Marine Room, La Jolla, California
One of my favorite fellow nerdy photography loving dive buddies had a birthday today! (Although he won’t admit to his nerdiness like I will. He calls it “awesomeness”. Insert eye roll here, haha) You know him as the Gentleman Fish from his underwater youtube videos! No better way to spend a birthday than in the water! In celebration of the bat rays and leopard sharks gracing us with their presence, we all headed to the Marine Room. Awesome topside conditions, baby waves and blue skies! We made most of the surface swim face down, snorkeling and checking out the bat rays. The black sea nettles are in full force at the Marine Room too. All between the surface to 10 feet deep. They just look so cool underwater! We dropped at the edge of the canyon and cruised around down to 114 feet. Not a whole lot out yet. I generally like this area for true night dives. All sorts of things come out. But still an easy dive with no current or surge. We start heading back to play in the shallows. Piles upon piles of bat rays on the swim back in. We made sure to swim higher up to not disturb them as easily. Which of course brought us face to face with the black sea nettles. As I was shooting photos of one average sized one, twisting and turning in odd positions to get “the shot”, I turn to come face to face with 3 more even larger ones! They are just such cool jellies!!! And then top off this already awesome dive, a leopard shark encounter. 😀 Check out the video below. Happy Birthday Ryan!
Max Depth: 114 feet
Temp: 51 degrees
Viz – 25-30 feet in the shallows, 10-15 at depth
Current: none
Surge: none
Bottom Time: 33 min plus lots of snorkel time
Eye Candy: black sea nettles, bat rays, leopard shark, banded guitar fish, scarcastic fringehead, blue banded goby, ronquil, octopus, flat fish, juvenile rock fish, yellow crab, and a kellets whelk
Leopard Shark (wait for it, wait for it…….)
Black Sea Nettles
Piles of Bat Rays
Bat Ray
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