San Carlos Scuba Trip Report - San Antonio Point and Catalina Island
Day 1
This past weekend was my first trip to the Sea of Cortez in nearly six months. The last semester of grad school, combined with the launching of three companies has kept me severely landlocked. I had great expectations for this trip, and as usual, the Sea of Cortez delivered in fine fashion. This was still a working weekend for me, teaching scuba diving to new openwater students, but I had a couple of days of pleasure diving scheduled after the traditional 3-day trip. I was staying longer so I could dive at Isla Tortuga on the Baja side of the Gulf. Of course, working is a relative term. It’s hard to call the experience of sharing the sights of one of my favorite locations on Earth with a pack of new divers “work”.
Our first dive on Friday afternoon was at San Antonio Point. This is one of the best all-around sites along the coast. It is generally protected from both surge and currents, but also offers great scenery and the opportunities for more advanced dives if one desires.
We anchored just north of the small channel that runs between the mainland and a small offshore rocky outcropping. Our students did extremely well and we were able to have a very relaxing dive here. One student had a bit of trouble equalizing, so I stayed with her as well as her dive buddy till they were able to get down, while the other instructor took the rest of the group. Despite the difficulties, both were gushing with excitement about what we had seen on the dive.
The water at San Antonio was toasty, about 81 at the surface, and visibility was in the 40-foot range. This is one of the best sites to see large aggregations of nesting Sergeant Majors, Abudefduf troschelii, and this was no exception. Many males were tending clutches of thousands of purple eggs. These damselfish eggs were deposited along rock faces, giving the rocks a velvet appearance. The males themselves were turned a deep indigo, rather than their typical light blue and yellow. This coloration has been associated both as a territorial display as well as an attractant to passing females.
By the time we surfaced, the wind had begun to collect a number of jellyfish, the Pacific Man-o-War, Physalia pacifica in the area, so we moved for the next dive to Eagle Rock. This site will be covered in the next post.
This past weekend was my first trip to the Sea of Cortez in nearly six months. The last semester of grad school, combined with the launching of three companies has kept me severely landlocked. I had great expectations for this trip, and as usual, the Sea of Cortez delivered in fine fashion. This was still a working weekend for me, teaching scuba diving to new openwater students, but I had a couple of days of pleasure diving scheduled after the traditional 3-day trip. I was staying longer so I could dive at Isla Tortuga on the Baja side of the Gulf. Of course, working is a relative term. It’s hard to call the experience of sharing the sights of one of my favorite locations on Earth with a pack of new divers “work”.
Our first dive on Friday afternoon was at San Antonio Point. This is one of the best all-around sites along the coast. It is generally protected from both surge and currents, but also offers great scenery and the opportunities for more advanced dives if one desires.
We anchored just north of the small channel that runs between the mainland and a small offshore rocky outcropping. Our students did extremely well and we were able to have a very relaxing dive here. One student had a bit of trouble equalizing, so I stayed with her as well as her dive buddy till they were able to get down, while the other instructor took the rest of the group. Despite the difficulties, both were gushing with excitement about what we had seen on the dive.
The water at San Antonio was toasty, about 81 at the surface, and visibility was in the 40-foot range. This is one of the best sites to see large aggregations of nesting Sergeant Majors, Abudefduf troschelii, and this was no exception. Many males were tending clutches of thousands of purple eggs. These damselfish eggs were deposited along rock faces, giving the rocks a velvet appearance. The males themselves were turned a deep indigo, rather than their typical light blue and yellow. This coloration has been associated both as a territorial display as well as an attractant to passing females.
By the time we surfaced, the wind had begun to collect a number of jellyfish, the Pacific Man-o-War, Physalia pacifica in the area, so we moved for the next dive to Eagle Rock. This site will be covered in the next post.
posted by SeaCortez at
3:35 PM
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