I started out by going along the wall looking at all the scarlet psoluses, bat stars, and anemones. The wall is pretty easy to navigate just, follow the rock sand line down and back. The kelp along the wall was really impressive. It reached the surface then spread out along it. I thought it would be really hard to navigate through all the kelp and that I would get tangled up a lot but it was easy to swim through and around. I would photograph the different crabs and fish swimming by me. At one point I was photographing an anemone and realized that there was a pretty big cabazon right next to me. The cabazon is a really well camouflaged fish that has almost a green army camo look to it. I got some shots of it and let it be. Probably my favorite subjects were the anemones that look like something out of Alice in Wonderland. They were massive compared to the anemones here in New England. On one dive I dropped down and noticed a purple striped jelly right in front of me. It was amazingly beautiful with bright colors against the dark green of the sea. I snapped a few shots of it and kept on going.
One day I did a thirty minute surface swim out to see the sea lion colony at the end of the wall. When I got there there were tons of sea lions all lying around. I swam up to the started making a lot of noises and blowing bubbles in the water and splashing around, ducked under the water come up a few feet away and did the same thing again. At this point about 20 young sea lions jumped into the water and started frantically swimming around me in circles. It was really breathtaking to watch them and how easily they glide through the water. The vis was really bad, only about five feet, so I tried to get some shots but mainly just took in the performance before me. At one point a huge bull male jumped in and swam right by me. It was about double the size of the young ones and had a large bump on its head which meant it’s a dominant male. It probably weighed in at around 500-600 lbs and was pretty intimidating. But at the same time he never bothered me so I felt safe. After about 80 minutes I began the long surface swim back and walked back to the shop to tell the story.
