Nate Cooper's Dive Log: 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Dive 56 - Newport Pier - Newport Beach, CA

12/15/10

This was our second ever night dive and was simply outstanding! We've been talking to Mike for about a month trying to find a night where the conditions are good for a dive and we finally go it in right before the rain hit.

We saw tons of Spanish Shawls, various other Nudibranchs, lots of crabs (lots of them mating too). There was a large sea star that was eating a crab. The highlights were seeing two bay pipefish, a relative of the seahorse that is about as thing as a headphone cable and also Mike found an Octopus hiding under a fallen plank.

Great dive. Mike said it was possibly his favorite ever california dive, I can understand that. Nothing is quite as amazing and haunting as going into the ocean at night.

· Time In: 07:52 PM

· Bottom Time: 00:49

· Depth: 21ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Mike Kelly

· Visibility: 5-10 ft

· Temperature: 57º

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Dive 55 - Shaws Cove - Laguna Beach, CA

12/08/10

2:03pm to 2:31pm
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Joe Tustison
Depth: 33ft
Bottom Time: 28 minutes
Vis: 8ft to 10ft
Temp: 57°

Notes:

We did this dive on the same tank as the earlier dive, as we had about 1800 PSI left and didn't want to walk up and down the 80 or so stairs at Shaws Cove, which is a daunting task with 70lbs of gear on your back. Especially after doing a bunch of overhead squats that morning at Crossfit.

The thing that amazed me about this dive, was how much worse the conditions were only about 40 minutes after getting out of the last dive. Surge was noticeably stronger, visibility was lower, and the water at some point turned very green (usually something you only see around 50 feet and below).

I fixed the issue with my video housing, however, when we got down the lense fogged up, so again I was unable to shoot. This can happen due to temperature shifts, I need to get some moister packs to put inside the housing.

There was one epic moment looking up at a giant reef structure with Kelp surging back and forth that was quite nice, but short lived.

Since it was our AWARE fish ID dive I should point out a few things we saw:
- Lots of girabaldi
- Lots of Sea Urchins
- Some Spanish Shawl Nudibranches
- A really cool rockfish

This was our Final AWARE Certification Dive.

Dive 54 - Shaws Cove - Laguna Beach, CA

12/08/10

Start: 12:40pm
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Joe Tustison
Depth: 35ft
Bottom Time: 34 minutes
Vis: 15ft to 20ft
Temp: 57°

Notes:
Very fun dive, we saw lots of Spanish Shawl Nudibranches. Such fun little creatures!

Visibility was oddly much better closer to shore, maybe about 20ft. Once we got out to the edge of the reef structure it was not as good. Jenni got some nice pics. I was hoping to get some video, but I messed up when I put my camera into it's housing and I was unable to use the record button.

This was our final Underwater Photography dive.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Dive 53 - Casino Point - Catalina Island, CA

11.28.10

Time: 11:06am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper
Depth: 41ft
Bottom Time: 41 minutes
Vis: 15ft
Temp: 61°

Notes:
Casino Point is a world class dive site. It's sort of a 'Best of California Diving' location. It hosts big rocks, a ship wreck, sunken tires, a sunken swim platform, sunken piers, loads of kelp of many sizes, tons of fish, from time to time you'll even see a giant sea bass. You enjoy a dive at 30 feet just as easily as 100ft in Casino Point. It's also for divers only and is a protected habitat so the fish are super friendly, it's almost as if they know you can't do anything to them.

I love Casino Point.

This was the worst conditions I've ever seen there. Visibility was 12 to 15 feet, where it usually ranges 20 to 25 feet, often better. The surface was choppy. It was cold outside. When we got there, we slightly considered not even diving. Luckily we went in.

Despite the less than perfect conditions it was a very fun dive. We stayed above 50 feet the whole time and barely went through half a tank in 41 minutes. There were many of the classic Catalina fish (Garibaldi, Sheephead, various bass) and a couple really fun little guys including one of my favorites a C-O turbot. Jenni found a six legged star fish, quite odd.

Nothing spectacular, but a really fun little dive.

It was so cold coming out of the water we decided to stop the day at one dive. We spent the rest of the day driving around Avalon in a golf cart and shivering over some whiskey.

Life on an island is good!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Dive 52 - Shaws Cove - Laguna Beach, CA

11.20.10

6:58am to 7:29am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Linda, Sam
Depth: 25ft
Bottom Time: 31 minutes
Vis: 12ft
Temp: 63°

Notes:
This was the beach day for our Rescue Diver Course. We were taught by Linda Shafer at Beach Cities Scuba in Orange County. She was a very good instructor, we usually work with Joe Tustison also a great instructor but he was not available on the dates we wanted.

The day started out early. We met at 6:30am. It was cold and rainy, however, it was just acceptable enough to go out.

When we first went into the water the swells were pretty mild maybe 2 feet. But within 1 minute of getting past the surf zone swells picked up to 3/4ft with some 5ft swells in there. The conditions were also pretty choppy with mild white caps in the open water. Once we dropped down it was much calmer and the conditions were actually pretty decent for Shaws Cove.

Our dive was a 'Search for Missing Diver' dive. Think of it as hide and seek. So once we were down, we swam to the main reef and the three of us taking the course waited while Linda disappeared into the blue. We waited the planned 2 minutes and began our search patterns. Per previous conversations with Jenni and Sam, we went with a U-Shaped search pattern. Basically, set your compass swim 3 minutes, turn 90°, swim 15 seconds, turn 90°, swim 3 minutes and repeat.

Sadly we did not find Linda, however, she said that she saw us swim by twice. So we did the search patterns fine, but need to be more aware with our looking around.

The rest of the day we did things like recover unconscious divers from the sea floor, do CPR in the water, take off a non-breathing victims gear, etc. etc. It was very choppy by the end of our day, Linda assured us if we were able to do our drills today we would be fine helping people in real life.

Although I hope we will never have to recover and unconscious diver and perform CPR in the ocean, it feels good to know how to handle it.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Dive 51 - La Jolla Shores - San Diego, CA

11.16.10

Time: 10:19am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Mike Kelly
Depth: 106ft
Bottom Time: 45 minutes
Vis: 20ft
Temp: 55°

Notes:
Met up with Mike Kelly, our friend from Beach Cities Scuba in Newport Beach. This was a Tuesday morning dive that we've been talking about doing for quite some time. Mike has Tuesdays off and I work 1:30pm to 10pm on Tuesdays.

We had hoped to do 2 dives, 1 at La Jolla Shores and 1 at La Jolla cove, but we were all running late and only had time for 1 dive.

It was a very nice dive, we met a couple other divers that came with us. They were nice and good to dive with as they were experienced but slow and cautious. We started the dive swimming out about 1/2 a mile then dropped down at about 30 feet. This was directly in front of the main drop off a La Jolla Shores. It drops steep from about 30 feet down to a valley that runs to something like 2500ft. We went to 106 feet and stopped.

There were many large crabs down there and some wild sea anemones. We stayed that deep for about 5 minutes and then went up to about 60 feet where there was a rock/reef about 40 feet long. We hung out there for a bit and looked at fish. There was a fun rock fish hiding as they always do.

We did an underwater swim all of the way back to the shore until we were in about 4 feet of water. We saw a couple of small string rays, a favorite of mine. About 10 minutes before the end of the dive the two guys we met parted ways to surface and swim back because one of them was out of air.

Overall a great dive. VERY cold, this actually prompted us to go buy some thicker under layers so we can dive in winter.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Dive #50 - Fraggle Rock, Catalina - 11/07/2010

· Bottom Time: 00:39

· Depth: 62ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison

· Visibility: 30+ ft

· Temperature: 55º

Dive #49 - Krolls, Catalina - 11/07/2010

· Bottom Time: 00:29

· Depth: 73ft

· Buddy:Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison

· Visibility: 15 ft

· Temperature: 55º

Dive #48 - Krolls, Catalina - 11/07/2010

· Bottom Time: 00:26

· Depth: 99ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison

· Visibility: 25+ ft

· Temperature: 55º

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Dive #47 - Picnic Beach, CA - 11/06/2010

· Time In: 12:48

· Bottom Time: 00:29

· Depth: 32ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10ft

· Temperature: 57º

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Dive #46 - Picnic Beach, CA - 10/10/2010

· Time In: 11:25AM

· Bottom Time: 00:30

· Depth: 24ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10-15 ft

· Temperature: 59º

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Dive #45 - La Jolla Cove, CA - 10/09/2010

· Time In: 04:17PM

· Bottom Time: 00:18

· Depth: 27ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10-15 ft

· Temperature: 57º

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dive #44 - Black Coral Wall, Honduras - 09/23/2010

· Time In: 06:15PM

· Bottom Time: 00:44

· Depth: 70ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Dive Master

· Visibility: 40 ft

· Temperature: 86º

Dive #43 - Rocky Point/Ted's, Honduras - 09/23/2010

· Time In: 10:04AM

· Bottom Time: 00:40

· Depth: 76ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 40+ ft

· Temperature: 86º

Dive #42 - Utila, Honduras - 09/23/2010

· Time In: 08:34AM

· Bottom Time: 00:34

· Depth: 57ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 30+ ft

· Temperature: 86º

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Dive #41 - Cara a Cara, Roatan Honduras - 09/22/2010

· Time In: 12:14PM

· Bottom Time: 00:35

· Depth: 73ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Esteban and group

· Visibility: 40+ ft

· Temperature: 86º

Dive #40 - Half Moon Bay, Roatan, Honduras - 09/22/2010

· Time In: 8:56AM

Dive #36 - Paradise, Utila, Honduras - 09/20/2010

· Time In: 1:47pm

· Bottom Time: 00:09

· Depth: 41ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 40+ ft

· Temperature: 86º

Dive #35 - Sting Ray Point, Utila, Honduras - 09/20/2010

· Time In: 11:18am

· Bottom Time: 00:36

· Depth: 24ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 50+ ft

· Temperature: 86º

Dive #34 - Utila, Honduras - 09/20/2010

· Time In: 8:43am

Dive #29 - Pirates Cove, Catalina, CA - 09/05/2010

· Time In: 08:19am

· Bottom Time: 00:41

· Depth: 52ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10-15ft

· Temperature: 64º

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Dive #28 - Pirate's Cove, Catalina, CA - 09/04/2010

· Time In: 02:37pm

Dive #25 - Casino Point, Catalina, CA - 08/07/2010

· Time In: 02:10pm

· Bottom Time: 00:30

· Depth: 31ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 15-20ft

· Temperature: 58º

Dive #24 - Casino Point, Catalina, CA - 08/07/2010

· Time In: 12:40pm

· Bottom Time: 00:32

· Depth: 45ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10-30ft

· Temperature: 58º

Dive #23 - Casino Point, Catalina, CA - 08/07/2010

· Time In: 11:27am

· Bottom Time: 00:23

· Depth: 69ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper

· Visibility: 10-20ft

· Temperature: 61º

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Dive #22 - Empire Landing, Catalina, CA - 08/01/2010

· Time In: 02:06pm

· Bottom Time: 00:39

· Depth: 39ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison

· Visibility: 20ft

· Temperature: 59º

Dive #21 - Goat Harbor, Catalina, CA - 08/01/2010

· Time In: 12:33pm

· Bottom Time: 00:33

· Depth: 59ft

· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison

· Visibility: 15ft

· Temperature: 59º

AWARE dive