Diving Skyline, Anacortes

[tiggymalvern]

Last weekend, I dived the Skyline wall near the marina in Anacortes. It's a site I've heard much about for years, but this was my first time getting there, and it was absolutely gorgeous. The wall is covered in a carpet of multi-coloured invertebrate life, particularly the bright orange sea cucumbers. Buffalo sculpin were lying around everywhere, in crazily vivid patterns to match their backgrounds. The site is also a wolf eel nursery, and I saw five juveniles, red-brown patterned with dark stripes and spots instead of the pale grey of the adults. They're so cute!

Since youtube no longer likes to display embedded videos, because that means the viewer evades the adverts, I'll just have to link you to the video on the site. People who say cold water diving isn't as pretty and colourful as tropical reefs aren't diving in the right places :-)

https://youtu.be/ZEb1F2WrCSg

Comments

[tameiki]

The colors were amazingly vibrant, especially the reds. What kind of fish were those with the red camouflage on them? They were extremely well hidden.Were those the Buffalo Sculpin?

Bet you were glad to get back in the water again. Thanks for sharing your adventures!

[tiggymalvern]

Yes, the fish with the huge heads and bulging eyes that are simultaneously stunningly ugly and vividly pretty with all their colours are the buffalo sculpin :-) It's breeding season for them, so they're looking exceptionally bright right now.

[bymyverytoes]

We finally watched this a couple of nights ago, and I think it's one of the best you've shot! I wish you would narrate the vids so we knew which fish were what, but it was still gorgeous :)

[tiggymalvern]

The background was beautiful and the fish were very cooperative - it was easy to make a pretty vid from this one!

I've thought about putting in titles naming the fish, but that would take longer, and it would detract from watching it for the images, which I do myself. So I settled for putting the main fishes in the description. Conflicts of interest!