Wed - August 9, 2006

"Other girls dream of working here. You merely deign." ~Nigel

A comment made to me as I arrived at the aquarium last night for my bi-monthly shark dive.

How true - it appears glamorous, until one realizes that most of what we do is clean the shark-poo off the fake coral, while of course 24 potential man-eaters circle us.
It was decided last night that we need some UW photos of the South Pacific Aquarium (read: shark tank) for purposes of making a grid map of the UW exhibits. Currently our method of cleaning the coral islands is to have duplicate sets of coral. We send down a pair of divers (with shark sticks) to an island, then send down huge trash cans full of replacement coral. We then remove a piece of dirty coral and replace it with a new, clean, identical piece. The dirty coral gets placed in a rubble pile and sent back to the surface once the bucket is full. So, in weeks to come, I will have photos.

Only 2 sharks of the 24 have posed threats. The sand tiger, ST2, himself has never made a move but his species has. I was bumped by one on a deco line on the East Coast once. Apparently they will snap very quickly at anything within their reach that hacks them off for whatever reason - so we keep our distance from him. And Lemon, the large, lovely lemon shark, once nudges a diver who held up her shark stick and it touched Lemon's nose. Lemon then swam to the far end of the tank and charged the diver, turning away at the last second. That was apparently several years ago; but still if Lemon is agitated, we get out of the tank. I love this job, I really do. I love diving open water of course, but there's something about the aquarium that's just too cool.

Here's our boy ST2. Note the obvious need for an orthodontist.



And here's our lovely lady, Lemon. She's truly regal, isn't she?



I got 6 pages of the dissertation edited yesterday, and need to get back at it today. Mom has her checkup later and needs to run about 1000 errands, then I will bring her home and go to school to finish working on the mess there.

A few of us signed up for a cool physics workshop in Seattle on Sept 1. Miss IGottaMoveNow was one. We signed up as soon as we got the info, but it was too late and we were put on a waiting list. I found out a few weeks ago that we made the cut to go, and emailed Miss IGMN. She would check on her availablilty, and let me know asw she thought they had reservations somewhere for 4-wheeling (!!!). Yesterday, I still had not heard from her that she was available, so I replied that she could not go. Of course within 8 hours of my declining for her, she decided that yes indeed she could go, so I had to email back and say oops I goofed. Another reason to love her. But it's am inportant part of mentoring her (why am I mentoring a teacher with 2+ years of experience??? Because she didn't get it the first time....) that I keep her close. Besides, there's that thing that my tech instructor trainer taught me: Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Back to work. Have a great day.

Posted at 10:23 PM       |

Mon - July 10, 2006

Wed - June 28, 2006

Sun - March 5, 2006

Edmonds

Two dives at Edmonds with Beeks, on his first visit to the PNW:

Posted at 06:15 PM       |

Sun - August 28, 2005

Sund Rock

Nitrox and drysuit class for Walt.

THe man power-skis and teaches celebs to do the same in Sun Valley. He has met and taught the most famous of the famous. He also teaches them to skydive so they can be dropped by helicopter on places you can only get to in that way to ski down way cool mountains. People like this are usually very easy to teach diving stuff. They don't flinch at much.

First dive, North Wall. Three large octos. one probably on eggs. None came out, but all were pretty easy to see. Awesome. 8 wolfies; 3 mated pairs, one huge male near the rockpile at the beginning of the wall. One tiny baby male, living under the huge concrete block that anchors the buoy so you come nearly face to face with him as you descend at the rope.

Second dive was a repeat as Walt wanted to see the octos again. So did I. I could look at octos all day. There si something just SO ethereal about them. They are so incredibly intelligent that I always feel that they are watching us long before we actually see them. Part of my personal pre-dive ritual has always been to pay homage to the sea and now it is also to ask the octopi to share their home and to tell them that it is my intention to be a polite and respectful visitor.

We were tearing donw gear about 7 PM and began to drive home. Across the canal, we saw the mountains shrouded in a pale haze. And we saw *the* most awesome double rainbow.
Left side and right side:


Oh wait, there are TWO!


Reflected in the waters of the Sound:


As the sun set over the Olympics to the West:

Posted at 08:13 PM     Read More     |

Fri - July 15, 2005

Thu - July 14, 2005

Wed - July 13, 2005

Bandito Charters Day 2

Back to the boat, with Captain Rick. Today, Alex was along as a diver and our DM was McKee. Another nice kid - where does RIck find all these. Today, our sites were Sunrise and Maury Island Barges. The barges were a new site for us. No walls or hideouts for GPO's or wolfies, but tons of fish and lots of stars. We had two other divers today, a French-Canadian who spent most of the trip ripping on the US and making me wonder why he just does not move back to Quebec, and his girlfriend. He spent the whole trip taking care of her....

Now, I am developing mixed emotions about being "taken care of" as a tech dive girl. At one time, I would have totally balked at someone toting my gear - not any more. Once all the guys at the dive shop have seen me walk in carrying a set of twin 95's while wearing heels, we are all aware that I am personally capable of my own schlepping. Any time a surge of testosterone encourages then to demonstrate their incredible strength by toting my tanks - they are more than welcome to do so. I am confident that I can out-dive most of them and can certainly keep up with the rest, so no big deal. But I digress.

I did take a bit of offense at this guy's insisting that the girlfriend, at her tiny size of 120 lbs, was much too frail to be diving in anything more than her lil 63. I was a strapping 112 when i did my trimix class and the rule was, if you can't carry it, you don't dive it. I carried. And, to be noted, I will be well below 112 when i get the rest of this weight off. And I will still dive the twin 95's, carried by moi.

Lori and I on the boat. I don't know what we were talking about. Probably the 120 lb helpless female.

Posted at 03:15 PM       |

Tue - July 12, 2005

Bandito Charters Day 1

Today found us on the NakNek with Captain Rick and his trusty DM Alex. He chose to take us to Pt. Defiance North Wall and then to Z's Reef; two of my favorite sites. Two quiet, uneventful dives and a good time was had by all. It's always awesome to be the only divers on a great boat like that with a great captain like Rick. We hadn't met Alex before, and enjoyed her most thoroughly. In fact, she will probably come back and dive with us again tomorrow.

CIty Marina:


The Narrows bridge with Pt Defiance in the background, on the right.

Posted at 03:02 PM       |

Mon - July 11, 2005

Sun - July 10, 2005

Edmonds Underwater Park

Two dives. Both sucked, as dives go.

I forgot that the surface swim is that long even at low tide. I forgot that the rope lines below are so hard to see and so far apart.

I was the only one wearing enough lead. I gave 3 lbs from my belt to Lori and 2 lbs from my pocket to Mike. Ken just dealt with it.

We should have had macro lenses instead of the, well, whatever they had. It was nudibranch city, dominated by my favorites:


Dirona albolineata (alabaster nudibranch), shown here in white but also found in a gorgeous peachy-pink.


We made two dives of about an hour each. Max depth was like 36 ft. Then we stopped a the dump of a sports bar on the way home for crab corn chowder, but it was the wrong damn day.

Lori and Ken are a bit beat, so after packing up gear for Hood Canal tomorrow, we sent them off to bed.

Posted at 08:31 PM       |