Posted by Ross-O on April 24, 2005 at 18:21:17:
Hi Guys,
Brian, Phil, and I stumbled across some incredible vis yesterday. Our first dive was around Marineland and we only had 20' or so at depth. Our second dive was the wreck of the Avalon. Above 30 fsw we only had 20' vis but below 30 fsw it opened up to 50 FEET! It was amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes when I got below the soup and could see the 80' bottom from 35'. We had an incredible dive. We swam from the bow to the crane and back. A sea lion dive bombed us when he wasn't busy chasing blacksmiths. We found lobsters, big ling, and large schools of fish. There were a couple of balls of Sargo that had maybe 40-60 fish in a tight formation about the size of a dish washer. I even saw a school of Pacific Barracuda. I *really* wish I would have had my camera with me on this one (alternately, a Jlyle, ChrisM, RogerC, Chris, or Elaine would have done the trick - I gotta start packing one of those for photographic emergencies!).
Saturday was the kind of trip that gets me all fired up and ready to battle another 50 dives of harsh to mediocre conditions in hopes of stumbling across that same combination of vis and life! Life is good.
Cheers,
Ross-O