As a scuba instructor, it never fails to amaze me that there is hardly a day of diving that does not hold something new - some new creature, new behavior, or just seeing something in a new way.  Then there are days that just seem full of discoveries, as this last Sunday at Ana Capa Island.  We did three dives off of the Raptor, out of Ventura Harbor, the last dive at Ana Capa's East End, a dive site that is closed to divers most of the year due to the currents that flow around the point.

Normally I make note of items that made a dive special in my dive log, but this time around there simply was not enough room.  Oh for want of a camera on this journey!  For lack of room in my log, I figured would immortalize this dive here.  Some of the things I encountered:

• Lots of seals at all three dive sites, and both seals and sea lions frolicking at the East End.  Usually I see one or the other, as they are territorial, but here they seemed to be okay with each other.
• Talk about freindly seals - on the second and third dives I had seals come right up against me and look in my eyes from inches away.  They didn't seem to want me to leave, either... as I tried to depart the East End and swim back to the boat, three times I found my progress impeeded by a seal attached to one of my fins!
• At the first dive site, The Caverns, there must have been hundreds of halibut fry.  They are always a cool surprise, they blend in perfectly with the sand untill they move, by oscilating their body, which is basically one giant fin.  Rarely do you see more than one at a time, though... seeing a half dozen or more at a time taking off was something to see.
• At Caverns there were hundreds of molts laying in the sand from some sort of crab I have never seen before.  It had an elongated body like a mole crab (also known as the sand crab, found at beaches everywhere), but was around 3 inches long and an inch wide, and had at least one claw, which the mole crab lacks.  I didn't see any live specimens, I'll have to keep an eye out for this critter in the future.
  
• Lots of invertabrate life at East End:
  • Many large colorful anemone, including a variety I had previously not seen, with multiple shades of purple crowned with tips of crimson.
  • A white sea cucumber with orange bristles, which I have seen on previous occassions, but had never seen feeding.  Beautiful plumage!
  • A couple of the largest hermit crabs I've seen, wearing large turret shells.  This is the first I've seen hermit crabs at Ana Capa, the only ones I've seen in the Channel Islands were at Santa Cruz, and always at night.
  • I've seen sea hares (picture a bulbous slug with big floppy rabbit-ear-like appendages) in different colors - black, green, brown - but never one in a deep crimson red before.  I was so entranced I laid in the sand in front of it for several minutes, until it started to crawl onto my mask!  I kept wondering if another diver might mistake me for unconscious and try to rescue me

Ah, another great day in the chilly Pacific!