Mission Beach, Mon June 30, 2008
In one of the most strange dives that I’ve had in a long time…
After rolling into the ocean I saw that the conditions were going to be mediocre at best, even though the surface conditions were nice and flat and that there was not much of a tide swing. Then as I began my decent the conditions turned awful. Still I continued my decent expecting to hit the bottom before actually seeing it so while I was going through the motions to get to the bottom I was already thinking of where I might go for the next dive site. To my surprise I broke through the “cloud layer” and not only was there decent vis but there was a respectable amount of light penetration; bottom-line, I’d complete the dive here. Now when I said that there was a cloud layer that is exactly what it looked like. Within a foot there was a tremendous transition between zero vis and 15′ of vis, weird… Ok so now on the bottom and trimmed out I began a rather random swim in a rather random location, but I could not stop looking overhead at the “fog” above me; that was a fascinating sight.
I swam about 15 yards and came across a BC weight pouch; what the heck, I was near the boat so I ascended, put the pouch in the boat and returned back to the bottom. Back on the original course, passing the weight pouch spot I continued another 20 yards and there on the bottom, a new snorkel, back to the boat, toss the snorkel in, return back to the bottom. Again, now back to the spot where the snorkel was found and then onward… until about 20 yards farther where I found a pole spear; back to the boat again. Now at this point I’m thinking that I’m going to come across a dead diver, sans weight pouch, snorkel, and pole spear… Well almost…
So I’m cruising along when all of a sudden I get a sense that I’m not alone. Coming up along side of me is a big GSB. The fish was much larger than me, I’m guessing it was about 300 lbs. It was no more than 5 feet away and after several seconds of me looking at it and it looking at me, the two of us took off and swam parallel courses for about 10 yards. Yeah it was pretty cool. Ok so I start swimming off to the left and the GSB appears to hold its course and soon we are out of sight from one another. I go about 40 yards and then ahead of me I see coming into focus is the GSB, which is floating there stationary, almost like it was waiting for me. I swim toward it, it turns to the right, I swear it gives me a look like, “follow me” but I blow that off thinking “yeah right, a GSB trying to communicate, now that’s a story that will get me locked up, so I turn to the left and start swimming. Well this scene repeats itself. I go again about 40 yards, sure enough there is the GSB waiting for me. I swear this thing is giving me the look… Ok so I thought that I’d better follow this thing, if for no other reason than to see it bolt off because I freaked it out by following it, and by doing so it would prove to me that what I was thinking was “communication” was nothing more than some random fish body movements. With the GSB about 10 feet in front of me it swam slowly enough for me to follow, that was kinda’ weird. Periodically it would look back as if checking on my progress, even weirder (is “weirder” even a word?). I know, you all think that it is time for Carl to check into the State Mental Hospital as this point, but I’m tellin’ ya’ that’s just what it seemed like… (now there maybe plenty of other reasons for me to “visit” the hospital, I’m not going to deny that, but swear it seemed like this GSB was really trying to get me to follow it). Now I swam behind this GSB for at least 50 more yards. Well sure enough the GSB speeds up and soon is out-of-sight, but curious I maintain my course. I swam about 30 feet farther and the GSB comes into focus, only this time it has stopped and is in a somewhat inverted position looking at something on the bottom. Ok so I swim over there and what-the-heck, there is a halibut laying on the bottom. The GSB is like “showing” me the halibut. Well this isn’t just any halibut, this one has a big hole in it and it is as dead as a door nail. The fish was probably about 15 pounds.
Upon closer inspecting I could see that the halibut had scaring on its head and on the front third of its body but the remaining two thirds looked somewhat normal in terms of color and texture. The scaring marks looked like another fish had tried to eat it but could not. My guess is that the halibut had been dead only a couple of days. The GSB then moves in to “nose” the dead halibut but then looks up at me, then moves in to about 2 feet from my mask and floats there. With somewhat of a nervous laugh I’m thinking that this GSB is about to swallow me head first, and I too will end up leaving a trail of gear behind, obviously like the panicked diver that I trailed earlier… Well the GSB backed off and I began to think, “I wonder if this thing was trying to eat that halibut”. With that I pulled out my dive knife and cut the tail third of the fish off the rest of its body. I held it out and sure enough the GSB sucked down the piece. I cut the remaining halibut in half and I ended up feeding the remaining two pieces to the GSB. It stayed there looking at me for maybe another minute and then simply swam off… Well that was certainly something different…
Sensing the direction of my boat I began the swim back. I traveled about 60 yards when all of a sudden I noticed that the previously relatively stationary bottom was rushing past me at breakneck speed. I was on some kind of a “E” ticket ride, headed due West. Above me the “clouds” seemed to be rushing past like one of those time lapsed movies of real clouds in the atmosphere. Similar to a rip current along the shore I decided to swim perpendicular to it and sure enough within about 20 yards I was on the other side. I wish that I could have been on some kind of a drift dive because it would have been really fascinating to ride the current as far as it might have taken me…
Anyway I know that it all sounds very strange but it really did happen… Boy this diving thing is a lot of fun!
Tags: Mission Beach, san diego, scuba diving, seastar adventures, shore dives
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