In Advanced Scuba Photo, we have two cameras, the Beast and the Mother of the Beast, Canon Rebel T2is with monster underwater housings, complete with strobes, flashes, macro and wide-angle lenses.
My partner, Ben and I were using the Beast at Bird Rock, a tiny island off Catalina, which is a fantastic dive spot.
I’ll admit, we had already been down several times and I had pretty shoddy pictures. I wasn’t expecting anything miraculous to come of that dive.
It was the coldest morning of Session 62, the water temperature at the surface was only about 57 degrees.
But once we were down we saw the most amazing things.
The freezing water made for incredible viz, crystal clear. The first thing I saw was a large snail suctioned onto a piece of bull kelp.
Not 20 feet away, lay a delicate maroon sea star, nestled down between two rocks.
Then there was this very flashy garibaldi that kept swimming in front of the camera.
He even came back around after I’d swum away.
I thought he had the most magnificent eyes I had ever seen.
There was a clam down near the kelp beds, and he was lovely.
I was using the macro lens so I zoomed in very close.
I found my first abalone that day too, chipped but still beautiful.
There was another star hiding in the surf grass with marvelous spotting.
The kelp itself was pretty amazing too.
It was by far the best dive of Session 62.
infiniteblue 