<\/p>\n
Magician<\/strong><\/p>\n Early Friday morning, we headed out to San Pedro for the berth that the Magician<\/a> is docked at. We get on board and have breakfast. I had checked the dive boat the previous night and saw that the boat was still open. Checking it Friday morning, I noticed that the boat was full. So much for not having a crowded boat. I get on and was asked if I was part of the Pacific Wilderness group, which I thought was odd as I didn’t see anything at the dive shop talking about this boat trip. Later I found out that it is a bunch of Disneyland workers that need to get certified for working on a new water show that is being added to Disneyland. Their instructor is Bob, who certified me a few years ago. Also on the boat is Cliff, who was in the certification class. A good group of people were on the boat and off we went.<\/p>\n Our first dive spot was Ship Rock. We jumped right in and start taking pictures and enjoying the water. Brian didn’t have a hood, so he used mine. The water was very nice and I didn’t need the hood. <\/p>\n Nudibranch, and tons of fish.<\/p>\n No more pictures because I didn’t have moisture absorbing materials in the camera and when changing out the battery, moisture got inside and condensed effectively removing my ability to take photos…. But the rest of our dives were nice. We found a sail boat and a few other neat things. The really impressive things came the next day.<\/p>\n Casino point<\/strong><\/p>\n The next day we took the Catalina Express over to Catalina early in the morning to dive at Casino Point. We got on shore and took a cab ride over. There are easily a 50+ divers getting in, getting out, and getting ready. We get suited up and hit the water. And on this dive we hit 100 ft.<\/p>\n 1st dive, seeing a wreck, hjitting 100ft, and seeing a bat ray. We dropped down to check out the wreck, then followed the gradual decline to 104 ft, hung out for a minute, turned and headed back up. At around 65 ft, I saw a cloud of silt and looked around for bubbles as I first thought it was a diver landing in the zone, but I didn’t see a single diver, but instead, saw a bat ray just starting to get up from the sandy bottom. I stopped breathing for a moment as the bubbles tend to scare them off, and moved in for a quick picture.<\/p>\n After taking my picture of the bat ray, I exhaled which caused the thing to get up and start moving, so I switched to video mode and followed it for a small circle around Brian before it got annoyed and just bolted. Damn cool.<\/p>\n<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n