Leo Carillo, California (Kayak Dive)
Author: Arno Dienhart

Posted by Eins on August 02, 1999 at 01:02:09:

It was a perfect day for kayak diving. Glassy water, very manageable surf, a fresh breeze, sun--what else could one ask for. Well, visibility could've been better than the 15 ft it was, and what happened to the water temperature? Yesterday 63 just some 40-50 miles south, and today 50F! I was fureezing in my drysuit, only had undergarments for above 60. Bummer.

Leo Carillo is a State Beach with a second parking lot at the west end where you can park pretty close to the water's edge. That's where we met and from there we paddled out for the first dive, heading further west for about a half mile. We had to paddle over some kelp cannopies which works quite well. The reef we dived was not very deep, max. 11.5m, bottom time 46 minutes. For mek: I started this one with 242 bar/3500# and finished with about 90 bar/1300# in a HP100.

The rocky reef looked like ancient ruins or stone foundations of vast buildings, with an occasional pinnacle. Kelp everywhere, and dusk in the kelp forest. Not as teeming with fish as I'd expected, but overly covered with invertebrates. Tunicates: stalked, spiny headed, and one cluster of pelagic tunicates, about cucumber-sized jelly-like tunicates that are stuck together to form a colony. Reminded me of that creature in The Abyss. Sponges, particularly the orange/yellow puffball sponge. Big sheep crabs, some of them enormous! Very well camouflaged with silt, sand, and small algae growth. Their white claws were very impressive, to say the least. One smaller one was very funny to watch. Once alarmed by us, it started to run around on the bottom with both claws reaching up at us, threatening to pinch. That one reminded me of Monty Python's In Search of the Holy Grail (I think that was the one) where this truncated knight keeps fighting a hopeless fight. Paddling back from that site was a cinch as the breeze was now with us.

For the second dive, it was only Paul and I. We just paddled out and across the next field of kelp and tied the yaks off to kelp. No current and the breeze had not increased. Basically the same structure and assortment of life, but less dense kelp. Paul found a good sized speargun that was still armed (with two of three bungees) and the safety lever in the shoot position! Paul disarmed it and took it. We suppose it was lost by a free diver who couldn't find it again. That dive was 10 m, 31 minutes. For mek: I started with a 207bar/3000# HP100 and finished with about 120 bar/1740#. This one was a lot more relaxed than the first one.

All in all, we had a field day.

Eins