The waters long the coast of California is abnormally warmer than usual. I was told that the kelp forest are gone or dying, but its expected around this time of the year. For months, we’ve been trying to schedule a get together to dive in Avalon. After finalizing, 5 diving buddies (Non, Goy, Sara, Kevin, Richard) and my newly certified brother (Jimmy) spent the weekend in Catalina Island. This weekend also marks the start of Lobster season and every charter I can think of was sold out. While the rest of the world was crazed bug catching fever–we choose to escape it.
To our surprise upon dive #1 entry, the kelp forest were truly gone. What remains was nothing like I am used to. On top of this, the visibility was at least 50-60ft, no currents, high tide making entry easy. Great Conditions!! We did 5 total dives including 1 night dive seeing so much including bat rays, giant black sea bass, octopuses, moray eels, lobsters, abalone, and so on.
Co-taught this class with Instructor Lisa Bell with the help of Instructor Eduardo Lopez. A solid group of Pacific Wilderness scuba students who transitioned very well into open water dives 1-4. Any class that can accomplish majority of the dive flexible skills on the 1st dive in my book is consider an awesome group of divers.
Saturday conditions were a little surge, 10 ft visibility, and occasional 4-5ft waves. Fortunately we had additional Instructors, DM, and DMIT to assist us making class safer and enjoyable. The water conditions turned for the better on Sunday with amazing 25+ feet visibility, easy water entries with plenty of sea creatures to see during the excursion dives between skill dives.
Special thanks to Eduardo, Helen, Sean, for spending their precious weekend to assist Lisa and I by making the experience so much more fun for our newly certified PADI open water students.
Congratulations to Tom, Brian, Peel, Garcia, Peter, Ben, and Cecilia for getting PADI Open Water certified. It was fun seeing every single one of your progress along the way. Keep on diving!
