Hello,
We hope everyone had a wonderful and productive 2017! Like we did last year, we would want to do a wrap up of wins and lessons learned for the year. Hopefully some of our adventures will help inspire you for 2018!
Due to historically crappy weather conditions and life schedules, our first dives of the year were not until April 16th (yeah, Tax Day!, j/k…) at La Jolla Shores. These dives were a balmy 46°F (7.8C) and our maximum depth was about 92 ft (28 m). The water was fairly murky with very low visibility and the tuna crab were out in herds. Literal herds. Upon our descent, the sandy bottom appeared to be moving due to the high numbers of tuna crab. Seeing all these little eyes every time you shined your light was a bit creepy. It was annoying to see them tearing through the natural growth and taking over areas like Vallecitos Point. Unfortunately our spring diving was cut short due to work, life, and some unexpected medical situations… Thankfully, we were back in the water by late July for some exceptional summer conditions at La Jolla Shores! We were also there during the peak tourist parking wars. It is always a joy to see people getting in screaming matches and threatening physical violence over parking spots… Regardless, the visibility and water temperature was much improved from April. Our maximum visibility was about 20 ft (6 m) and the water temperature was hovered around 50°F (10C). The tuna crab had also drifted to other places, so the beautiful, natural landscape of La Jolla Shores was in full view. We saw sarcastic fringeheads, California Sheepsheads, spiny lobster, strawberry sea anemones, Brittle Arm Sea Stars, sea urchins, Sculpin, octopus (specifically a mother with eggs), and many other native CA marine species.
During our time out of the water in May we took a Saturday off and headed to the Annual Scuba Show in Long Beach. We had a great time going to all the various vendor booths to get more information on products and trip destinations. We were excited to get more information about dive resorts in Fiji for our planned vacation this year! Some of the product booths we spent time at the rebreather manufacturers, it is always interesting to see how this technology is developing. Additionally it was fabulous people watching all over the show floor. Nothing like seeing drunk people spend a small fortunate on scuba gear just because it was pink…
By late summer we were busy planning and preparing for our trip to the beautiful island of Bonaire in the Southern Caribbean. More about this below… Before our trip to Bonaire, we started our NAUI Master Diver class with our local dive shop of choice (San Diego Divers). This was busy class with 20 hours of classroom sessions reviewing everything from basics to more lengthy discussions of search/recovery patterns and how to read tide tables for different dive sites. There were also 8 dives as part of the course curriculum which unfortunately were not in “great” conditions thanks to typical large autumn surf conditions. We did finish the course and are now NAUI Master Divers!
By early November, we were headed to the Southern Caribbean for our big dive vacation of the year. Bonaire is part of the Leeward Antilles and is part of the ABC Islands along with Aruba and Curação.
Due to its southern location outside of the hurricane belt, Bonaire offers some of the best diving locations in the Caribbean. There are several dive sites along the Western coast of the island with all of them offering something a little different. The nine days we were there, we logged 18 dives at 16 different sites.
Based on this schedule it wasn’t too much of ‘vacation’, but we had a great time and saw some amazing things. We will make sure to post more information about the dive sites, where we stayed, and general information about Bonaire.
Overall we a good and busy year in the water and we look forward to the coming year. Please let us know if you have any questions on anything!!! Thanks!!!
<3 B. and Meliae Quad
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