Sole Searchers Newsletters

Next club meeting Eddie Walker will be speaking to us about a new diver safety system.

Up until 1997 almost 400 divers over the years have been left behind in the oceans of our planet.  1997, was the last year of gathering and keeping these hair raising statistics.  You may ask - “Did these accidents stop occurring or go away?”  “Do these accidents still occur?”  You bet they do, and at an alarming rate with the increases in the numbers of individuals getting Scuba certified and diving each year worldwide. 

Who is watching your back while on a designated dive boat?  We hope it’s the dive operators, dive master, dive buddy and fellow divers.  With everything happening before and after a dive, there may be times that your back is not covered.  We at, No Diver Left Behind; are watching your back with the only infallible electronic diver accountability system, known as NDLB.  The sole function of NDLB is to keep track of the physical diver on the designated dive boat.  This will give you and the crew peace of mind that, the NDLB system is double checking for the accountability of all divers on board a vessel. 

If your dive operator does not have or know about NDLB, ask them who is helping them keep track of you while watching the backs of your operators/dive masters as well – keeping risk management and liability at an all time low.

No Diver Left Behind is also the products name. This proactive system keeps track of the physical diver, creating an atmosphere of accountability and reliability.

Hadn’t been diving for a while. Needed to get salty again. One of my favorite beach dives is actually in one of the most boring sites. Redondo Beach is mighty sandy but winter brings the squid and like a camel migration in the desert, the squid are interesting to see. It’s been cold and raining but we were determined to dive. I won’t say how cold the the water was. I was afraid to look at the guage but it was warmer than being on shore. The cold wind made changing rather uncomfortable and had me second guessing opting for the semidry-wetsuit instead of a drysuit. No worries though as it was all good. (Images open a 50 second HD video clip.)

Visibility close to shore was hazy but as soon as we entered the canyon, it cleared up nicely and my wide angle light wouldn’t cast far enough in the dark to test the true distance. We immediately came across a baby horn shark sitting in the clear open. However, like many of the critters we came across, our efforts to observe and film them just stirred up silt. An genie octopus quickly retreated into her bottle. Crabs paddled away, Sand dabs skulked in the sand. I only came across one squid egg so things didn’t look promising. A Sculpin posed nicely to make up for it while I tested how far my zoom would work before the picture got muddy from all the wide angle optics. Still practicing that one. At over ninety feet, we were burning air quick. Jack retreated to a more shallow depth above me while I sucked through my air trying to aim the camera. As we headed for more shallow water I spied what appeared to be a Torpedo ray although it looked a bit large. It was partially buried and I wasn’t about to prod him to find out what he was made of. Instead I filmed from a distance while a squid pecked at him bravely. The squid also lost his nerve and headed off with me in tow. Before long we were back near shore and hiked out through the small breakers where Mark and Lynette waited on the beach to Sherpa part of our gear for us. We dried off and headed for El Torito for the usual relaxing dinner overlooking the water. My guess is that the squid will arrive within the next couple of weeks to give a full show. Maybe we’ll try again then.

It’s winter, it’s cold, it’s dark… and you want to what?

Yup, it’s time to go night diving to see if the squids are arriving in masses.

Dec. 27th 4:30 p.m. We’ll meet in the Veteran’s parking lot right near Redondo Peir (bring quarters for meters).  First assess the condition from top of the stairs. If it’s bad we’ll go have drinks at El Torito on the pier.  If it’s a go, we gear up at the car, walk down the stairs to the beach, and enter the water straight out from the stairs, heading straight out/slightly right.  Plan on hitting the water around 5 - 5:15 p.m.

Next we surface swim until we’re almost paralleling the end of the pier (not as far though).  If you go too far out, you’ll be above the canyon, and the drop to the bottom can be 70-80 feet.  But don’t worry, we usually drop down to about 30 ft. first, and then follow the sandy bottom down into the canyon.  The canyon is not a sheer drop off, but a rather sandy slope.  It’s hard to notice it going down, but on the way back up you’ll definitely see the incline.  I caution divers of this, since some people may feel panicked when noticing the steep incline on the way back.  Relax, don’t kick hard, instead, just adjust your buoyancy.

In the past, when the squids are there, they seem to appear in numbers around 70-80 ft range.  I’ve seen masses of squid egg casings carpeting the sea floor near 90 ft.

Some points I like divers to be aware of (these are not instructions, but suggestions.  Please check with a dive instructor for further pointers):

•Make sure you’ve dived this site during day time.
•You must have night diving experience, along with deep dive experience.
•Make sure you know how to frog kick, so as not to stir up the silt.
•Although it’s a beach dive, it can get deep (100+), so divers will have to be aware of the fact they will consume air much faster, and run out of No Deco Time much faster than your average beach dive.

Personally I really don’t recommend making a blue water ascent here at night, but if you must, keep in mind that you need to coordinate controlling the inflator hose, dive computer, lights, at the same time keeping visual contact of your dive buddy.  Arrange your instruments so you can do all these tasks while controlling buoyancy.  If you add air sharing to the mix, it makes the task much more difficult, so keep your eyes on your spg and turn back before you get low on air.  Yea, I know it sounds simple.

If you lose your dive buddy in less than 40 fsw, look around for about a minute, and then surface to meet up (give the OK sign with your dive lights).  If you lose your dive buddy in the canyon, follow the sandy bottom up towards the shore, and then make a safe ascent from about 30 ft.  Find your buddy on the surface (give the OK sign with your dive lights).  Then either continue the dive, or call it.

After a nice dive in the canyon, a leisure safety stop at about 20-15 ft can be very interesting looking at sand-dollars, and other critters in the sand.  The shore is always well lit here from the street lights, so finding the shore is no problem.

Finally, the easy looking sandy beach exit here can be a little tricky at times.  During the winter months, the sand may have troughs in the shallows due to the winter wave action.  So be cautious walking out.

After the dive we usually walk over to El Torito on the pier and have a drink to warm ourselves

Here is a great California Diving News article on this dive site.
http://www.saintbrendan.com/Aug4/RedondoCyn.html

Low tide 3:45 (-0.69 feet)
Sunset 4:52 p.m.
High tide 10:25 p.m. (3.64 feet)

Let me know if you plan to join us.

Thanks

Kaz