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The instructor that certified me is on the trip; but other than him, I don’t know anyone else on board. There are a group of Japanese divers that are from another local dive shop: Cal Divers in Torrence CA on the boat. There are two Mexican divers that I briefly chat with, and a handful of white guys. I’m the only Chinese guy on the boat. The trip starts off as any standard boat trip, the only difference from my other dive boat trips is that it’s 8:00PM when we leave the port.<\/p>\n
Here are some pictures as I play with the different night time shooting modes of the camera. Without a tripod and on a moving ship, not much I could do, but got some pretty interesting tracer effects.<\/p>\n
The galley is in full swing and we’re quickly fed a spaghetti dinner with all the trimmings; salad, garlic bread, meatballs, etc. After the meal, I wander around and chat with random folks. I help snap a group photo for the Japanese divers. The general mood is excitement for the coming lobster opener. There are a few folks that have never done this trip, and we discuss past hunting experiences from previous years and various good spots to dive. Pretty standard conversations for these dive excursions. After getting some time to digest the food, I head in to my bunk and crash out for about an hour.<\/p>\n I awoke to the lack of engine noise as we arrive at Catalina Island. Excited, I jump out of the bunk and head outside to see it the boat fairly empty. Most folks are still asleep; and it’s only 10:30. We still have another hour and a half before lobster season officially opens. I get some of my gear ready; but it’s still too early. But I cannot go back to sleep, so I just hang around and chat with the few folks that are awake. I meet Brad, this is his first lobster opener trip as well, and he’s alone, so I’ve found my dive buddy. <\/p>\n Time ticks by very slowly. Around 11:15, everyone is woken up and starts to suit up. We are briefed before the dive by the captain and the dive masters. Words of caution and to have fun and keep our heads cool while we hunt is the main focus of the briefing. We are released to jump into the water at 11:30 with the explicit statement that lobster season doesn’t start until 12, so “we’re not to catch anything until 12” (Translation: don’t return to the boat before 12 with anything in our nets). Brad and I decide to go in at 11:45; so we suit up and are in the water. <\/p>\n We kick out to the front of the boat near shore and drop down. We try to stay together for a bit, but not long after the start of the dive, we are separated. There is a good amount of kelp and searching around rocks for the usual hiding spots of lobsters makes it that much more easy to lose one another. I take a look at my gauge to check my depth and my computer is off. F me, the damn battery died, I push the button on my computer and it lights up, only briefly, to tell me that I need to change the battery. *sigh* Ok, no deep dives for me, I’m sticking with staying shallow. There are small lobsters everywhere. I try dual wielding lights but it only works to spook the fish and alert the lobsters of my presence, so I switch to only one light. Good to keep my other one around just as a backup. <\/p>\n I run up against a few lobsters but fail miserably at catching them. They are highly sensitive to light, and vibration, so if they feel a quick rush of water from my hand pushing forward, they run; if they feel my hand or any part of me with their antennae, they run; if they see the light, they back or walk towards their rock home and back in deep within their caves. So I resort to using the light as a quick pass and moving the light or turning it off as soon as I spot a sizable lobster. I creep up on one that is at least 6-7 lbs. Having no means to catch it or little faith that I could possibly pin it with just one hand, I try to position my goodie bag behind it and scare it into backing into the bag, this fails miserably and the lobster is gone. At the mere sight of that first large lobster, my heart was racing and the adrenalin was pumping, I had to mentally calm myself down so that my air consumption returns to normal. An accelerated heart rate and adrenalin will only result in quickened pace of breathing wasting air for no reason.<\/p>\n I move on and spot what I feel is a decent sized lobster, but it’s walking somewhere, so I follow it, and it leads me to an even bigger lobster, so I reach and pin the bigger lobster. It’s fighting me, but I have a death grip on the little bugger. I open up my bag and thrust it into my bag and carefully and quickly remove my hand from the bag and close it. WOOHOO! I have bagged my first lobster of the night. I continue to search. I see something in my peripheral and it’s large. I get a little spooked thinking it may be a big fish, but it’s a big seal. And where ever my light was pointed, it’s head went to get food that I was apparently helping it hunt. The seal hangs out with me for a few minutes thwarting my lobster hunting. And eventually, it got bored and left. But returned later. I was down to 500 lbs of air so I looked up to see the lights and headed to what I believe was the boat. Since I was in only 30-40 feet of water at most, I slowly ascended towards the light. On the surface, I find out that the large light was just the almost full moon. The ship wasn’t far off, so I just kicked back to the boat and got on board with my first catch. I gear down and chat with my dive buddy. He’s running an aluminum 80 and is an air hog – so he lasted only about 30 minutes at depth, where I was down for over an hour. We understand that we’re preoccupied with hunting and that along with that, we need to stay conservative with our diving. My dive computer is kaput, so I definitely need to stay shallow.<\/p>\n Brownies and cinnamon crumb cake are baked and served along with carrot and celery sticks. We get a quick bit and rest up before heading back into the water. One of the last divers to get out of the water is holding a 6 lb lobster. That thing was huge in comparison to mine. But I was happy, mine was well over the legal minimum. Brad didn’t catch a single thing nor did the Mexican divers. One of the Mexican diver’s main light also flooded, so he went to his secondary. I had gotten out of the water at 1 AM. And after the quick bite, an air fill, and some chatting; an hour passed and we were good with our surface interval; we geared back up and dropped back in. This time we didn’t even drop into the water together. Everyone was on their own. This was an uneventful dive, no lobsters to be scene, anything around was too small to even fiddle with; but they make for good practice in catching, and it’s fun to catch and release. I see a light and notice that it’s not moving so I move close to it. It’s just a light that was dropped by a diver, so I hook it onto my rig and move on. I try the light and it’s just too damn powerful. There’s something to be said about adjusting to the dark and trying to rely as little on the light as possible as everything is skittish when the light is shined upon them. I see tons of rays, shrimp, a huge abalone, and various other things. I wish I had my camera housing and system. But I was out here for one purpose only, to grab lobsters; and the extra gear would just slow me down. Looking up I saw the big light and a little light in a different direction, learning my my previous dive, I swam for the little light and when I surfaced, I was right next to the boat. I returned the light to the dive master on post and he found the owner which was the instructor and dive lead for the Japanese crew; he came over and thanked me for finding his light.<\/p>\n The dive is completed with nothing to show for; the Mexican divers get nothing, Brad gets nothing, most everyone else complains that the lobsters are too small and that everything must have been scared off from the first dive. My dive lasted for about 45 to 50 minutes. As I gear down, two of the Japanese ladies are next to me, one is hunched over the side of the boat; most likely feeding the fish with partially digested spaghetti and the other trying to comfort her green sea sick friend. I chuckle; there’s always one. And on that note, I went into the galley and grabbed a nice big bowl of beef stew, threw some grated chease and onions into it and restored a little bit of energy. The boat headed to another dive spot and the captain puts a limit on our dive to 30 minutes as we still need to get back to the Long Beach port by 6AM. We find a deep spot and are told to head towards the shore for our lobsters. The captain ancored in about 60-70 feet water and for the site briefing, told us to head towards the shore for the dive. A few divers decide to sit this one out; this includes the dive buddy of the guy that grabbed the 6 lb lobster, and one of the Mexican divers.<\/p>\n A female diver (a certified dive master) suggests to the lone Mexican diver that they buddy up; and also notes that if they get separated, that they will not search for each other on the surface and that they will just finish their dives on their own. They both agree and are in the water in no time. I partner up with the guy that picked up the 6lb lobster and we drop in and head towards shore for a little on the surface, then at the bottom. I thought I swam fast, this guy was damn quick. But I kept up. We stayed within light distance for a good portion of the dive, but I ended up losing him in a kelp forest. So I continued my dive. There were lobsters everywhere. I grabbed one, then another. The last one I grabbed I figured was too small, but I grabbed him anyways this was the last dive and I needed to get as many as possible. But I was getting low on air and I’m sure that I’ve gone past the 30 minute limit so I search for the smaller of two lights and see one in the distance and head towards it underwater. I make my safety stop while heading towards the light, it’s still a good distance off so I surface to see two life guard boats docked next to the dive boat. I swim closer towards the boat and meet up with two Japanese divers still in the water. We wonder if it’s the Fish and Game folks checking up, but as we get closer, the captain and crew scream for us to back off and head towards shore away from the life guard boats. I hear them tell the life guard boats that they still have divers in the water and with knowledge of our position, the life guard boat carefully leave. I see someone on the life guard boat doing chest compressions. This cannot possibly be a good sign. Once the life guard boats are gone, we are told to get onto the boat as quick as possible. We’re swimming fast and they’re still yelling for us to get back. We get back on board, I gear down and secure my tank and ask Brad what happened. He said that there was something wrong with the big guy. I have no point of reference as there were a few “big guys”. I continue to gear down and look around and notice that the two Mexican divers were not there, as well as the female dive master. <\/p>\n I off load my lobsters into my cooler and they are measured, the smaller of the two I brought up is too small and thrown back into the water. So I am left with two legal lobsters. Not too shabby for my first opener night. Other lobster bags are checked and lobsters measure, the third dive master on the boat has six lobsters, of those, he can only keep 2 – everything he grabbed was too small.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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