More from Underwater

[tiggymalvern]

I had a lovely dive at Titlow Beach near Tacoma on Sunday. There are a few areas people dive around there, but the most common one is the pilings which are the remnants of an old jetty. It was a funny sort of day - the tide calendars said slack tide would be at 11.39am, so we got in the water at 11.10. We swam out from the beach a bit through the shallow pilings and found some pretty stiff current that was tough to swim into, so we hung onto the pilings and waited. And waited. 11.40 came and went with no sign of slack tide, so we decided to drop down to the bottom, where the current is always weaker than at the surface and swim out to the main pilings.

That worked well, but we had to stay on the shoreward side of the pilings, because the seaward side still had current that was hard work! Andyway, the vis was great for the area, well over 20 feet, and since the site is so shallow (my max depth for the dive was 32 feet) we had sunlight on the bottom and we could see without needing lights! The pilings are covered in giant white plumose anemones. We didn't see anything particularly cool or unusual, but the whole dive was just pretty and it's always nice to be able to see XD

I had a request to name the fish, so I've tried doing that with this video. I haven't labelled the same fish every time (buffalo sculpin were everywhere again, though not as dramatically coloured as at Skyline where the background was more vivid). Do not ask about the small sculpin at 3.10-it's a small sculpin, they're a nightmare to identify...

https://youtu.be/LjVsTSzxnaA

Comments

[tameiki]

Having sunlight on everything really makes a difference in what can be seen! Thank you for putting the names on the fish, I need to go back and watch it again a few more times because my eye was locked on one thing but there would be a crab or something else going on the side. The camouflage is amazing on some of these critters. Is it easier to make out in person or are they just as hidden as on video?

[tiggymalvern]

Sunlight while diving is normally a tropical indulgence, but sometimes we get it in the Pacific Northwest!

The critters can be exactly that hard to make out in person. They really do a good job of disappearing into the background.

[bymyverytoes]

The naming was much appreciated. Another lovely video, thank you.

[tiggymalvern]

At least one other person was in favour of fish naming, so I'll probably continue to do it.