Hey Everyone,
Apologies for not getting more content out this year, we have been a little busy between work and life… But we did want to take some time to let everyone know what we have been up to and what dive adventures we have been on, as well as give everyone an idea of what to expect in the coming months.
Early 2016 was busy getting life back on track after the holiday. In March and April, we braved the chilly Pacific Ocean waters and completed our Advance Open Water Certification. Unfortunately our dive days were spread out over a few weeks due to the water conditions/weather being out of our favor. During our navigation dive, we fought a strong surge that swept us about five to eight feet in either direction of the guide line in pea soup visibility. Despite these crap conditions, we found our way back to our starting points and marks. After navigating through that muck, navigation doesn’t seem too bad.
Along with becoming Advanced Open Water Divers, we became Enriched Air Certified/Nitrox Certified. With this Naui certification we can dive with different nitrogen/oxygen mixtures in addition to the standard air mixture of 21% oxygen. Becoming a Nitrox Certified Diver can help immensely with making this most of your dive time because hauling 50 pounds of gear for a 5 minute dive kind of sucks… In addition to increasing bottom time, we have also been enjoying the lower rate of nitrogen loading to make the most of repetitive dives. We will be doing a full write up of our courses and descriptions of what to expect with a Naui Advanced Open Water Certification and Nitrox Certification.
Throughout late Spring and going into Summer 2016, we made sure to take some time out of our schedules to do some shore dives at La Jolla Shores. We did our best to plan our dives on days with good conditions. For anyone not familiar with this dive site in San Diego County, a “good” day at La Jolla Shores is 1-2 ft (0.3 m to 0.6 m) waves with little wind and average water temperature of 49°F to 51°F (9.45°C to 10.56°C) at about 100 ft (30.5 m) depth. We have found that this helps cool our heads after a long and busy work weeks. During our dives at the Shores, we saw a variety of ocean life common to the Southern California coast. Throughout these dives we saw the California Sea Hares (A. californica) come up from the deep for their annual feeding. We also saw a variety of fringe heads, Horn Sharks (H. francisci), Giant Sea Bass (S. giga), pipe fish, octopus, California Sheep Head (S. pulcher), and sea stars.
As well as taking time to do some shore dives, we did our first wreck dives off the coast of San Diego at a few sites in “Wreck Alley”. Our first adventure to Wreck Alley was with the local, non-profit scuba group Power Scuba (Meet Up Site). Unfortunately for this day of diving, the conditions were very poor due to a strong surge and visibility being extremely bad in most spots. We did our best to make the most of the day on the water, but it was tough given how bad the conditions were. Thankfully, we got another shot at diving on the same wrecks as part of our Nitrox course and the second time around the conditions were much better. We will be doing a full review of the dive boat and the dive sites.
After a busy year of local Southern California diving, we were able to take a week-long dive trip to Cozumel, Mexico this fall. This was our second trip to the island and we had a great time diving on the reefs and walls. Some of the sites we went diving at were Punta Sur, Columbia Deep, Yucab, Tomentos, Paso Del Cedral, Paradiso, Chankanaab Reef, Palancar Caves, and Palancar Gardens. 
We saw so much life at these different sites and we expanded our dive skills at some of the sites. There will be a lot more information about our trip; we have tons of video footage and pictures!
Besides doing all of this diving, we also bought and tested out a lot of new gear. Please make sure to keep a look out for reviews and comparisons.
Thank you so much for taking time to read through what we did this year. We hope to have some dive content up in the next few weeks, keep a look out for some video/blog posts. To help you keep an eye out for new content, please check out our YouTube Channels (Scuba and Shooting), Instagram, and Twitter.
Cheers to everyone’s 2017! Good luck and good dives!
- B-Quad