Casino Point dive was thankfully not a blast
Monday, May 10th, 2010On Saturday May 1, Bromley, David, John, and I took the Catalina Express to Avalon to dive Casino Point. The weather was perfect, and Bromley was kind enough to help me break in my new dry suit. For me, it was the first time diving a dry suit, but it all went pretty well. Amazing how you don’t feel cold at all at 100 fsw.
During our first early morning dive in the underwater park, Bromley and I surfaced so we can adjust the weights, then Bromley says “Hey, they’re calling us in.” I look towards the shore to find a Sheriff officer waiving all of us divers out of the water. A dive accident? was my first thought. After exiting the water, we approached one of the officer and asked what was going on. “The underwater park will be closed off for the rest of the day” she said. At first she wasn’t telling us why, but soon she revealed that someone had found a World War II artillery shell right near the stairs. Ummmm… right near the stairs we just exited? Yikes! Our guess was that it was a left over practice shell from the early years. Soon, the bomb squad was called in, and the dive area was taped off.
Although Casino Point was closed off, the trip wasn’t a loss at all due to the harbor master opening up Descanso Bay for us divers. Descanso Bay is usually closed off to divers and can only be dived by permission from the Harbor Master. So, after we grabbed a quick lunch at the burger place right next to the Casino (where we chatted with Karim and his GUE friends), we walked over to Descanso Bay for our next dive. It was an easy beach entry and a short swim to the outer buoy. Following the buoy chain down, we hit bottom at about 80 fsw. John and David enjoyed the wreck of the Valient, and Bromley and I watched many large bat rays swimming around us. Oh yes, and we spotted one angle shark in the sand perfectly hidden… well almost perfectly. Anyway, the day gave us a different kind of excitement we never expected on Catalina. By the end of our dive, it was (as Shawn would say) Beer O’clock. We headed towards town and grabbed some really tall glasses of beer.
Oh yea, we never did hear a big boom, so I take it that they disposed the shell without any difficulty 
-Kaz-