely. We ended up seeing a great deal of life, and it was a great dive.
At the beginning, we came across a tiger rockfish near the day marker. They were not very common as far as I have ever seen, so it was very cool. 15 minutes into the dive, we also came across a lion's mane jellyfish. I got a too up close and personal with it, unfortunately. I saw it, and tried to turn left to avoid it with my scooter. That put my right into its tentacles, which dragged across my upper lip. It stung like the dickens! Up to that point, I had never actually come into contact with a lion's mane. It was painful but not horrible, and the cold water helped. I decided it wasn't enough to cancel the dive and we kept going. The next time, when I see a lion's mane, it will be stop first, then think about how to avoid it. I seem to remember the mantra "stop, think, act", which I didn't do in this case!
We also came across two octopus on the dive, along with a spidery tanner crab, and a brown box crab. The brown box crab was like a dull version of a puget sound king crab. Vlad got some good video.
At the end of the dive, our original plan was to do skills in mid-water. But the visibility was bad and I was feeling worse for wear with the jelly sting, so I made us do some skills near the bottom instead.
Back on shore, we rested on a log. Vlad turned his light on my face, and thought I was some kind of horrible monster. The jellyfish sting had really puffed up my lips. Here is a picture!
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